Innovative Projects Realized

The project’s aims are to conduct research on geological carbon storage from the perspective of dynamic analysis and process systems engineering, looking in particular at the dynamics between the wellhead and the CO₂ storage reservoir. The main objective is to achieve closed loop operation and management of the reservoir with respect to CO₂ sequestration and storage, along with enhanced oil recovery in cases where the reservoir is not fully depleted.

Another important aspect of the research is risk assessment and uncertainty propagation. This includes making predictions on overall CO₂ injectivity and storage capacity, risk of reservoir fracture and CO₂ leakage. This is being investigated using Monte Carlo simulation and more efficient methods such as polynomial chaos expansions.

The student’s role in the project will be to develop methods for uncertainty propagation and risk assessment in geological carbon storage. Accurate risk assessment is crucial in geological carbon storage, especially with respect to the possibility of CO2 leakage, and in the estimation of overall CO2 storage capacity of the reservoir. The student will investigate more efficient methods of uncertainty propagation, including polynomial chaos expansion. These methods use orthogonal polynomials as a basis, and offer compact approximate descriptions of stochastic variables. The coefficients of the polynomials are evaluated by comparison with data from the full-scale reservoir model. This project will involve the development and modification of MATLAB code for uncertainty propagation and risk assessment. This will involve running reservoir simulations, constructing polynomial chaos expansion based models for uncertainty propagation, and using these models for risk assessment. There is expertise in the group related to the construction of stochastic reduced order models.

Canada experienced dramatic increases in the prevalence of overweight and obesity in the past decades as did most countries across the globe. Canadian health care costs associated with excess body weight and its co-morbidities are estimated to be $4.3 billion. Poor nutrition and lack of physical activity are the major modifiable risk factors for overweight. Healthy diets and active lifestyles are the key foci of primary prevention initiatives. Schools seem the ideal setting for prevention programs as this is the place to reach almost all children and this is where children spend the majority of their waking hours.  However, the effectiveness of school-based programs in changing health behaviours and preventing obesity is not established.

My research team is involved in the evaluation of various school-based programs that promote healthy eating and active living (please our websites: APPLESchools.ca, REALKidsAlberta.ca, NSCLASS.ca). We evaluate changes in knowledge, attitudes health behaviours, body weights, and health.  Cost analyses are needed to show whether investments in primary prevention produce cost savings through avoided overweight and overweight co-morbidity. We conduct economic evaluations of the programs and take an approach to capture the health benefits for the society to aid future decision-making on prevention.

The role of the student would be to assist the team with development of the user interface design. Although the team is exploring various physical and virtual interfaces, the student will be asked to assist with the interface design for the central management system. Activities that the student might undertake would include gathering requirements, designing prototype interfaces and programming those interfaces.

Friction stir processing has been developed as a method for modifying the microstructure and properties of an alloy. However, no efforts have been made to determine how the formation of amorphous phases can be promoted during friction stir processing, or whether a composite involving an amorphous or nanocrystalline matrix and carbon nanotubes can be synthesized.  These nanostructured composites offer desirable properties in terms of strength to weight ratio, wear resistance, and impact toughness.  The goal will be to establish which factors control the formation of nanostructured composites via friction stir processing, and to characterize their microstructures and properties.

 The goal of the proposed work will be to synthesize nanostructured composites by friction stir processing and characterize their microstructure, mechanical performance, and thermal stability.  The processing conditions and base material chemistry promoting formation of amorphous and nanostructured phases will be determined.  The influence of processing parameters on material flow and the dispersion of carbon nanotubes in the metal matrix will also be examined using SEM and optical microscopy.   Ultimately, these findings will help to develop an understanding of structure-property relations in nanostructured composites, as well as the influence of severe plastic deformation on amorphous metals.  A major focus will be to establish the role of microstructure on the deformation mechanisms, and thermal stability of these materials.

A dedicated friction stir processing machine will be used to synthesize nanocrystalline and amorphous metals, as well as composites reinforced by carbon nanotubes.  The student will be trained in the operation of the equipment, and techniques for fabricating the composites.

An increased VOC emission from coatings (paints, varnishes, glue, resins) allows faster curing of the coating and stabilization of the emissions resulting in less residual VOC that can be emitted from the material in the future. Hence, it is desirable to emit the majority of the VOCs quickly so that once the building is in use negligible amount of VOC will be emitted.

The objective of this research in this phase is to characterize the change in emissions of VOCs from building materials with time and temperature and the impact of such change on indoor air quality, during the construction (manufacturing) process and after occupancy. Field and lab emission cell (FLEC) will be used to directly measure the emission of VOCs from building materials. FLEC consists of a flux chamber that uses a sorption tube to capture VOCs directly degassed from building materials; the sorption tube can then be analyzed in the lab with GC-MS to determine the amount of total and speciated VOC collected during the sampling time.

The student will complete a literature review regarding emissions form building materials and methods to characterize these emissions, prepare experimental setup and complete experiments on characterizing emissions from building materials, and find computer and/or mathematical models that can be applied to characterize emissions from building materials and its impact on indoor air quality.

Driven by economic, technical and environmental reasons, the interest in distributed and renewable generation (DG) is increasing without signs of slowing down.Large-scale integration of DG units, storage and electronic control devices will be of significant impact on the structure, performance and operation practices of future energy systems. Dynamic interactions between DG units, system control device and loads may exist and can lead to several low- and high-frequency instabilities; mainly due to the resulting complex nonlinear system-level dynamics and the active control nature of power converters.

One of the long-term objectives of Dr. Mohamed’s research program is to provide a unified framework to model, analyze and mitigate undesirable interaction dynamics in ADS via controller design and coordination. Current research activities are focused on the suppression of converter-fed power network instabilities due to local loads, load filters and network disturbances.  Current investigations show that a converter-fed micro-grid system (a cluster of DG units serving critical loads) can be stabilized via a robust hierarchical energy-shaping controller that provides active damping control performance against the aforementioned low- and high-frequency instabilities.

The project’s aims are to conduct research on geological carbon storage from the perspective of dynamic analysis and process systems engineering, looking in particular at the dynamics between the wellhead and the CO₂ storage reservoir. The main objective is to achieve closed loop operation and management of the reservoir with respect to CO₂ sequestration and storage, along with enhanced oil recovery in cases where the reservoir is not fully depleted. The main thrust areas of the project are described below.

The student’s role in the project will be to work on the development of a strategy for closed loop management (i.e., control) of geological carbon storage. The main aspect of this work will be the development of a CO₂ injection strategy based on a given reservoir model, and then integrating the CO₂ injection with the updating of the model and a monitoring / measurement scheme to provide closed loop feedback to the injection. The objective is to specify production-related variables such as wellhead pressures and phase rates, while interpreting sensor information that may be available from well tests, seismic monitoring or other surveillance data and transforming it to a form usable by the control algorithm. The primary objective is to specify methods for the optimal operation of smart wells. Smart wells are unconventional wells with downhole instrumentation (including sensors, valves and inflow control devices) installed in the production tubing. These wells offer continuous in-situ monitoring of fluid flow rates and pressures, and the periodic adjustment of downhole valves. Another aspect that the student can investigate is whether cyclic or periodic patterns in the input flow and pressure signals can improve CO₂ injectivity.

Health Sciences Online is currently helping to start and sustain schools of dentistry, medicine, nursing, pharmacy, physical therapy, public health, and speech-language pathology in the Caribbean, China, Colombia, India, Kenya, South Africa, and Zambia, and we are testing how this inexpensive, relatively easy, high-quality model works best. As HSO’s next phase, and the area on which the MITACS trainee would work, we're collaborating with colleagues all over the world in creating what we expect will soon become the largest, most accessible, high-quality health sciences university — all done with distance HSO-based didactics, local hands-on mentoring, and peer-to-peer distance feedback.  We plan to train many thousands of trainees at a time, particularly in developing countries, with students remaining in their home environments (and thereby building capacity, instead of encouraging brain drain).

A research student can assist us in finding consensus and high quality resources. He/she would help us in achieving our goal of designing high quality online course modules for trainees, faculty and practitioners in low-resourced health care settings.The student will identify curricula that fulfill the training goal of the students,,work with an Advisory committee, and incorporate their feedback, populate the curriculum (find the relevant links) and design a marketing strategy to promote the credentials.