Canada’s $9.6B pulp industry produces an ample supply of unusable organic pulp mill residues, yet there has been relatively limited utilization of this feedstock for the production of bio-crude through hydrothermal liquefaction (HTL) – a low-temperature, high-pressure thermolytic conversion process. The proposed research project will investigate HTL catalysts that produce abundant, high-quality, and low-cost bio-crude […]

The objective of this project is to help reduce the environmental impacts of automotive painting operation by correlating changes in paint quality, transfer efficiency, and VOC and GHG emissions with droplet size distributions and the spray pattern produced by Electrostatic Rotating Bell atomizers. During the project, data will be collected using the innovative Mazlite platform […]

Sewage collection systems have long been considered as sanitation and hydraulic infrastructure, i.e., a medium for transporting wastewater to the treatment facility. Therefore, the management focus has been mostly on hydraulic performance and the prevention of particle settling/odor development in pipes. Current research extends beyond sewage conveyance into sites of chemical and biological transformation with […]

The partner organization, C-CORE, conducts medium- and large-scale experiments on ice fracture. The goal is to estimate the mechanical loads involved in the interaction of icebergs and subsea cables/pipelines. While the ice fracture tests provide the most valuable data, numerical models may help estimate the loads at custom geometries and conditions the test apparatus cannot […]

Brain activity can be recorded by an electroencephalogram (EEG). When investigating the data, it is notoriously difficult to extract neural dynamics related directly to e.g., a visual stimulus in an experiment, from the ‘background’ brain activity. A similar problem arises in fluid dynamics, when ordered dynamics, so-called coherent structures, are extracted from measurement data. There, […]

This project focuses on the development of a tool to monitor electricity use in Quebec households. This tool intends to assess in near real-time the energy use of each appliance (electric space heaters, electric water heaters, etc.) to identify and diagnose its energy usage for providing feedback to utility and customers. Accordingly, several developments and […]

A refrigerant leak is one of the major contributors of commercial refrigeration unexpected breakdowns. Conventional methods of leak detection using physical sensors are expensive, have limited capability of square footage coverage, and incapable of detecting slow and progressive refrigerant leaks. Accordingly, the development of a smart leak detection system without the need to include additional […]

This project aims to demonstrate the feasibility of a novel system for an efficient and environmentally friendly wastewater treatment plant to produce clean water and hydrogen production as a clean fuel. Hydrogen, as an important energy carrier, is a part of Canada’s energy transition towards net-zero emission and an important asset in Canada’s fight against […]

The British Columbia aquaculture industry sends 3-4,000,000 Expanded Polystyrene (EPS Styrofoam) fish boxes to market annually. Globally, wild and farmed combined, circulate tens of millions annually. Food industry including Sea-food packaging is one of the largest producers of package waste in landfills, and this has driven the need for a recyclable/biodegradable packaging as a replacement […]

Future scarcity of phosphorus supply, increasing cost and issues of eutrophication are potential drivers promoting nutrient recovery from wastewaters. The proposed project aims to develop cheap and environmentally friendly technology for the recovery of phosphorus and nitrogen from municipal, agricultural, dairy, food processing, petrochemicals, and biomass processing industries wastewaters. Successful completion of the project will […]

Industrial applications are among the heaviest producers of greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) and require a large amount of energy to operate. Industrial applications have now begun to invest in “microgrids”, which are small-scale power systems that utilize clean energy sources, such as solar, batteries, and electric vehicles, to satisfy energy demand. This project will develop […]

The proposed research project is targeted to develop an accurate mathematical description for control and optimization of the Autonomous Mobile Energy system (AMES) and its integration with potential applications in mining, water desalination and other areas. The system incorporates solar thermal system thermal energy storage and an auxiliary energy source and will provide uninterrupted clean […]