The United States Coast Guard (USCG) recently introduced stringent regulations for the treatment of ballast water. Ultra-violet (UV) light is a useful technology in a ballast water treatment system (BWTS), for inactivating phytoplankton which could be invasive and harmful to humans and the environment. UV damages DNA and prevents replication, but the vital stain methods mandated in the USCG protocol do not detect UV damage. Alternative culture-based measures of reproductive capacity are yet to be approved, time consuming, and have limitations (not all species may grow).
Ce projet de recherche consiste en l’étude de l’utilisation de poudrette de caoutchouc recyclés traités pour amélioration du comportant des enrobés bitumineux. L’utilisation de la poudrette de caoutchouc devrait permettre une amélioration du comportement à chaud et à froid des enrobés tout en diminuant la quantité de bitume d’apport, ce qui est très intéressant sur le plan environnemental. Des essais de résistance à la fissuration thermique, des essais de modules et des essais de fatigues seront réalisés.
The interest in organic waste treatment has increased a lot in the recent years. Among the treatment technologies, anaerobic digestion (AD) has gained a significant role in municipal solid waste management due to its energy recovery benefits. Digestate is the solid material produced from the biodegradation of organic waste during anaerobic digestion process. Management of a high volume of digestate is one of the challenges in AD technology. The digestate can be mixed with the organic waste and then applied to the composting process.
Canada is a world leader in both cutting-edge, DNA-based environmental research and in the abundance and variety of our natural resources. By bringing the transformative power of the "Biomonitoring 2.0" approach for use in the environmental consulting industry, I propose to take the best of the former and use it to create innovative methods for the most sustainable utilization of the latter.
Environmental modelling has been an indispensable tool of the Lake Simcoe restoration efforts. The proposed research aims to develop an integrated watershed-receiving waterbody modelling network that will provide a realistic platform for the evaluation of a variety of land-use management and climatic scenarios.
Trojan Technologies provides UV-based technologies for water, wastewater and reuse wastewater treatment. This proposal is directed towards optimizing and developing the validation protocols for UV systems provided by Trojan. The study results will expand Trojan's ability to provide more holistic and sustainable reactors for water/wastewater treatment as well as expand the polychromatic UV market.
This research project intends to further expand the use of the recycled rubber (also referred as devulcanized rubber) prepared from waste tires to reduce the threat caused by the increasing number of scrap tires. Due to relatively inferior properties, the devulcanized rubber cannot be used by itself. Hence, the research focuses on blending the devuclanized rubber with cheaply available plastics. A patented technology has been developed in our lab that leads to preparation of high quality devulcanized rubber.
In water quality management, mathematical models are used to evaluate management alternatives, and to support the policy making process. Environmental models involve substantial uncertainty which can be very critical when striving to identify polluters, to direct the use of taxpayers' dollars, and to determine management strategies that have considerable social and economic implications.
Mineral aggregate production is essential to Canada’s economy and infrastructure but environmental concerns threaten to impede this until ecological impacts are shown to be mitigated by off-site replication of affected ecosystems including heritage hardwood forests. A large-scale comparative study was recently initiated to determine whether conventional forestry can produce plantations that are ecologically equivalent to natural forests.
The proposed research seeks to investigate four ways to support sound decision making and sustainable development by: 1. developing an integrated approach to planning using a combination of scenario creation and structured decision making (SDM); 2. testing methodological improvements to SDM by increasing our understanding of how to measure values and preferences; 3. examining how to effectively communicate and use high-quality data to inform decision making, and monitoring & evaluation; and 4.
