The gases released by the region's various industrial chimneys will be recycled as part of a pilot project at the Trois-Rivières airport park. The gases will be recycled to create de-icing salt for airstrips.
It is the young company, Electro Carbon, from the Montreal region, which will set up a pilot plant there. Quebec believes that this initiative fits well with the role of the Energy Transition Valley.
The CO2 spewed out by the region's industrial chimneys, including those in Bécancour, will thus be captured at the source and will become the raw material to produce potassium formate, an ecological de-icer for the maintenance of airport runways.
According to the president of Electro Carbon, Martin Larocque, CO2 can be directly captured from the chimney in certain locations, depending on the purity levels of the gas that will be emitted.
Électro Carbon plans to put into operation, at the airport park, a $25 million experimental plant with an electrolyzer as the main equipment for transforming greenhouse gases. It is with this equipment that the gas will be transformed into de-icing salt.
The airport runway will therefore serve as a test bed.
Martin Larocque explains that elsewhere in the world, airports tend to bring this salt from the Middle East or even Asia. There [they] have been producing [salt] in the same way for several decades, that is to say with oil , he mentions.
The Minister of Labor, Jean Boulet, hopes that this type of initiative will multiply in the Energy Transition Valley.
The Energy Transition Valley will stimulate businesses to develop projects that will contribute to our major environmental objectives that we have here in Quebec, says the minister.
For the moment, Electro Carbon only carries out tests at Trois-Rivières airport. If the trial period goes well, the company plans to base its operations in Bécancour.
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