Sep 26, 2016

The annual Gasification and Syngas Technologies Conference , October 16 to 19 at Westin Bayshore Hotel, will draw roughly 200 delegates from 19 countries representing gasification, syngas, biomass and methanol industries. But it’s not B.C.’s abundance of natural gas – from which methanol is made – that is drawing the conference to Vancouver. The U.S. has plenty of natural gas. Vancouver is simply cheaper than San Francisco, where the conference is usually held, and there are plenty of direct flights from Asia, which has become the major market for various syngas technologies, says conference executive director Alison Kerester. Originally, the conference focused almost exclusively on syngas and gasification sectors. But it recently expanded to include members of the Methanol Institute. Vancouver-based Methanex Corp. (TSX:MX) is a member of the Methanol Institute. It will be one of the companies making presentations at this year’s conference, as will Vancouver’s Nexterra Systems Corp. Syngas is a synthetic gas made from a variety of feedstocks containing hydrocarbons – coal, petroleum coke, wood waste, waste plastics, and municipal solid waste. Gasification is a process where the feedstock is cooked at high temperatures under pressure, but with such low levels of oxygen that it prevents combustion. The end product is a gas that can either be burned to create heat or drive steam turbines to create electricity, or used as a feedstock for any number of chemical processes, just as methanol is used a building block for various chemical and petrochemical processes. “The largest use for syngas is chemicals,” Kerester said. “There’s also very strong upcoming markets for municipal solid waste gasification – so taking municipal waste and extracting energy from that.” Nexterra is one local company in the gasification space. It builds plants that turn biomass, like wood waste, into syngas, which can then be used for heating, as an alternative to natural gas. A gasification system at the University of BC is just one of several plants it has built in Canada and the U.S. An abundance of cheap natural gas in the U.S. and Canada has crimped the industry in North America, but there is a growing market in Asia – particularly China and India.

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