This project aims to investigate grid friendly net-zero energy residential buildings. These are buildings that consume as much energy as they produce, on an annual basis. The three proposed subprojects will investigate this concept through both simulation and real-world system monitoring at the TRCA’s Archetype Sustainable House. To begin, the design of highly energy efficient […]

The cost of labour makes up almost a third of the operating costs for greenhouse, nursery and floriculture operations. Many growers are seeking ways of automating labour intensive processes to reduce their exposure to increasing minimum wages and shortages of available labour. Planting flower bulbs is an example of one such process. The main barriers […]

This project aims to provide real-world, verifiable estimates of impacts to watersheds from usage of back-country logging and resource roads. fRI in partnership with the University of Alberta, MiTACS and Canfor is testing computer-based tools developed in the United States to apply them to watersheds in Alberta. Given the different geography, soil types, and relief […]

This research will help Innovation Building Group to optomize design details for proposed net-zero energy buildings in Golden, BC. The focus of the research is on comparing the costs of envelope design details with the expected energy savings. This will allow the most economical decisions to be made, which will mean that the best building […]

There is an urgent need to develop and evaluate an affordable, reliable, real-time variable rate smart sprayer, using affordable sensors/cameras and controllers for spot-specific application of agrochemicals in the wild blueberry cropping system. The main objective of this project is to evaluate the performance of the developed smart sprayer for spot-applications of agrochemicals in wild […]

The overall objective of the proposed initiative is to develop a novel, berry harvesting system that will identify the root causes of increased loses; increase berry picking efficiency and product quality. Currently, there are 15 to 25% fruit yield losses during the harvesting. The wild blueberry growers set a goal increase the harvestable yields by […]

This project aims to establish an ion-exchange/nanofiltration pilot study at the Waterhen water treatment plant. A natural result of the chlorination disinfection process in water treatment is the formation of disinfection by-products (DBP), a family of known carcinogens. This project aims to limit the formation of these DBP by removal of their precursors using the […]

Use of aluminum alloys in the automotive industry comes with huge manufacturing challenges such as instability of spot welding processes. To overcome this challenge, frequent selective quality tests are performed in industry usually by destructive means, which are labour intensive and costly due to its nature. Non-destructive testing (NDT) of aluminum spot welds can decrease […]

Recirculating aquaculture systems are indoor, tank-based systems which allow aquaculturalists to raise fish in controlled environmental conditions through the use of several water treatment processes. Research related to the aquaculture industry is important, as it is currently one of the fastest growing food industries. This research aims to improve the operation of these systems by […]

As the complexity of the modern simulation problems increase, the simulation efforts have been growing constantly. Taking advantage of the current multi-core chip to fully utilizing the modern processors available in the market, the development of computational simulators that are scalable and portable between current hardware have become a real challenge. As a result of […]

Destress blasting is a rockburst control technique where highly stressed rock is lightly blasted to reduce stress. This technique is currently used in Canadian mines to reduce stresses around mine production openings. In this research project, the intern will build a numerical model to simulate the destress blasting that will be undertaken at a Canadian […]

The goal of this project is to explore new ways to present the most useful information needed by commercial building managers, in order to allow them make decisions regarding on how to manage their building, reducing costs and carbon emissions, and projecting future energy budgets. This information has to be accurate, easy to obtain and […]