EnCana is reducing its engine emissions

Company engineer works with CSU to continue expanding the technology

Click to Enlarge Browse and Buy Post Independent Photos Dennis Schmitt, pictured at EnCana's Fort Lupton Gas Processing Facility, led the company's efforts to use fuel and oil additives to reduce emissions and increase efficiency in diesel engines at EnCana drilling sites in Garfield County. He now is studying whether the additives might have similar applications for compressor engines powered by natural gas. Submitted photo

Dennis Webb
Glenwood Springs, CO Colorado
July 26, 2007

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GLENWOOD SPRINGS, Colo. — Research by an EnCana engineer is making Garfield County's air cleaner and his former teacher proud.

Dennis Schmitt first led EnCana's efforts to use fuel and oil additives that have increased the efficiency and reduced the emissions of diesel engines that power drilling rigs in the Piceance Basin, which is centered in the county.

Now he's working with his alma mater, Colorado State University, to see if the additives could achieve similar results with engines powered by natural gas and used to move gas through pipelines.

Schmitt earned his bachelor's and master's degrees in mechanical engineering from CSU. Dan Olsen, an engineering professor at CSU and Schmitt's former graduate advisor, is working with Schmitt on the research at CSU's Engines & Energy Conversion Laboratory, which the college says is the largest independent lab of its kind in North America.

"It's exciting to see one of my former students being so successful with a company like EnCana," Olsen said.

Schmitt said he first learned from EnCana engineers in Texas about additives being offered by American Clean Energy Systems Inc., based in Pennsylvania. At the time, Schmitt was EnCana's drilling engineer for the Piceance Basin, and he began using the additives to see how they performed on diesel engines that power the rigs. The results were so good the additives now are being used for pretty much all of EnCana's drilling in the basin, he said.

"I thought, well, if it works well on these diesel engines maybe we can find out if it works with natural gas engines," he said.

Schmitt, who these days primarily works on pipeline compression for EnCana, said the company probably has about 70 natural gas engines in the Piceance Basin. They generate a total of about 100,000 horsepower, to compress gas for transportation in pipelines.

Reducing emissions in the diesel drilling engines, and potentially in the natural gas compressor engines, could go far in reducing EnCana's emissions of pollutants, Schmitt believes. He said the additives appear to have cut carbon monoxide emissions by 70 percent in the diesel engines.

Schmitt thinks that's important to air quality in western Colorado, and that residents also could benefit from it in other places where EnCana could make use of the additives.

"It's important to me personally to try and make things more efficient and it's also important to do what I can to try to reduce the emissions from various operations that we have," he said.

Schmitt said the additives work through means such as reducing engine friction, enhancing an octane-like substance, and improving the air-fuel ratio to achieve more complete fuel combustion, which reduces particulate emissions. The increased fuel efficiency saves EnCana money, too.

One question for natural gas engines is how to inject liquid additives into a gaseous fuel. Atomizing the additives might be one approach, said Schmitt, who also has some other possible approaches in mind.

Along with the lab research, he is planning a field demonstration involving use of fuel additives in one natural gas engine in EnCana's Mamm Creek field south of Rifle and Silt.

"If it's successful then of course the project becomes much larger scale because then I would be looking at finding a way to roll this thing out to many, many engines throughout the basin and beyond," he said.

Meanwhile, Olsen and the CSU lab are working with Cummins Inc., an engine maker, on engine control technologies that would increase efficiency and reduce emissions despite the use of natural gas fuel that can vary widely in its composition. Energy producers use the gas produced at wells to power compressors at the wells. But the makeup of gas can differ dramatically from well to well, and in an individual well over its lifetime, because the quantities of substances such as methane, ethane, propane, water, carbon dioxide and nitrogen tend to vary.

Olsen believes engine control technologies have advanced enough that engines can be made more efficient and clean-burning across a range of natural gas compositions. A big question, however, is whether such improvements would result in much benefit in the Piceance Basin. The gas comes out of wells in the basin at such high pressures that compressors generally aren't needed until farther down the pipelines, when gas from numerous wells already have been blended to produce a more average gas composition, Schmitt said.

Schmitt said other energy companies besides EnCana also are using additives in their diesel engines. He said if EnCana finds out the additives can be beneficial in natural gas engines as well, it will make that information available to others rather than keeping it proprietary.

"We fully support everybody trying to find ways to reduce their energy consumption and reduce their emissions footprint," he said.


Contact Dennis Webb: 384-9119
dwebb@postindependent.com


Post Independent, Glenwood Springs Colorado CO