In the steelmaking industry, process control models need to be based on a sound physical understanding of the process but should also account for many uncertainties due to the nature and complexity of the environment in which the process is carried out. As a result, it is crucial to extract useful process control information from the raw data stream acquired by the industrial sensors.

Solids exist as crystals, amorphous or subcooled liquids. The degree of crystallinity determines the long range order in a solid phase. Molecules when transferred from the solution to the solid phase may take many different crystal forms (polymorphs, solvates/hydrates, salts, co-crystals). Theoretically, there are 230 space groups describing the diversity of a crystalline material. About two thirds of pharmaceutical small molecules exist in more than one polymorphic solid form. Crystallization of polymorphs still has a touch of art.

Helicobacter pylori (HP) is a bacterium that causes 65% of gastric ulcers and cancers worldwide. Current anti HP treatments often fail because the bacteria have become resistant and they have serious side effects. We are looking into using molecules produced by bacteria called Lactobacilli that are a natural component of the human gastro-intestinal flora to treat and/or prevent Helicobacter infections. The novelty of our approach is to focus on the molecules that Lactobacilli release (i.e. their secretions) and that could be administered to patients in a controlled and reliable manner.

Approximately 5% of the population has a Spondylolisthesis (one of the lower vertebrae slips forward onto the bone directly beneath it). Non-invasive image-based assessment of this spinal structure is an increasing demand in healthcare service. However, the massive information embedded in the increasing large imaging scans has made manual inspection a lengthy and tedious task and observer dependent. The proposed research aims at a computer-aided spinal-scan assessment software toolkit facilitating the diagnosis of Spondylolisthesis.

Global population growth, urbanization and changing climate patterns have increased the demand for potable water, wastewater reuse and value recovery from wastewater, and for remediation of industrial process water. Population growth also results in increased demand for the shipping of goods by ocean freight, with the associated risk of the transport of unwanted marine life from one location to another by the discharge of ballast water.

Global population growth, urbanization and changing climate patterns have increased the demand for potable water, wastewater reuse and value recovery from wastewater, and for remediation of industrial process water. Population growth also results in increased demand for the shipping of goods by ocean freight, with the associated risk of the transport of unwanted marine life from one location to another by the discharge of ballast water.

Trojan Technologies uses ultraviolet (UV) lamps in reactors to purify water. When multiple lamps in a reactor are active at once, light emitted by the various lamps can interact with neighbouring lamps, creating effects that are not well taken into account in current industrial lamp models. The goal of this project is to develop a more accurate model, which accounts for these phenomena, to better predict the distribution of UV light inside a reactor. To do this, we have developed a numerical model of the photon-plasma interactions, which agrees well with work found in the literature.

Global pollution emissions contribute to climate change and are damaging to health. In many industrial applications that produce particulate matter, devices such as cyclones are used to separate and capture the particles from the exhaust gas. However, these do not capture the very small, but hazardous, particles and so expensive and energy-intensive secondary systems have to be added to the process. The industrial partner is developing a novel dynamic cyclone separator that has rotating vanes which improve the particle separation efficiency and allow capture of the fine particles.

This project aims to convert feedstocks to H2-rich syngas for FT biojet fuel synthesis by using a two-stage system. The first is a hydrothermal liquefaction (HTL) process, one of the most promising thermochemical pathways to liquefy solid biomass into liquid products including bio-crude with higher heating values and an aqueous product. The second is a gasification process using water in supercritical range (SCWG) and in the presence of a catalyst, during which the liquefied biomass (after separating out char and ash), from first stage can be transformed to clean and H2-rich syngas.