A $20 million air separation plant in Lockwood is up and running after more than a year of construction. Onkar Dhaliwal, president of Aspen Air U.S. Corp., says his company anticipates a long-term presence in the community.
“The life expectancy of this plant is 40 to 45 years. We’re going to be a part of the community for a long time to come,” Dhaliwal said during a recent tour of the plant at 1524 Lockwood Road. Dhaliwal said Aspen Air shipped its first products in late December.
Aspen Air, based in Calgary, Alberta, announced in November 2006 that it planned to build an air separation plant in the Billings area. Dhaliwal said a lot of research was conducted before Aspen Air selected Billings for its first plant in the United States. Billings fit the bill because it’s around 500 miles from the nearest industrial gas manufacturing plants in Salt Lake City and Boise, Idaho. Also, Billings has an abundance of industries – health care facilities, refineries and welding shops – that can use Aspen Air’s products, Dhaliwal said.
“It’s a good, stable business,” he said. “We’re a manufacturing operation just like the refineries are, and our clientele is always nearby.”
Dhaliwal said Aspen Air has plans for developing other plants, but he can’t yet disclose where they will be located.
He said Aspen Air will enhance local business by reducing its customers’ operating costs by 10 to 15 percent. Customers realize the savings because they don’t have to pay for shipping the products Aspen Air manufactures – liquid oxygen, liquid nitrogen and argon gas – over long distances, he said.
Health care facilities use oxygen in operating rooms and for patients who need help breathing. Oxygen is also used in refining and other manufacturing processes.
Dhaliwal credited the Big Sky Economic Development Authority, Yellowstone County’s economic development agency, for welcoming Aspen Air to Billings and opening doors as he selected a site for the plant.Refineries and petrochemical plants use nitrogen in some industrial processes. Cattle breeders also use liquid nitrogen – which boils at about minus 320 degrees Fahrenheit – to store bull semen. Argon is used in welding shops and in a variety of manufacturing processes. For example, window manufacturers often use argon as an insulating layer between glass panes.
To some, separating the air we breathe into its most useful components sounds a little like alchemy, but it’s a fairly straightforward process, Dhaliwal said. The atmosphere is about 78 percent nitrogen, 21 percent oxygen and nearly 1 percent argon, and smaller amounts of carbon dioxide, water vapor and other trace elements.
Dhaliwal said the air separation plant uses a series of filters, compressors, expanders, dryers and chillers to separate the gases. The plant, which runs on electricity, creates no emissions, he said.
As a simple way to describe the air separation process, think of what happens when a bottle of Coca Cola is shaken. Liquid collects on the bottom, a bubbly liquid-gas mixture collects in the middle and pure gas rises to the top of the bottle, Dhaliwal said.
Designing and building an air separation plant involves specialized skills. Aspen Air’s engineering staff relocated from Calgary to Billings for several months during the construction phase. Most of the plant’s components were fabricated on the site, using local labor, Dhaliwal said.
Dhaliwal credited the Big Sky Economic Development Authority, Yellowstone County’s economic development agency, for welcoming Aspen Air to Billings and opening doors as he selected a site for the plant. Doing business in the United States has gone well, he said, because Calgary and Billings have much in common culturally and geographically, he said.
The plant has nine full-time employees, and Aspen Air plans to contract with a local trucking company to deliver its products.
“From what I understand, some of their deliveries will be in the local area, but some will be as far away as Spokane,” said Stewart Ankrum, manager of Ankrum Trucking, which has been working with Aspen Air. Delivering Aspen Air’s products could create a few more jobs, but at this point it’s too soon to tell whether the new drivers would be employees of Ankrum Trucking or owner-operators, Ankrum said.
