Kitimat, British Columbia

KAAP [Kellogg advanced ammonia process] The first high-pressure process developed for synthesizing ammonia from its elements which does not use an iron-containing catalyst. The reformer gas for this process is provided by the KRES process. The catalyst was developed by BP it contains ruthenium supported on carbon. Developed by MW Kellogg Company in 1990 and first installed by the Ocelot Ammonia Company (now Pacific Ammonia) at Kitimat, British Columbia, from 1991 to 1992. Another plant was installed at Ampro Fertilizers in Donaldsonville, LA, in 1996. 

Aerial view of the layout of the Alcan aluminum smelter soon after it started production at Kitimat, British Columbia. Dock facilities for alumina, and aluminum shipments are in the foreground, and alumina storage silos are visible at the left end of the site. 

Rgure 3 Concentrations of PAHs in a sediment core from Kitimat Arm, Douglas Channel, British Columbia. O - total unsubstituted PAHs A - unsubstituted perylene - phenan-threne x -fluoranthrene <>-2-methylphenanthrene. (Adapted from Simpson CD, Harrington CF, Cullen WR, Bright DA, and Reimer KJ (1998) Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon contamination in marine sediments near Kitimat, British Columbia. Environmental Science and Technology 32 3266-3272.)... 

Another key feature of this new process is the patented KBR Reforming Exchanger System (KRES), which eliminates the need for the directly fired primary reformer furnace (fig. 6.11). This reduces capital costs by 5-8%, and emissions of NO and CO2 by 70-75%. The first KAAP process was installed for the Ocelot Ammonia Company s (now Pacific Ammonia Inc.) retrofit of its plant in Kitimat, British Columbia, in 1992 and when the first two new KAAP plants (for Farmland Misschem and PCS Nitrogen) were completed at Point Lisas, Trinidad, in July 1998, they became the world s largest ammonia facilities (each at 1,850 t/day) to date. ... 

Li et al. [323] studied the bacterial transformation of pyrene in an estuarine environment (Kitimat Arm, British Columbia, Canada), where they separated a metabolite (i.e., ris-4,5-dihydroxy-4,5-dihydropyrene) from the sediment and pore waters. The presence of this key metabolite from the dioxygenase-mediated transformation of pyrene [100, 186, 342], along with previous pyrene degradation studies using cultures isolated from the same sediment samples, suggested a possible in situ bacterial transformation of pyrene in the Kitimat Arm environment. 

R.C. Brewer, J.B. Brodie, L.D. Kornder et al, Environmental Effects of Emissions from the Alcan Smelter at Kitimat, B.C. Ministry of Environment, Province of British Columbia, 1979. 

Canadian methanol production, especially the two plants located in the Province of Alberta, were in very serious financial difficulty in the mid-1980s. The cost of the feedstock natural gas was not considered a value comparable to that of other remote-area producers, and it is ejq)ensive to ship this methanol to deep-water export facilities, located in Kitimat and Vancouver in British Columbia. Attempts were made to ship methanol via a products pipeline from Edmonton, Alberta to Vancouver and also via a liquefied petroleum gas pipeline from Edmonton to Chicago and Windsor, Ontario, but these tests proved only marginally successful and the methanol that was received was off-specification and suitable basically only for fuel uses. The two Alberta methanol producers, Novacor and Celanese Canada, reduced their total costs by renegotiating feedstock gas contracts and shipping rates both to Canadian ejq)ort ports and directly to the United States. 

The new rathenium catalyst has been used in the Pacific Ammonia Inc plant at Kitimat in British Columbia since 1992. Ammonia had been made there, from the methanol plant purge gas, since 1986 using a conventional iron synthesis catalyst. The new rathenium catalyst converter was in series with the old converter. Although in 1992 there was no additional synthesis gas to increase production capacity, the ruthenium catalyst operated well in a radial flow reactor and reduced both the steam and electricity used by 30-40% and 5-10% respectively. The new catalyst was said to be twenty times as active as the iron catalyst, and the effluent gas contained about 20% ammonia. 

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