Derya Yinanc, chief executive and chairman of Quantum Ingenuity Inc. Photograph by: Leah Hennel, Calgary Herald
CALGARY — A Calgary-based research and development company says it has developed a number of “breakthrough” technologies that would reduce costs in the oilpatch while at the same time being environmentally-friendly.
Derya Yinanc, chief executive and chairman of Quantum Ingenuity Inc., said the company is in negotiations with “multiple major energy firms.”
“Developing breakthrough innovations for primary resource technologies, such as oil and gas, such as energy production, this is our purpose,” said Yinanc.
Quantum Ingenuity Inc. was founded in 2009 to provide improved primary resource production technologies. Its executive team includes Paul Harris, chief innovation officer and director of advanced concept research; oilpatch veterans Garry Mihaichuk, co-president for commercialization, and David Devenny, co-president for research and development; and director Bob Schulz, who is a professor in Petroleum Land Management at the University of Calgary’s Haskayne School of Business.
Yinanc said the company has achieved breakthroughs in clean coal technology, sustainable hydrogen production, and sustainable ethylene and acetylene production.
Quantum Ingenuity has done research work in the areas of heavy oil upgrading and refining, biodiesel production, heavy oil transportation, methanol fuel cells and heavy oil extraction.
“Right now, refining, extraction of crude oil, call it bitumen, call it any kind of crude oil, is extremely hazardous to the environment. The environmental damage that it causes, and the costs associated with cleaning up, is one of the major factors,” said Yinanc. “What we have is the elimination of that cost altogether.
“Room temperature, room pressure upgrading has the potential to revolutionize the industry. The industry itself is operating through 1930s and 1940s chemistry which is very bulky, very large. Huge units can do what we can do on a very small scale. Modularity is the key here.”
Yinanc said that within one to two years a pilot unit should be in place based on 50 barrels per day in production. Once in place, it would take a few years for approvals. He said in three to four years these technologies could be in the marketplace and available for industrial use.
“The upgrading technology is pretty old technology and it’s brute force technology. We bring in reactors for the upgrading reactions to take place in,” said Devenny. “They have stainless steel walls that are two feet thick. You need that sort of pressure vessel in order to operate large equipment at high temperature, high pressures. And the high temperatures are several hundred degrees. This is pretty expensive to bring something in that big and to operate at that high temperature.
“Our technology is operating at room temperature and pressure. So we eliminate that. We’ve replaced this expensive equipment with something at room temperature and pressure.”
Devenny said the company is developing breakthrough technologies.
“In oilsands, we kind of joke that if you invent something new it takes about 20 years before it gets introduced and put into commercial use,” he said. “This is a real challenge because with the plants operating today you don’t want to introduce some new technology that would cause them to not operate so well. So they’re deathly afraid of trying something new. They want anything new tried offstream independent of existing production. They go to great lengths to turn technology away or to really prove beyond a doubt that it can fit into their technology. That’s a challenge we’re going to face here because this doesn’t need much of their technology.”
Schulz said the industry has been operating with 40-year-old technologies. He said Quantum Ingenuity is a technology maverick which has already succeeded with environmentally-friendly, inexpensive room-temperature conditions and rapid-fire experiments which combine to dramatically shorten the innovation cycle time.
The next stage for the company is to seek partnerships with energy companies or countries interested in the breakthroughs.
“Although Derya has been successful in the lab, part of the reason it’s not taken off as quickly as possible is because the companies don’t always have the science people to evaluate what he’s doing or they have their own guys that have their own ideas,” said Schulz.
Greg Stringham, vice-president of oilsands and markets for the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, said technology has always been the key for the oil and gas industry, particularly in Western Canada because the region has some of the tougher resources to extract.
“Between 10 and 15 years ago, I think you’ve seen not only a lot of incremental improvements on things, lower environmental impacts and also better recovery technologies, but we’ve seen some huge breakthroughs as well,” he said.
“Innovation cannot be funnelled through just one channel. So it’s important to get that going in a variety of forums.”
mtoneguzzi@calgaryherald.com
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