Efficiency and productivity： Catalyst technology to transform industry
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Summary
In this episode, I chat with Mins Mcgovern, CEO of Nanostech, about his company's efforts to clean up oil and gas extraction in order to improve efficiency and reduce the emissions footprint of the extraction process.
Transcript
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so i'm sitting with miles mcgovern the ceo of nanostech and i i'm looking forward to this
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conversation we're at the global energy show and if you know it gets overwhelmed it's all oil gas
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talk and of course it's all that a lot of these things are related but sometimes we forget about
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the technologies that go in and then cleaning up our extraction and becoming you know in improving
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efficiency and of course reducing the the emissions footprint and and miles has some
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interesting technology that you guys have been bringing forth uh in this show uh with with uh
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technology i guess for for subsurface oil and gas extraction can you kind of expand on that sure i
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i really appreciate the opportunity to chat with you but this it's uh our whole focus is using
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chemistry like you know what i call green chemistry so i'm using catalyst technology so what we're able
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to do in catalysts you know the fundamental thing about them is you're able to target a very specific
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molecular reaction and in doing so i can separate one molecule from three others and keep them separate
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and so forth and i can target and have it being very active and it's extremely energy efficient so
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sometimes we generate our own heat and energy from that reaction and so therefore it's also very
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environmentally friendly and we target what we do is use these catalysts so for instance in you know
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different applications across decarbonizing the energy sector if you will you know we have them for
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fossil fuels so where we actually inject these nanoparticles which form a catalyst and in into a sag d
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operation and within that operation you create what we call a fixed bed reactor and we're upgrading heavy
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oil to a medium oil in situ so before it's even extracted out of the ground we upgrade that and the
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benefits are you're reducing your sor your steamed oil ratio or your emissions by 35 to 40 percent and
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you're improving the quality of the oil so you can extract more of it quicker and it's a higher quality
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which further means you don't need to have diluent in it when you go to ship it through the pipeline so
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you know as carney and people are talking about hey we want to ship to you know broader markets and we want
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to be able to do this with decarbonized barrels of oil yeah so just kind of explain to some people
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further if you're not as familiar with it so i mean we get the heavy oil deposits in northern alberta
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there's the conventional open pit mining sag d is a steam assisted gravity drainage i believe and so
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what that is is we've been it's an energy intensive means of extracting the oil we're not mining but
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they're injecting steam down there to heat the oil change the consistency so they can bring it to the
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surface and then utilize it so you're talking in a sense of doing some of that processing
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subsurface before it even comes up and and then it will reduce all of the energy required to heat
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that steam and pump it downwards correct so we're using the chemicals so not that different than the
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chemicals that a refiner would take to once he gets that oil or the bitumen and turn it into a fuel
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our goal isn't to turn it into a fuel it's to turn it into a higher quality oil yeah bringing it up a
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level in the uh so that it you you can really it becomes it opens up additional markets but also
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significantly reduces the amount of steam required to extract it so cutting emissions right out of the
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gate yeah and something has been you know uh celebrated by the energy sector but they often
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don't seem to get credit for it is the emissions for oil production have come down dramatically per
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barrel in alberta over the last 10 20 years the efforts have had success and and then we can go
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further potentially through efforts like yours has this been brought into any application yet we are
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in the process of implementing it um with one of the the major uh producers here in in alberta
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well actually two of them so are working on the the initial implementation and um where our expectation
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it is a project that is funded by era so emissions reduction alberta is a participant in the in this
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project along with sdtc um the scientific development technology group and you know our expectation is
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really to actually elevate this as one of those projects that uh the federal government saying
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put forward more projects with decarbonized you know ventures and so we believe this could be a very
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nice fit in that area great night i appreciate that as i said with this show i mean it's a good time for
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people to network and exchange these ideas these different processes and and just to remind people
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outside of the industry like there's there's ongoing efforts to reduce the impact of oil and gas
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production uh 100 and and uh you know we're getting there we're getting there and i think you know
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that that decarbonization even carries across um our our team was published in the journal of science
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last year for having a catalyst that would be most likely the successful in converting co2 to co
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so to to take co2 and convert it into a syngas and which is a significant breakthrough so once you've
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even captured that other co2 that you are producing so rather than sticking it into the ground to turn it
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into a synthetic gas for part of that sin you know circular economy that they can actually run it
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to produce to run the the equipment and so forth oh that's excellent uh you know i appreciate you
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uh bringing that up and you know it's just yet another of the things the innovations that are coming
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out where can people find more information on what you guys are doing and then uh you know
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reach out to your company if they're yeah nanostech so our company's website is nanostech
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dot tech and uh yeah happy to you can find us through uh through there on linkedin and uh be
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able to share more information over and uh expose more as as we disclose all the partners and what's
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happening well i appreciate you coming to share some of that with us and the work you guys are doing
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you know i mean remind people it's it's we're getting better all the time absolutely well i appreciate