Linde Canada’s specialty gases plant in Edmonton, Alberta, celebrates its 35th anniversary this year.
Linde Canada is an affiliate of Linde North America, which is a member of The Linde Group, a world leading gases and engineering company. The specialty gases plant, which has been located at 12143 - 68 Street in Edmonton for its entire existence, has quadrupled in size since it opened its doors for business in 1975.
“A thirty-five year anniversary is a major accomplishment for any business,” says plant manager Neal Konowalyk. “It speaks to the stability of the business, the quality of the people, and the level of service provided to the customers,” Konowalyk said. “Over the thirty five years of operation we weathered many challenges and have worked to continually improve our systems and processes to provide our customers with value-added products and services,” he said.
In its early days, the facility housed an acetylene production unit, an air separation unit (1 ton/day), and cryogenic facilities to serve the local welding and oil and gas markets. With the addition 30 years ago of gas mixing production units and a reactive gas handling unit, which includes a state-of-the art corrosive mixing area, the plant’s focus moved to the specialty gases market.
The staff at the Edmonton specialty gas plant has over 100 years of production experience in this niche market. The site fills about 15,000 cylinders per year to service the oil and gas industry, analytical laboratories, hospitals, and various other markets where specialty gases are required.
The Edmonton facility now has over 20 years of experience producing stable reactive gas mixtures of hydrogen sulfide, sulfur dioxide and ethylene oxide for the local oil and gas industry. The plant also produces custom gas and liquid mixtures which are used as laboratory standards throughout Canada, the United States, and other parts of the world, such as South Africa and Venezuela. “This is just the tip of the iceberg,” said Konowalyk. “We also produce pure gases, such as air, nitrogen and hydrogen, natural gas standards, environmental standards, and other types of mixes,” Konowalyk said.
The gas mixtures are offered in a variety of cylinders, including Linde’s latest portable gas cylinder solution, the ECOCYL® OSQ specialty gas cylinder. ECOCYL cylinders are part of the Linde HiQ® family of specialty gases and equipment. ECOCYL cylinders have integrated cylinder valves, pressure regulators and flow control all contained within the cylinder – and permanently protected by a specially designed protective cowling. This makes the ECOCYL safer and easier to handle than cylinders requiring associated gas handling equipment. The ECOCYL is also refillable, offering an environmentally friendly alternative to traditional disposable cylinders.
Source: http://www.linde.com/