Route of Heartland Hydrogen Pipeline. Click to enlarge.

• Shell Canada Energy’s Scotford Upgrader, close to its refinery near Fort Saskatchewan, Alberta, uses hydrogen to upgrade high viscosity extra heavy crude oil (bitumen) into a wide range of synthetic crude oils. The Scotford Upgrader was the first facility of this type to be built in the Alberta Industrial Heartland region.

• Sherritt International Corporation is a diversified natural resource company. The hydrogen will be used to precipitate nickel and cobalt from solution to produce high-purity metal products.

• Williams Energy (Canada), Inc. will use Air Products’ hydrogen to treat certain olefinic synthetic gas liquids at its Redwater Fractionation facility. These liquids are extracted from off-gas produced by oil-sands upgraders and are valuable to the petrochemical industry. Williams Energy (Canada), Inc. is Canada’s only oil-sands off-gas processor.

Air Products had announced in December 2009 regulatory approval from the Alberta Energy Resource Conservation Board for the approximately 30-mile pipeline to provide hydrogen from its two operating production facilities in Strathcona County near Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. The pipeline will serve refiners, upgraders, chemical processors and other industries in the Alberta Industrial Heartland region and is scheduled to be commercial this year.

Hydrogen is needed in this region to support the continued operation and development of multiple industries in the area. It is a major feedstock for bitumen upgrading and refining, and is key to enabling the production of cleaner burning transportation fuels.

—Steve Losby, general manager–Canada at Air Products

Besides this newly announced pipeline in the Alberta Industrial Heartland, Air Products also has a hydrogen pipeline in Sarnia, Ontario, Canada, and operates the largest hydrogen pipeline network in the United States Gulf Coast, as well as pipeline systems in California in the US and in Rotterdam, the Netherlands.