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“The towers were a sight to behold when they came onto site from the highway,” says Johnson. “They were fully assembled and lying on their sides when they arrived, then picked up by crane and set into place.”

He recalls the process of installing and commissioning the evaporator towers.

“Being an early adopter of that generation of evaporator doesn’t allow you the luxury of receiving an operator’s manual,” he says. “The trick is to find the optimum water processing rate that gives you the most distilled water in the shortest time with the lowest energy costs.”

Connacher and GE worked together for a two-year period to find the sweet spot that would consistently achieve the energy project’s goals. Conferring with other energy companies, for example, it was discovered that placing the evaporators in series could reduce energy consumption by 20% to 40% over parallel installations.

“Ultimately, we were able to recycle 97% of the water we used in SAGD,” says Johnson. “The technology was so successful that we specified two evaporators for our Algar oil sands project which began production in 2010.

Connacher is currently evaluating the feasibility of expanding its Algar project and looking to other possible projects farther afield.

“We’d like to see evaporator technology pushed to the point where we could place a smaller evaporator tower on a truck and easily deliver it to more remote sites,” says Johnson. “We’re looking to go portable.”

This story was produced by Postmedia’s advertising department on behalf of GE for commercial purposes. Postmedia’s editorial departments had no involvement in the creation of this content.