Caitlin deBoer and Clarke Ellis with Gas Liquids Engineering

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

caitlin, Clarke, talk, industrial, captured, work, carbon capture, carbon, power, sequester, projects, enhanced oil recovery, renewables, gas, people, alberta, bottling company, booth, generation, creole

00:00

Scott. Welcome to the Industrial Talk podcast with Scott. MacKenzie. Scott is a passionate industry professional dedicated to transferring cutting edge industry focused innovations and trends while highlighting the men and women who keep the world moving. So put on your hard hat, grab your work boots, and let's go all right

00:21

once again. Thank you very much for joining the number one industrial related podcast in the universe, all backed up by data that celebrates industry professionals all around the world. Because you're bold, you are brave, you dare greatly, you innovate, you solve problems, and that's why we celebrate you on Industrial Talk, we are broadcasting on site. PowerGen is the location power Gen 24 and we're here in New Orleans, Louisiana, and it's a great event. We're right on the floor. And put this on the calendar for 25 if you have not signed up for it. PowerGen 25 is where you want to be. Two people in the hot seat. Clarke, just one second. Clarke Ellis, oh, come on. Caitlin DeBoer, you got it right. Did I my biggest My biggest fear is when I see some names and it's like, Oh, come on. Scott. Guys, shout it out. That wasn't bad. That wasn't bad at all. Caitlin,

01:20

your first try, I

01:22

did. Thank you. I'm proud of that. You guys having a good conference. Caitlin,

01:26

yeah, it's been busier than we expected. It's our first year here, so it's nice to see the support in the industry. Why are you here? We're here to talk about carbon capture on power generation projects, as well as just power generation as a whole industry.

01:41

Clarke, you having a good conference?

01:42

Yeah, it's good so far, like Caitlin said, it's been busy. Had a lot of good traffic, lots of good people to talk to.

01:50

Why did you decide that gas liquid engineering, by the way, they're just right across from me, so I can look at their booth. Is needed to attend this Caitlin well,

02:02

over the last few years, the power generation conversation has changed, where we need to have reliable and affordable energy, and that's been really a big topic in North America, across all the US and Canada. And we're really here to keep that conversation moving forward and find solutions.

02:18

Can you can you have reliable and affordable energy all at once. Well, I

02:24

think that's the goal. We really need it as absolutely consumers, yeah, yeah.

02:29

I don't want to pay more.

02:31

Nobody wants to pay more. Everything costs more. So power should be something that we can at least rely on and be able to afford without sacrificing groceries, sacrificing sports for our kids. Here it

02:42

is, okay, we're gonna wrap it up over there, because that's exactly how I feel anyway. All right, are you having a good conference? Clarke, absolutely. Why? Why?

02:52

Well, it's nice to visit New Orleans. I've never been here, really.

02:55

Is this your first time? First time where you staying

02:59

just a hotel down the street. Live meridian.

03:01

Oh, yeah, absolutely. Did you what type of food everybody got? Everything is food, yeah? Just Creole

03:09

so far. Yeah. Looking forward to engaging tonight. So

03:12

where are you? Where are you going? Do you know? Because I I'm from here, not New Orleans, but I live in the town across Lake, Pontchartrain. So it's always about food. You're looking I'm

03:23

a reservation expert. I think we went to Creole house last night. Galliano, Galliano and rebirth, dad. I don't know. I have heard good reviews, but all my research comes from the internet. So you

03:41

never know that's the World Wide Web, of course. Why wouldn't you trust it absolutely. All right, Clarke, let's talk carbon capture. And how do you, how did, what does that carbon capture look like? So in the world of generation? So how do you, how do you capture carbon? Well,

04:05

I'm gonna keep it high level. I'm an electrical engineer,

04:10

but yell at MacKenzie over there, yeah. Well, no, I

04:12

can give you the high level. So I mean, he's the expert, so I might, I can dumb it down. But basically, CO two is produced by burning fossil fuels comes out the exhaust stack as you as you're aware of, it's it's hot and but it's very small concentration. It's about three, eight to 5% of the flue gas concentration. So you have to capture that somehow. And there are various technologies we work with various licensors. The old standby is an amine carbon capture system, where the amines, basically you contact the flue gas with an amine solution, and it strips the CO two out of it. What

04:53

do you do with it?

04:54

What do you do with it? Yeah, I

04:56

mean, as a hair, I've captured it. I've caught it. Now. What?

05:00

Now, what? Well, it typically comes out very wet. I guess it's, it's water saturated, and there's a lot of particulates. There's, there's things you need to take out of it. Basically you need to purify it. So first you need to purify it, you need to dehydrate it, you need to compress it, and from there you basically just push it down a hole.

05:21

Ah. So that's how you get rid of it. But, but, but Caitlin can, is there an industrial application for that captured carbon? You know? Is that one of those questions that I

05:33

yeah, oh, there you go. Do we do with what the answer is, you can either sequester it. So exactly like Clarke said, you can put it down a hole and then it's essentially trapped for infinity, or you can utilize it. So that's another conversation that we have with people who are looking to capture their carbon. They can find a commercial partner and sell their carbon to, say, a beer company or hot bottling or food grade. There are different applications, and we can help you provide either options. So depending on what your commercial deal is with it is, you can either capture it, sequester it, so keep it, put it down a hole, never to release back into this atmosphere, or you can find a partner to utilize it and sell it to so that they're able to kind of reuse that carbon for another product,

06:27

carbonization. Like carbon, yes. So do you guys, do you handle that like that? Let's say I'm capturing the carbon, right? I'm doing that, and I have a client that wants that captured carbon. Do you work with them on getting it to the right spec? Clarke?

06:50

Yes, absolutely. We get a spec from our clients, so we need to meet and we put in their proper equipment

06:59

to do so. I'm done. I'm tracking on this, but it's depends. So you that the quality of the carbon all depends on what the client wants. If you sequester it, right? If you sequester it. Who takes that is that like enhanced oil recovery type of stuff.

07:24

So enhanced oil recovery actually falls under the utilization side of it. So it's not sequestering it, because sequestering it is sending it down whole to be stored there for infinity. It is being captured and it is not going back into the atmosphere. And oil enhanced oil recovery is a way of utilizing the CO two so you can sell it to the partner, typically an oil producer, and they would use it then for that purpose. So that makes sense. So that falls under the same idea as if you're going to sell it to, for example, a bottle a hot Bottling Company, soda bottling company, so they're going to use it for their purposes. Or you can sell it for enhanced oil recovery for them to use as well. See,

08:07

it would be cool to be a popper bottling company and say, yeah, look at this. Man. We captured this and now it's in your drink.

08:14

That is just an example of whatever your commercial partnership would look like. You can find multiple uses. Clarke,

08:21

what do you we're capturing that. Why is it? Why are we making a dent? Does it impact us? Is there? I mean, there's a lot of generation out there. The technology. Is it improving? Paint a picture of what that looks like.

08:39

Yeah. And, you know, I think we're making a dent. We were part of a very large project last couple years sequestering 200 sorry, 2 million tons per year of carbon dioxide. I

08:51

don't even know what that looks like. Sounds like a lot, but

08:54

it sounds like a lot. How do you imagine that? I

08:56

don't know. Is it bigger than a bread box?

08:58

Is it getting better? Yes, there are many bright minds all over the world thinking about this, trying to solve it, trying to make it economical, trying to make it viable. You know, we're not there yet, but

09:09

I'm sure we will. It's not economical to to scrub those stacks and get that carbon out of there and do what you need to do.

09:18

Well, I mean, what's what's in it for the power producer? I mean, they're not making any money out of it. Are they the CO

09:27

two? How come? I mean, it's coming out of their stack. Can't they make money out of it? Well, with

09:33

the volumes we're talking about, I don't think you can utilize that much CO two, not today. Maybe down the road, maybe there'll be used for it, but today, what are the uses for it? Like Caitlin said, There's EOR, but that is a former sequestration as well. Pot bottling. I don't know how much carbon dioxide you can put into pop, not million. I'm sure it's not millions. I was just gonna say it's

09:55

but I would imagine there's a lot.

09:58

Yeah, no, absolutely. It's, and it's, I mean, there are other ways to use, utilize the CO two as well. There's, there's talks of, you know, you can make nothing all over this, you know, you combine it with hydrogen. So there's that side of thing needs to be solved too, right? What do we do the CO

10:13

two? Yeah. But you, you guys, live in an area where they, I mean, you just, you get to play with all that, yeah. I mean, you, you're, you're in Alberta, it's like, there's, there's great minds up there that are wrestling with all this. Exactly, yes, brings me a good point. I mean, that's probably where the solution comes from. Alberta. I don't know what the state motto is. What is the Alberta state model?

10:40

I don't know if we have mottos.

10:41

Calgary is the heart of energy. There you go.

10:45

It's not motivational.

10:49

Great minds, not very great naming.

10:53

But So with that said, gas, liquid engineering, Caitlin. Take us through just just in general, what the business is all about.

11:06

So we are an engineering procurement and construction management for EPC. Yeah, exactly. Epcm. We do the construction management. We partner with other construction divisions and fabricators. So we definitely partner up with different individuals in different companies to best suit our clients, to find the right solution for their project. We work across western Canada, North America, down in Texas, down in Midwest,

11:31

Illinois, it's

11:33

a.we do we've got some a big carbon capture project in Illinois. There's a lot going on with the Midwest and ethanol, working on carbon capture projects. So that's been a really interesting area to get involved with more.

11:47

But you do more, like you said that, epcm, yeah. So there's a lot more to that, absolutely. Is it strictly in the world of oil and gas or generation what or what verticals Do you find yourself in? Caitlin, in

12:02

energy. So oil and gas has been our traditional business model, but we've definitely expanded into the power generation, into working with hydrogen clients, into working on the renewable fuels. We've had some really, really interesting projects with ice cream creameries.

12:21

So totally good hanging What do you mean by that? Well,

12:25

they have refrigeration needs. They do. We've been able to really work with quite a few different industries on some interesting projects, but in the last few years, what has really kept our interest is the carbon capture side, the hydrogen side, the renewables continue to be a part of the conversation, along with and pairing with the natural energy projects, the natural gas projects, the ones that we've always worked on for the last 37 years. Clarke,

12:53

what are we talking about from renewables? What give us an example of what renewables are?

12:58

Renewables? Well, for us, I

13:00

know what they are. I used to negotiate the contracts, but, but for you, what are we talking about? So

13:05

we're not talking about solar or wind. We're not involved in that. We have been in the periphery a little bit. We're talking about sustainable aviation fuel, ethanol to jet fuel. No way. Renewable diesel,

13:19

which is hydrocracking fat anyway, that's, that's sort of the renewable side is there with the renewable diesel, it's always, it's always the feedstock, sustainable, that consistent feedstock, yes, along with other things, but, but the technology is the technology. But it's like that constant flow of feed stock is always key, yeah,

13:43

which, in our case, is canola oil, the ones we've worked on. Oh,

13:47

no kidding, yeah, like fields and fields of canola oil, fields

13:53

of canola being brought to facility to be turned into diesel.

13:58

How's that been? Can you turn that into aviation fool,

14:02

I believe so. Again, I'm not the experts, but I think start

14:05

pulling on that thread to make you feel uncomfortable. Clarke, yeah,

14:08

asking the electrical engineer about process. Yeah, no,

14:11

don't ask me. It's just so for the listener out there, the canola is, are they the yellow plant. That that golden yellow. That's right, okay,

14:24

Saskatchewan, yeah,

14:27

that's a whole nother conversation where you can see Saskatoon and it's still five hours away.

14:34

Yeah, I'm from there. That's where I was born. Yeah, and it gets cold. It gets very cold,

14:39

yeah, absolutely. All right, Caitlin, as the business development outside of carbon capture, outside of renewables, what other areas that you've been listening to that that sort of pique your interest?

14:56

Well, traditionally, we work with midstreamers So and the gas. Processing that would be our bread and butter, and we're always there to continue to support those types of projects.

15:07

Well, good, that's positive. Caitlin, how do they get a hold of you? Well,

15:13

you can check out our website, gas liquids.com, or you can stop by our booth, and we're right across from the Industrial Talks podcast,

15:21

15:30

of you? Same thing? Yeah. I go to our website, you know. Stop by the booth. I can give you one of my cards. Give me a call anytime.

15:38

There you go. All right. Listeners are going to have all the contact information for both Clarke and Caitlin out on Industrial Talk. So fear not reach out to them. You will not be disappointed. Mad Skills. They're nice people too. See, I just blew that in. Nice people. All right, we're gonna wrap it up on the other sides, so stay tuned. We will be right back.

15:57

You're listening to the Industrial Talk Podcast Network, all right,

16:07

once again, thank you very much for joining Industrial Talk, and thank you for, once again, your continued support of this platform. That was Caitlin, and that was Clarke with an E, so make a note of that. That's Clarke with an E. The company is gas liquid engineering, and the event was power gin in New Orleans. If you're in that space, if you're in that market, and you want to connect with incredible people like Caitlin and Clarke, you need to attend power Gen. It is a must. It's easy. You need to find out more, which will be out on Industrial Talk, as well as connect with both Caitlin and Clarke out on Industrial Talk. We're building a platform Industrial Talk is a platform that is dedicated to industrial professionals. You have a podcast, you have technology, you need to put it out on Industrial Talk. It is an ever expanding ecosystem of industrial professionals that want to collaborate with you, that want to innovate and definitely want to educate. So go out to Industrial Talk and support more and be out there that's a must. All right, people, be brave greatly. Hang out with these two and you'll change the world. We're gonna have another great conversation shortly.