• Suncor Energy selects GE advanced water treatment solutions for upgrader expansion project
CALGARY, ALBERTA, Canada, and TREVOSE, PA, July 19, 2007 -- GE Water & Process Technologies, a unit of General Electric Company, announced today Suncor Energy Inc., an integrated energy company headquartered in Calgary, Canada, has selected GE's advanced membrane technologies and boiler feedwater system for its upgrader expansion project located in the Canadian oil sands, Fort McMurray, Alberta. The Suncor Energy site will install a new two-train, 1,220 gallon-per-minute water treatment system, which includes GE ZeeWeed ultrafiltration (UF) membranes, reverse osmosis (RO) membranes and sodium cycle softeners. GE's advanced boiler feedwater process is expected to help improve the expanded site's up-time, water quality, cycle rates, water consumption, asset protection and operational costs.
"GE Water & Process Technologies is committed to bringing our customers in the oil sands a full set of solutions, ranging from treatment equipment, to chemicals and tools for monitoring and analysis," said Jeff Garwood, CEO of GE Water & Process Technologies. "We look forward to working with Suncor Energy to implement some of our environmentally sound and sustainable solutions designed to improve capacity, protect assets and lessen environmental footprints."
Suncor requires large amounts of high quality water for steam generators that are used in upgrading naphtha, a component of synthetic crude oil. Suncor's planned naphtha treatment facility will draw water from the Athabasca River, which can experience large variations in raw water quality -- total suspended solids can rise as high as 3,000 mg/L. GE ZeeWeed UF membranes provide a robust and reliable method to handle such variations and can consistently outperform conventional clarifiers. The membranes provide a physical barrier to virtually all suspended particles and consistently deliver high quality feedwater to RO systems regardless of raw water quality. This is expected to benefit the RO systems with lower cleaning requirements, higher flux rates, reduced energy consumption, and extended RO membrane life compared to conventional systems.
Suncor plans to have the new GE boiler feedwater system operate alongside an existing system that uses conventional clarification as pretreatment for the RO. The GE ZeeWeed pretreatment system will occupy about half of the space of a conventional clarifier and is expected to reduce the cleaning intervals for the RO system by as much as 50 percent -- from once per month, to once every two months. Suncor will also experience a significant reduction in chemical usage since ZeeWeed does not rely on settling of particles to achieve separation. The efficient operation of the system is intended to maximize Suncor's water efficiency and substantially reduce the amount of sludge produced. The system is scheduled to startup in the fall of 2008 and is designed to consistently provide high quality water, with a conductivity of less than 10 µS/cm to the boilers.
UF, RO and sodium cycle softeners are among the core products of GE's advanced separation technologies and are supported by a broad range of ancillary products and services. Together with thermal/evaporative, monitoring, chemical feed, and control equipment and process chemicals, GE is the world's only company to offer a complete portfolio of equipment, chemicals and services.
GE Water & Process Technologies also provides industry critical services that maintain optimum operational efficiency. GE Water & Process Technologies provides a total solutions approach that includes treatment equipment, chemicals and tools for monitoring and analysis. The benefits of these offerings include: oil, water and solids separation; corrosion inhibition; fouling control; enhanced product quality; asset protection and reliability; water conservation; waste minimization; evaporative produced water treatments; and zero liquid discharge solutions.
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