Alberta Research Council
Established: 1921
Gross Revenue: $10-60 million
Other Offices: Calgary, Alberta; Devon, Alberta; Vegreville, Alberta.
No. of Employees: 101-600
The Alberta Research Council develops and commercializes technologies to give customers a competitive advantage. The corporation performs applied research and development on a contract or fee basis, and co-ventures with others to develop new technologies, deriving a return on investment from the commercialization of new products and services. ARC also conducts applied research to support provincial science and technology needs and strategies.
ARC provides a full spectrum of R&D and advisory services that effectively bridge the gap between basic research and market development. The corporation works closely with industry, universities and other groups in a variety of arrangements, including strategic alliances, contract research, joint ventures, consortia and licensing arrangements. ARC brings technology know-how and infrastructure to the table in partnering with the private sector to commercialize technology in key sectors. Our focus is on developing opportunities for the province of Alberta either through technology transfer or direct investments.
Today, ARC is widely recognized for its capability in seven key market sectors:
Agriculture: crop diseases, insect, pest and weed management, the impact of industrial activities on air, water and land resources essential to sustainable agriculture.
Biotechnology: carbohydrate chemistry, process engineering, fermentation optimization and scale-up manufacturing, including biopharmaceuticals, enzymes and animal health products.
Manufacturing: multi-phase fluid flow dynamics, and intelligent manufacturing, advanced materials applications and testing, development and commercialization of specialized ceramic materials and component parts for use in high-performance electronic devices.
Energy: conventional and heavy oil recovery and production technologies, reservoir management processes and protocols, novel downhole and surface oilfield equipment, specialty sensors and instrumentation; oil sands upgrading technologies for improved recovery and cost efficiency; pipeline maintenance planning, on-conventional energy production.
Forestry: engineered wood products, improved pulping and papermaking processes and alternate fibre sources, sensors and process control systems to improve plant efficiency and cost effectiveness, remote sensing, geomatics and modeling to support and enhance the sustainable management and use of forest and wildlife resources.
Environment: pollution control, including air biofilter technology and waste incineration; climate change, greenhouse gas mitigation and CO2 management strategies, land-based waste management, land reclamation and remediation, and habitat restoration; clean process and waste minimization technologies, combustion systems design, thermo-fluids dynamics modeling, emissions monitoring and expert systems for performance optimization, and toxicology of environmental pollutants.
Information Technologies: development and application of interdisciplinary information technology methods, products and services for distributed systems, learning and collaborative systems, spatial information, automation and robotics, and health informatics.
Internationally, ARC is active in many countries and recognized as having world-class capabilities in its areas of expertise.
Key Geographic Markets: ARC has experience marketing in the following countries: People's Republic of China, Cuba, India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore, United Kingdom, United States, Venezuela, Chile.
ARC is seeking to market its capabilities in: Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Mexico and Taiwan.
Business Development Objectives: joint-venture partners, licenses, contract R&D, marketing alliances, research & development collaboration, strategic alliances, and technology acquisition.
Company Details
Year Established:
1921
Number of Employees:
500
Company Information
Kathleen Fleming
Title:
Admin/Exec Assistant
Telephone:
(780) 450-5360
Fax:
(780) 450-5083
Products
Environmental Products And Services
Integrated Manure Utilization System.
Being developed, is the Integrated manure utilization system, IMUS, to successfully manage the solid, liquid, and gas produced from manure. IMUS technology will digest manure to a solid material that can be used for compost, digestion will produce biogas which will be captured for fuel, and the liquid will be purified so it can be used in the fields or by cattle.
Three years of intensive soil profile and climate analysis have helped complete the picture of sustainable manure application. Field research into nitrates, phosphorous, and micronutrients such as copper, zinc, and magnesioum are being investigated. The field work along with modeling are determining suitable application rates, taking environmental and economic factors into account.
Land Application Of Pulp Sludge Increases Crop And Wood Production.
Land application of mechanical pulp and paper millsludges continues to produce impressive results. Farmland treated with sludges has produced crop yield increases from two to five times greater than control land for at least six growing seasons. ARC continues to investigate whether the sludges can economically replace commercial fertilizers to achieve a target yield. Demand for the sludge has made it necessary for farmers to stockpile it in the fields over the winter to ensure availability for spring seeding. ARC is also studying the use of pulp mill sludges for forest regeneration. White spruce and pine seedlings planted with sludge treatment have yielded two to three times the volume of wood produced by controls over six years and achieved regeneration standards one to three years sooner than the controls. Current studies are aimed at developing forest management strategies using sludges to maximize wood production.
Geochemical Modelling Packages.
The Alberta Research Council, with their partners, market three classes of geochemical computer codes/models.
Class 1: Geochemical Aqueous Equilibrium Models These programs calculate static models of an aqueous solution. They estimate the concentrations and activities of all the important aqueous species in a specific water and calculate the saturation indices for various minerals. These programs have considerable flexibility of input, allowing various corrections to be made for poor or incomplete water analyses, modifying the water chemistry as a result of a user-defined reaction path, or allowing constraints such as gas partial pressure or the presence of a solid phase to control the water chemistry. Their strength is based upon their rigorous treatment of the aqueous phase and their ability to modify the fluid composition based upon a user-defined process.
General Equilibrium Model (SOLMINEQ.88 PC/SHELL): This is a PC version of the FORTRAN code SOLMINEQ.88, and includes a user-friendly interface for program data input and for rapid examination of program output. The program has many useful options to modify or correct water analyses. Other options include boiling, fluid mixing, ion exchange and a limited mass transfer function. The largest group of users is the oil companies, who typically use the program to examine deep formation waters and production waters. Price is $500 U.S.
Ground Water Analyses (SOLMINEQ.GW): This is a simpler PC/SHELL version of SOLMINEQ.88 prepared for ground water geologists and hydrogeologists, who need a practical PC tool for interpretation of ground water analyses. It does not contain all the options in SOLMINEQ.88 PC/SHELL. The handbook which accompanies the program is designed to give ground water specialists, without formal training in geochemistry, the fundamentals of how to collect, preserve, display and interpret the chemical analyses of ground water. SOLMINEQ.GW was dev eloped jointly with Hitchon Geochemical Services Ltd. A test version is available now, the final version will be available in June, 1996. Estimated price is $175 U.S.
Class 2: Geochemical Support Codes: This package consists of two geochemical support models developed at the University of British Columbia. These programs calculate and display intensive variable diagrams, or fit or calculate thermodynamic data such as free energies or log K's. Mass balance programs that solve the inverse problem by using only compositional constraints are also included.
PTA-SYSTEM is an interactive program to calculate log activity versus log activity (a-a), log activity versus temperature (T-a) and log activity versus pressure (P-a) diagrams where activity generally refers to the thermodynamic activity (or ratio and/or products of activities) of any mineral, gas species, or aqueous species. Price is $500 U.S.
PTX-SYSTEM calculates complete pressure versus temperature (P-T), temperature versus composition (T-XH20-C02) and pressure versus composition (P-XH20-C02) phase diagrams. Price is $500 U.S.
Class 3: Geochemical Reaction Path Models Reaction path models are dynamic mass transfer models for calculation of reactions between a fluid and a rock in a closed system. As the 'initial' or 'reactant' solids in the rock dissolve into water, the water composition changes and 'secondary' or 'product' solids may precipitate from or redissolve into the liquid. The amount of product solids will change as a function of time until the solids assemblage is in total equilibrium with the aqueous phase. The whole process is monitored as a function of time based on the rate laws assumed for the solids.
PATHUBC.80: A general reaction path code developed at the University of British Columbia. PATHUBC.80 uses relative rates of reaction that are specified as input data. Reactants are the only phases out of equilibrium with the aqueous phase. Product phases remain in equilibrium with the aqueous phase at all times. Only relative progress is modeled. The program does not include graphical analyses. Price is $150 U.S.
PATHARC.94: A general reaction path code developed from PATHUBC and is an early test version of PATHARC.96. PATHARC.94 uses kinetic rates of reaction constants which must be specified as input data. Reactants are the only phases out of equilibrium with the aqueous phase. Products phases remain in equilibrium with the aqueous phase at all times. Only dissolution kinetics are considered. Absolute time is modeled. The program includes post-processing graphical analysis using a windowing environment under DOS. Price is $1,000 U.S.
PATHARC.96: A general reaction path code being developed at the Alberta Research Council. PATHARC.96 uses kinetic rates of reaction. Rates laws and constants are specified for each of the phases in the general database. Both reactant and product phases may be out of equilibrium with the aqueous phase. Both dissolution and precipitation kinetics are considered, including nucleation. Absolute time is modelled and the program includes graphical analysis using a windowing environment under DOS. This program will be available in 1996/97 by license only.
Replace Small Flare Sites With T. Thiooxidans-inoculated Biofilters.
Combustion gas is required to sustain a flame at the flare and usually the combustion gas is natural gas (methane). Methane and its combustion product (carbon dioxide) are both greenhouse gases. Biofiltration eliminates the requirement for combustion gas use. Biofiltration uses immobilized bacteria on a support matrix to transform/degrade gaseous contaminants. Biofiltration has an advantage over other air pollution control technologies in that it is economical, the maintenance and operational requirements are low and the end products of transformation are innocuous products such as water and biomass (van Groenestijn and Hesselink, 1993).
T. thiooxidans is an autotroph that must fix CO2 for its carbon source. Research has shown that CO2 at partial pressures up to 1.0-2.0% enhance the growth rate and the sulphur oxidation rate of thiobacilli (Jaworska and Urbanek, 1997, and Kurosawa et al., 1993). Laboratory scale biofiltration of H2S using Thiobacillus thiooxidans as inoculum was shown to be highly effective (Coleman and Dombroski, 1995).
There is potential to apply this technology in the field at small sour gas batteries producing less than 1 tonne of H2S per day. Industries benefitting from this research are mainly oil and gas, but also the agriculture, forestry and any other industry that have sulphurous emissions.
Development Of Technologies/Treatment Processes Which Allow The Recycling Of Water For Its Original Use.
ARC has developed a pilot-scale water treatment process that includes optimized coagulation and flocculation processes, a dissolved air floatation system, and staged ozonation columns, which was developed from the evaluation of processes at the bench-scale. Novel coagulants were found to offer improved solids recovery at lower doses. Experiments were used to optimize and integrate the overall processes and enhance the performance of downstream clarification. Dissolved air flotation offered high-rate water clarification and the potential to recover product normally lost to waste streams. Efficient particle and organic material removal was found to reduce the oxidant demand for disinfection processes. This means that the size of disinfection facilities and its operating cost could be reduced. The pilot treatment facility has been used to conduct on-site trials of the process. The results established the level of disinfection, potential operational issues, organic removal and process control factors. The data collected can be used to assist in the development of full-scale water treatment processes.
Services