Innovative Projects Realized

Hemicelluloses-based Microgel and its applications

Hemicellulose is the second most abundant renewable polysaccharide, and the HMCbased microgels have great potential in the application in various industries of surface coating, oil recovery, printing, and diaper industry. In this project, the HMC obtained from FPInnovations’ novel fractionation process will be used as the raw material to prepare HMC-based microgels. The fundamental properties, including the rheological behavior, water absorption, swelling degree, will be determined. The second aspect is to determine the potential applications of the prepared HMC- based microgel, such as coating, ink/printing, oil recovery, diaper. There is a strong market demand develop natural polymer- based microgel, not only because of the rising oil prices but also due to structural versatility, biocompatibility, and sustainability of bio-based products. Hemicelluloses (HMC) are renewable resource of biopolymers, and they have been the focus of growing attention in the context of bio-economy and sustainable development.

Software development outsourcing decision making

The objective of this internship proposal is to develop a decision support instrument for Priologic to assist companies in making the software development outsourcing decision. Specifically the decision support instrument should provide guidance on whether a certain software development project merits offshoring, nearshoring or rather inhouse production. Priologic, the industry partner on this grant proposal, is a software firm that is interested in making the instrument available on its website to assist its existing customers, and identify and attract new potential customers.

BFE Heat Pump Analysis

A Binary Fluid Ejector (BFE) refrigeration system is a scalable, energy efficient, cost effective, environmentally friendly refrigeration system that converts thermal energy directly into cooling. The intern will be performing feasibility studies of potential practical applications for the BFE system based on the different climate zones in North America. To achieve this, he will perform some more refined analyses of the ejector system first and then use the result of these analyses to perform calculation to estimate which parameters need to be adjusted in order to become a feasible alternative to conventional furnaces and air conditioners and be attractive to potential business clients. To analyse this feasibility, the intern will perform market research and connect to external stakeholders to define requirements and limitations for the product.

Feasibility study of dual input clamp undir DC-DC converter for 737 SPU replacement

The main objective of this project is to a) investigate feasibility and suitability of a new proposed DC-DC converter based on a novel “Dual Input Clamp Unidir DC-DC Converter”, and b) validate and quantify its projected benefits including reduced parts count, higher efficiency, lighter weight and more reliable as compared to existing commercial products. Cost-effective, efficient, reliable and high-speed gate drivers, clamp circuits, and HF isolation transformer suitable for operation at switching frequencies of 100 kHz need to be developed for the proposed DC-DC converter. A brass-board prototype need to be built and tested in a relevant environment and should meet stringent electrical, thermal, power quality and EMI requirements. Due to the much higher power requirement and higher switching frequency of this application, we are investigating such circuit concepts for the first time and therefore this feasibility study is essential to verify technical features and projected benefits before a product development phase can get launched.

Reduction-to-practice of embedded sensors and means of propagating analog signals over digital networks for aerospace

DreamWafer Prototyping WaferBoard™ is a “waffle iron” for prototyping electronic printed circuit board (PCB) systems. Simply place components (“dough”) in the WaferBoard™ and close the cover. "WaferBoard™ then senses the component contacts and recognizes the components and intelligently interconnects them (“cooks them”). The prototype (“waffle”) is now ready to be brought up and run. The WaferBoard™ will have saved the PCB development process weeks or months of time to market and tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars (or more). The DreamWafer Prototyping research objective is to build and validate a WaferBoard™ prototype.

The commercial and economic benefits include over $100 million of DreamWafer revenues over 10 years. DreamWafer Prototyping is a Platform for providing a wide range of creativity and innovation that could be disruptive and far reaching in Canadian Industry and Canadian Universities. It will result in many new Canadian start-up-companies with a competitive edge, by shaving months from time-to-market and saving hundreds of thousands of dollars off of design cycles for sensors, robotics, process control, instrumentation, vision systems, medical equipment, remote sensing, displays, telecommunication devices, multimedia, computing, defence and consumer electronics.

Shot peening for fatigue life improvement and forming of aerospace structures

The principle objective of this collaborative project is to develop in collaboration with the industrial partners novel methodologies for characterizing the shot peening and peen forming processes. One part of the program is devoted to establish analytical and numerical models for the prediction of the shot peening and peen forming processes. Experimental campaigns are planned in order to qualify the effect of the shot peening parameters on the peening results as well as to validate the developed models. The other part of the program is to assess the fatigue life improvement on the peened components. The crack initiation and propagation during cyclic loading in the peened component will experimental observed and numerically simulated in the microstructural scale.

Advanced text clustering algorithm for aircraft applications

CaseBank provides a service called ChronicX™ to the airline industry for the purpose of detecting and managing repeat defects, i.e. faults that have eluded resolution repeatedly. Each night, airlines upload their raw maintenance records to the CaseBank server. ChronicX applies text mining methods to eliminate irrelevant records, and search for defects that are repeat occurrences of defects previously reported. These are assembled into clusters, each of which is called a ‘chronic’. ChronicX performs reasonably well, but it has limitations that we believe can be improved.

Incorporating hyperflux in a Nanoptics platform

This project aims to develop a new platform for spectroscopic imaging with optics at the nano-scale. It will involve forming a new relationship between Tornado Spectral Systems, RHK Technologies and the Burch group at the University of Toronto. This relationship will combine their unique expertise to achieve a system with unparalleled performance, able to determine a wide variety of physical properties on unprecedented length scales. The resulting Tip Enhanced Raman Spectroscopy system will be of interest to a wide array of researchers in biology, physics, materials, engineering, and chemistry, not to mention numerous industrial and medical markets. Thus at the conclusion of this project Tornado Spectral Systems will be in an excellent position to widely broaden their customer base, including a new entrance into the high performance, research grade, optical spectroscopy market.

Improvement in the dissolving pulp production process

Two interns will collaborate with Neucel Specialty Cellulose (Neucel), which is located in Port Alice, British Columbia. Neucel is one of the leading global manufacturers of dissolving pulp, which has very high alpha-cellulose content (90 percent and over). The mill has identified the big variation in the solids content in its concentrated red liquor fed to the boiler as its priority project to improve the mill operation efficiency.

To minimize the variation and stabilize the solids contents within the mill’s target range, the two interns will determine the cause of the red liquor variation, set up an on-line solids content measurement system for three evaporation lines, and build a database to identify and provide practical solutions to the issue so that the recovery boiler performance, as well as the entire operation efficiency, can be improved. The proposed project is directly relevant to the improvement of the process operation at Neucel and has a great technology transfer potential. The project has provided excellent opportunities for the two interns.

A geomatics-based integrated resource management model scheme for watersheds

Integrated management of land and water resources is critical to best addressing increasing resource demands of society while maintaining a healthy environment. Combining computer mapping and satellite data at the watershed scale with integrated resource management models will provide governments, industry and nongovernmental agencies with a new generation of resource planning and management capabilities. Watersheds are a natural management unit – defined by interactions of geologic and atmospheric processes.

Our integrated modelling platform provides high resolution real-time capability to assess changing resource issues in mountains – the water towers of the world. Such capabilities are critical to short, medium and long-term management. Short and medium term issues can be challenging: examples include flood protection, optimizing hydroelectric generation and water allocation in times of drought. Longer-term adaptation to inter-annual and inter-decadal environment change requires high-level resource management tools. Our modeling capacity is critical to address all these management issues in watersheds around the world.

Ensemble analysis of climate change impacts on Churchill River, Labrador hydrology

The goal of the proposed research project is to develop a robust and useful analysis of the effects of climate change on the hydrology of the Churchill River watershed in Labrador. The partner organization, Nalcor Energy, is planning a multi-billion dollar hydroelectric development on the Churchill River and has a strong interest on the impact climate change may have on initial project engineering and operations throughout its lifespan. Specific objectives of this internship represent some of the final milestones of a continuing research collaboration, the groundwork for which was laid during past internships. Objectives include preprocessing various datasets, setting up and running a hydrological and river routing model, validating model outputs, creating weighted ensembles from three different analysis approaches and combining all results using probabilistic methods to produce a useful representation of the impacts of climate change.

Asset management for a distributed fleet of vehicles

In an effort to improve the return on investment for assets, it is becoming increasingly important for companies to develop and implement techniques for more efficient asset management and condition monitoring. Improved reliability and productivity levels for technological assets such as fleet vehicles and material handling systems in factory and warehouse environments are a must to maintain competitive. On a system such as a forklift fleet, distributed on-demand condition monitoring, combined with model-based fault analysis and prediction techniques, can raise productivity through more efficient maintenance schedules and reduced downtime.

BMI Industries is interested in developing a small and customizable embedded sensor system for forklifts to add to their existing product line of retrofit fleet monitoring embedded systems, with wireless connectivity and automatic status reporting. Professors M.G. Lipsett and Prof M. MacGregor from the University of Alberta (Departments of Mechanical Engineering and Computer Science, respectively), with four graduate student interns, will work with BMI on research and development of the information flow and system design and prototyping. Work will be completed over eight months to develop technical specifications, provide an initial proof-of-concept demonstration, model system functionality for performance enhancement, and produce a prototype system suitable for preliminary evaluation. With the goal of providing the information and tools to improve asset management, this system will be capable of logging and transmitting sensor data over a cellular network to a centralized server and database system capable of providing improved model-based condition monitoring reports to fleet owners and operators.