Energy

Whether it’s copper for electric cars or lithium for cellphones, many everyday technologies and devices are made of or rely on metals. But mining and extracting these valuable commercial minerals can come at a catastrophic cost to the environment.

The process of comminution – crushing and grinding billions of tonnes of rocks a year – is estimated to account for more than four per cent of the world’s energy consumption. Erin Bobicki, an assistant professor in the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering, wants to decrease the energy required for comminution by 70 per cent.

She and her collaborators in academia and industry are developing a cleaner solution using microwave technology.

“Metal is the basis of almost all the things we know and love – we need mineral processing to function as a society. Unfortunately, it’s extremely energy inefficient. If we can change that, it would make an enormous difference in mining,” says Bobicki, who has researched microwave applications in mineral processing for more than a decade.

Bobicki is leading a team to compete in the Crush It! Challenge, a competition launched by Natural Resources Canada to develop innovative solutions to reduce the energy used for crushing and grinding rocks in the mining industry. Her team, CanMicro, has just been named one of six finalists in the competition, receiving $800,000 in funding to pursue their solution.

By November 2020, the team who demonstrates the most energy savings will receive a $5 million grant to commercialize their technology.

CanMicro’s technology aims to reduce the amount of energy involved in the grinding process by exploiting the fact that valuable minerals tend to be most responsive to heat. When exposing rocks to high-powered microwaves, this variability in thermal response allows rocks that contain valuable minerals to be sorted from those that don’t.

“That means you don’t grind the ones that don’t contain anything valuable – there’s energy savings right there,” she says.

The intense blast of heat also applies stress and strain on the rocks that generates fractures across the mineral grain boundaries, which also reduces the energy required for grinding.

“We don’t have to grind it as fine because what we’re interested in has already been liberated,” says Bobicki. “Yet another opportunity for energy savings.”

The use of microwaves in the mining industry has long been considered a niche application, says Bobicki. That’s mainly because of the hurdle in developing the technology at a larger scale to handle a high tonnage of rocks.

“That’s what excites me about this project,” she says. “The objective is to scale up.”

CanMicro – which includes Professor Chris Pickles from Queen’s University as well as industry members at Kingston Process Metallurgy, Sepro Mineral Systems, COREM and the Saskatchewan Research Council – now have 18 months to test and pick the right microwave equipment before building a pilot plant in Kingston, Ont.

“I think we have a lot of risks to overcome, since this technology has never been scaled up before. But we believe that we’re going to get much better results at high power and achieve significant energy savings,” says Bobicki. “I think our chances of winning are very good.”

Beyond the competition, Bobicki is excited to see the potential of this technology one day applied, not only at a large scale, but across the mining industry.

“You can’t apply this technology to all rocks but imagine if it worked for half of the ores and we were able to reduce half of the energy required for breaking the rocks – that’s huge at a global scale,” says Bobicki.

U of T research looks at how to take the ‘petro’ out of the petrochemicals industry

noreen.rasbach — Tue, 30 Apr 2019 22:27:20 +0000

U of T research looks at how to take the ‘petro’ out of the petrochemicals industry

noreen.rasbach Tue, 04/30/2019 - 18:27

Cutline

Phil De Luna is the lead author of an article in Science that analyzes how green electricity and carbon capture could displace fossil fuels in the production of everything from fertilizer to textiles (photo by Tyler Irving)

Topic

Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering

Research & Innovation

Subheadline

Fossil fuels are the backbone of the global petrochemicals industry, which provides the world’s growing population with fuels, plastics, clothing, fertilizers and more. A new research paper, published last week in Science, charts a course for how an alternative technology – renewable electrosynthesis – could usher in a more sustainable chemical industry and ultimately enable us to leave much more oil and gas in the ground.

Phil De Luna, a PhD candidate in the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering, is the paper’s lead author. His research involved designing and testing catalysts for electrosynthesis, and last November he was named to the Forbes 30 under 30 list of innovators in the category of Energy. He and his supervisor, Professor Ted Sargent, collaborated on the paper with an international team of researchers from Stanford University and TOTAL American Services, Inc.

Writer Tyler Irving sat down with De Luna to learn more about how renewable electrosynthesis could take the “petro” out of petrochemicals.

Can you describe the challenge you’re trying to solve?

Our society is addicted to fossil fuels – they’re in everything from the plastics in your phone to the synthetic fibres in your clothes. A growing world population and rising standards of living are driving demand higher every year.

Changing the system requires a massive global transformation. In some areas, we have alternatives – for example, electric vehicles can replace internal combustion engines. Renewable electrosynthesis could do something similar for the petrochemical industry.

What is renewable electrosynthesis?

Think about what the petrochemical industry does: It takes heavy, long-chain carbon molecules and uses high heat and pressure to break them down into basic chemical building blocks. Then, those building blocks get reassembled into plastics, fertilizers, fibres, etc.

Imagine that instead of using fossil fuels, you could use CO₂ from the air. And instead of doing the reactions at high temperatures and pressures, you could make the chemical building blocks at room temperature using innovative catalysts and electricity from renewable sources, such as solar or hydro power. That’s renewable electrosynthesis.

Once we do that initial transformation, the chemical building blocks fit into our existing infrastructure, so there is no change in the quality of the products. If you do it right, the overall process is carbon neutral or even carbon negative if powered completely by renewable energy.

Plants also take CO₂ from the air and make it into materials such as wood, paper and cotton. What is the advantage of electrosynthesis?

The advantages are speed and throughput. Plants are great at turning CO₂ into materials, but they also use their energy for things like metabolism and reproduction, so they aren’t very efficient. It can take 10 to 15 years to grow a tonne of usable wood. Electrosynthesis would be like putting the CO₂ capture and conversion power of 50,000 trees into a box the size of a refrigerator.

Why don’t we do this today?

It comes down to cost. You need to prove that the cost to make a chemical building block via electrosynthesis is on par with the cost of producing it the conventional way.

Right now there are some limited applications. For example, most of the hydrogen used to upgrade heavy oil comes from natural gas, but about four per cent is now produced by electrolysis – that is, using electricity to split water into hydrogen and oxygen. In the future, we could do something similar for carbon-based building blocks.

What did your analysis find?

We determined that there are two main factors: The first is the cost of electricity itself, and the second is the electrical-to-chemical conversion efficiency.

In order to be competitive with conventional methods, electricity needs to cost less than four cents per kilowatt-hour, and the electrical-to-chemical conversion efficiency needs to be 60 per cent or greater.

How close are we?

There are some places in the world where renewable energy from solar can cost as little as two or three cents per kilowatt-hour. Even in a place like Quebec, which has abundant hydro power, there are times of the year where electricity is sold at negative prices, because there is no way to store it. So, from an economic potential perspective, I think we’re getting close in a number of important jurisdictions.

Designing catalysts that can raise the electrical-to-chemical conversion efficiency is harder, and it’s what I spent my thesis doing. For ethylene, the best I’ve seen is about 35 per cent efficiency, but for some other building blocks, such as carbon monoxide, we’re approaching 50 per cent.

Of course, all this has been done in labs – it’s a lot harder to scale that up to a plant that can make kilotonnes per day. But I think there are some applications out there that show promise.

Can you give an example of what renewable electrosynthesis would look like?

Let’s take ethylene, which is by volume the world’s most-produced petrochemical. You could in theory make ethylene using CO₂ from the air – or from an exhaust pipe – using renewable electricity and the right catalyst. You could sell the ethylene to a plastic manufacturer, who would make it into plastic bags or lawn chairs or whatever.

At the end of its life, you could incinerate this plastic – or any other carbon-intensive form of waste – capture the CO₂, and start the process all over again. In other words, you’ve closed the carbon loop and eliminated the need for fossil fuels.

What do you think the focus of future research should be?

I’ve actually just taken a position as the program director of the clean energy materials challenge program at the National Research Council of Canada. I am building a $21 million collaborative research program, so this is something I think about a lot.

We’re currently targeting parts of the existing petrochemical supply chain that could easily be converted to electrosynthesis. There is the example I mentioned above, which is the production of hydrogen for oil and gas upgrading using electrolysis.

Another good building block to target would be carbon monoxide, which today is primarily produced from burning coal. We know how to make it via electrosynthesis, so if we could get the efficiency up, that would be a drop-in solution.

How does renewable electrosynthesis fit into the large landscape of strategies to reduce emissions and combat climate change?

I’ve always said that there’s no silver bullet. Instead, I think what we need is what I call a “silver buckshot” approach. We need recycled building materials, we need more efficient LEDs for lighting, we need better solar cells and better batteries.

But even if emissions from the electricity grid and the transportation network dropped to zero tomorrow, it wouldn’t do anything to help the petrochemical industry that supplies so many of the products we use every day. If we can start by electrifying portions of the supply chain, that’s the first step to building an alternative system.

In course on global energy, students welcome special guest: Canada's finance minister

geoff.vendeville — Wed, 24 Oct 2018 15:58:38 +0000

In course on global energy, students welcome special guest: Canada's finance minister

geoff.vendeville Wed, 10/24/2018 - 11:58

Cutline

"We're trying to make sure that pollution is not a free good," Finance Minister Bill Morneau told an engineering class at U of T on Wednesday (photo by Geoffrey Vendeville)

Topic

Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering

Graduate Students

U of T Mississauga

Undergraduate Students

The day after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau unveiled the details of a national climate framework – taxing carbon and offsetting costs to consumers with rebates – a guest was invited to discuss the policy with an engineering class at the ��Ƶ.

Bill Morneau, Canada’s finance minister and former head of human resources and technology firm Morneau Shepell, spent more than half an hour speaking with about 30 U of T students in a class on innovation and entrepreneurship in global energy systems. Earlier in the day, he met with U of T President Meric Gertler at Simcoe Hall.

Among all the challenges facing the country, including an aging workforce, Morneau said curbing pollution to address climate change was one of the most pressing problems.

“It's a big issue for young people as they look toward the future,” he told the group of fourth-year and graduate students. “They see the environment is changing at a pace that is much more rapid than even what we would have expected a few years ago.”

The federal “backstop” program puts a price on carbon emissions in provinces and territories where there’s no equivalent. The list includes Ontario, New Brunswick, Manitoba and Saskatechewan, home to nearly half the country’s population.

The carbon tax will start next year at $20 per tonne of emissions, rising by $10 each year until it reaches $50 in 2022. It will be levied on fuel producers and distributors, such as Enbridge, but consumers are expected to see higher prices at the pump and heating bills as a result. The government is planning to offset these indirect costs by putting 90 per cent of the tax revenue into people's pockets through a rebate. The leftover 10 per cent will be set aside for sustainability initiatives and retrofitting.

Morneau told the class that the government felt compelled to act since climate change is already taking its toll through droughts, wildfires and other extreme weather. “Overhanging everything is our environment and the very real, immediate challenge around climate change that we’re all facing,” he said.

After a discussion with course instructor and postdoctoral researcher Marina Freire-Gormaly, students had the chance to ask questions.

Students in Innovative Technologies and Organizations in Global Energy Systems asked Finance Minister Bill Morneau questions about the national climate change framework (photo by Geoffrey Vendeville)

Olivia Lahaie (above, second from right), in the master of science in sustainability management program at U of T Mississauga, asked about how the government plans to ensure that small and medium-sized businesses remain competitive. Morneau said the 10-per-cent share of tax revenue would help these businesses with their green transition. Citing the example of British Columbia, which has had a carbon tax since 2008, Morneau said that carbon pricing isn’t anathema to a strong economy.

May Lim (right), in the same program at U of T Mississauga, said it was a valuable opportunity to hear the finance minister explain the impact of the previous day’s policy announcement. “He was inspirational in identifying the issues that the government is trying to solve and the role we can play as Canadian citizens,” she said. His visit to campus turned an abstract government policy into something more concrete, she added.

Morneau wasn’t the only visitor to the class. Two weeks ago, the students heard from alumnus Tom Rand, a senior adviser on clean tech at MaRS and the managing partner of ArcTern ventures, which invests in startups tackling climate change. This Friday, they expect to welcome Mike Rencheck, CEO of Bruce Power.

Freire-Gormaly, of the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering, said it was a “unique experience” having a sitting finance minister come to class. “It gave us a sense of how these new policies came about and what other aspects they considered before implementing the carbon tax,” she said.

As he was saying goodbye, Morneau quickly reminded the students of their role in creating a greener future: “Good luck with your studies,” he said. “We’re counting on you.”

Artificial photosynthesis gets big boost from new catalyst developed by U of T researchers

rasbachn — Mon, 20 Nov 2017 16:57:20 +0000

Artificial photosynthesis gets big boost from new catalyst developed by U of T researchers

rasbachn Mon, 11/20/2017 - 11:57

Cutline

Phil De Luna is one of the lead authors of a new paper published in Nature Chemistry that reports a low-cost, highly efficient catalyst for chemical conversion of water into oxygen (photo by Tyler Irving)

Topic

Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering

Global

Graduate Students

International

Research & Innovation

Ted Sargent

A new catalyst created by ��Ƶ researchers brings them one step closer to artificial photosynthesis – a system that, just like plants, would use renewable energy to convert carbon dioxide (CO₂) into stored chemical energy.

By both capturing carbon emissions and storing energy from solar or wind power, the invention provides a one-two punch in the fight against climate change.

“Carbon capture and renewable energy are two promising technologies, but there are problems,” says Phil De Luna, a PhD candidate in the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering and one of the lead authors of a paper published today in Nature Chemistry.

“Carbon capture technology is expensive, and solar and wind power are intermittent. You can use batteries to store energy, but a battery isn’t going to power an airplane across the Atlantic or heat a home all winter. For that you need fuels.”

De Luna and his co-lead authors Xueli Zheng and Bo Zhang – who conducted their work under the supervision of University Professor Ted Sargent – aim to address both challenges at once, and they are looking to nature for inspiration. They are designing an artificial system that mimics how plants and other photosynthetic organisms use sunlight to convert CO₂ and water into molecules that humans can later use for fuel.

As in plants, their system consists of two linked chemical reactions: one that splits H₂O into protons and oxygen gas, and another that converts CO₂ into carbon monoxide, or CO. (The CO can then be converted into hydrocarbon fuels through an established industrial process called Fischer-Tropsch synthesis.)

“Over the last couple of years, our team has developed very high-performing catalysts for both the first and the second reactions,” says Zhang, who is one of the corresponding authors and is now a professor at Fudan University. “But while the second catalyst works under neutral conditions, the first catalyst requires high pH levels in order to be most active.”

Researchers Xueli Zheng (left) and Bo Zhang test a previous catalyst for the artificial photosynthesis system. The new catalyst works at lower pH, leading to an improvement in the overall efficiency of the system (photo by Marit Mitchell)

Interested in publicly funded research in Canada? Learn more at UofT’s #supportthereport advocacy campaign

That means that when the two are combined, the overall process is not as efficient as it could be, as energy is lost when moving charged particles between the two parts of the system.

The team has now overcome this problem by developing a new catalyst for the first reaction – the one that splits water into protons and oxygen gas. Unlike the previous catalyst, this one works at neutral pH, and under those conditions it performs better than any other catalyst previously reported.

“It has a low overpotential, which means less electrical energy is needed to drive the reaction forward,” says Zheng, who received his PhD at U of T and is now a postdoctoral scholar at Stanford University. “On top of that, having a catalyst that can work at the same neutral pH as the CO₂ conversion reaction reduces the overall potential of the cell.”

In the paper, the team reports the overall electrical-to-chemical power conversion efficiency of the system at 64 per cent. According to De Luna, this is the highest value ever achieved for such a system, including their previous one, which only reached 54 per cent.

The new catalyst is made of nickel, iron, cobalt and phosphorus, all elements that are low-cost and pose few safety hazards. It can be synthesized at room temperature using relatively inexpensive equipment, and the team showed that it remained stable as long as they tested it, a total of 100 hours.

Armed with their improved catalyst, the Sargent lab is now working to build their artificial photosynthesis system at pilot scale. The goal is to capture CO₂ from flue gas – for example, from a natural gas-burning power plant – and use the catalytic system to efficiently convert it into liquid fuels.

“We have to determine the right operating conditions: flow rate, concentration of electrolyte, electrical potential,” says De Luna. “From this point on, it’s all engineering.”

The team and their invention are semi-finalists in the NRG COSIA Carbon XPRIZE, a $20-million challenge to “develop breakthrough technologies that will convert CO_₂ emissions from power plants and industrial facilities into valuable products.”

U of T chemistry team advances to ‘close the carbon cycle’

rasbachn — Wed, 15 Nov 2017 19:28:18 +0000

U of T chemistry team advances to ‘close the carbon cycle’

rasbachn Wed, 11/15/2017 - 14:28

Cutline

Closing the carbon cycle by U of T's Geoffrey Ozin: The diorama will open in December at Austria’s Museum of Applied Arts in Vienna (photo by Peter Weibel)

Peter McMahon

Topic

Global Lens

Energy

Faculty of Arts & Science

Subheadline

Solar fuel breakthroughs showcased in new art exhibit in Vienna

Making fuel out of polluted air, using it to power industry, and then taking the emissions from that industry back out of the air to create more fuel – it sounds too good to be true. But while there are a few hurdles to clear, a team led by ��Ƶ’s Geoffrey Ozin of the department of chemistry in the Faculty of Arts & Science is getting closer to closing the carbon cycle.

“Carbon dioxide's so frustrating because it's the most stable molecule on the planet,” says University Professor Ozin of the climate pollutant that outlives soot, methane and hydrofluorocarbons by a long shot.

“That's the problem. Anything you burn becomes CO2 and CO2 is really good at staying CO2,” says Ozin, who holds the Canada Research Chair of materials chemistry and nanochemistry.

For the last five years, Ozin has led a multidisciplinary team known as the U of T Solar Fuels Cluster on a quest to develop a process to convert atmospheric CO2 into a renewable fuel. Ozin says his plan for manufacturing the fuel would take as much carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere as burning the fuel would put back in.

This photomontage unites the vision of a global CO2 utilization strategy with a fuel synthesis plant that enables closing the carbon cycle (image courtesy of Todd Siler and Geoffrey Ozin, Matthias Gommel and Peter Weibel, “GLOBALE: Exo-Evolution” exhibition at the Center for Art and Media in Karlsruhe)

The team’s efforts have attracted the attention of major international corporations, and even inspired an exhibit about the process that’s been on display in Germany – a world leader in CO2 reclamation – and more recently in Austria.

The quest to make fuel out of waste carbon isn't new, but Ozin and his team are the only ones using both the heat and light of the sun to convert CO2, hoping their process will be more efficient than anyone else’s.

Recently, Ozin’s work caught the eye of the director of the Center for Art and Media in Karlsruhe, Germany, which specializes in multimedia exhibits at the confluence of art and science. The result was a vivid diorama depicting Ozin’s vision that has met with acclaim in Karlsruhe and will open in December at Austria’s Museum of Applied Arts in Vienna.

It is not the first time Ozin’s research has been immortalized in art. In 2011, American artist Todd Siler began creating multimetre-tall abstract sculptures of Ozin’s nano-structures, showing them in such places as the Armory Show, New York City’s premier art fair.

“There were human-sized nano rods, sheets, self-assembly, applications in energy, climate change,” says Ozin. “I lost my voice by the end of the week explaining it to all the visitors. We got two main comments: 'I like the colours' and 'What the hell does it all mean?'”

Ozin is currently working with a dozen U of T fourth-year chemical engineering students to design and build a pilot-scale version of his laboratory demonstration 'solar refinery’ connected to U of T's physical plant.

"There are different ways of doing this and maybe different methods will be more useful in some parts of the world than others,” says Ozin. “Some places have more wind, some places are sunnier, some have more water,” he says. “Everybody's pushing their method to valorize CO2 capture and conversion and when the public sees someone holding a gallon of gasoline that's been pulled out of thin air, that's going to shake them up.

“If you want to do this on a gigaton-scale, the way that we're doing it is the way to go.”

How Ozin’s ‘photoreactors’ would create a carbon-neutral cycle:

Renewable electricity is used to drive current through water, teasing out hydrogen gas that can be used to provide a feed stock for reaction with CO2.
Renewable energy captures CO2 – for example, from high CO2-emission sources such as power stations, steel and cement factories, or even from dilute CO2 sources in air.
Once captured into the reactor, sunlight starts to drive the conversion of hydrogen and CO2 when it comes into contact with catalysts made of nano-structured metal oxides and composites with nano-scale metals or other nano-scale metal oxides engineered by Ozin and team.
Ultra black in colour, the surface of these nano-catalysts absorbs more than 90 per cent of the sunlight spectrum – from ultraviolet to visible to infrared wavelengths – driving thermo- and photochemical reactions that turn CO2 and hydrogen gas into synthetic fuels.
“When a black nano-material absorbs light, it gets very hot at the nano-scale, so you get very high local temperatures at the surface of these nano materials,” says Ozin. “So I don't need fossil fuels to drive the conversion. With just the sun, I can get 500 C at the nano-scale because the heat builds up as vibrational or electronic energy, confined to the surface of the catalyst nanoparticles where the CO2 chemical conversion to synthetic fuels is occurring. That's photothermal catalysis – it utilizes wavelengths of the incident light across the entire solar spectrum to transform CO2 to synthetic fuels – and it is a process we have patented."
Depending on the composition and structure of these catalysts, as well as the reaction conditions – temperature and pressure – the fuel material created can be tailored to produce carbon monoxide, methane or methanol, potentially ready for use in engines, buildings, factories and more.
Ozin says all of this is a way to make the catalysts more efficient. “If we can be half a per cent more efficient than everyone else, that's a big deal when you're dealing in hundreds of millions of tons,” he says. “If you can drive it all through sunlight, that's new. And if you can drive the surface reaction chemistry through light, that's our contribution.”

Tackling environmental issues together: U of T engineering and public policy students address energy and pipeline policies

ullahnor — Mon, 27 Feb 2017 18:48:41 +0000

Tackling environmental issues together: U of T engineering and public policy students address energy and pipeline policies

ullahnor Mon, 02/27/2017 - 13:48

Cutline

A section of the Trans Alaska Pipeline near Fairbanks, AK. The policy implications of pipelines are one of the many topics being addressed in a new collaboration between undergraduates in two different faculties (photo by Brian Cantoni via Flickr)

Tyler Irving

Nathalin Moy

Author legacy

Tyler Irving and Nathalin Moy

Topic

Breaking Research

Undergraduate Education

Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering

Faculty of Arts & Science

School of Public Policy

Energy

Pipeline

Undergraduate students from U of T's Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering and the Faculty of Arts & Science's School of Public Policy and Governance are working together on a public policy assignment that has them briefing would-be decision-makers on challenging environmental issues, such as pipeline development and the proposed phase-out of coal-fired electricity plants.

The project, designed by fourth-year engineering science student Nathalin Moy, unites students currently enrolled in an energy policy class in engineering with an introduction to public policy course. Teams composed of three to four students from each class work together to formulate a response to a current energy policy issue. They prepare a two-page briefing note aimed at a hypothetical decision maker. The activity was piloted for the first time between Jan. 16 to Feb. 17.

“Communicating with government and members of the general public is a big part of my job,” says Andrew Knox, an engineering consultant and sessional instructor for the energy policy course. “I wanted to help our students get some practice, explaining technical issues to people without a technical background.”

Fourth year engineering student Nathalin Moy designed the program (photo by Tyler Irving)

Assistant Professor of Political Science Jonathan Craft says the project is also useful for his students.

“Like engineering, policy is a very interdisciplinary field, and it’s important for my students to get a sense of that,” he says. “Working with engineers offers the added benefit of exposing students to the technical constraints and realities of energy policy.”

Moy designed the activity as part of another course.

“It was challenging to develop an activity that would work for both engineers and non-engineers, but it’s exciting to see it in action,” she says. “And, I think the students are embracing it.”

The topics include:

The Canadian government’s proposed phase-out of coal-fired power plants
The proposed “Energy East” pipeline
Hydroelectricity pricing in Ontario
American climate policy under the new federal administration
Climate change mitigation: the sinking island of Kiribati

In addition to the briefing note, which integrates both technical and policy considerations, students in both classes will be part of in-class debriefs on their experiences. By honing their abilities in cross-disciplinary collaboration, the project prepares the students for success in a wide variety of fields and careers.

“In my undergraduate work, and even in my graduate work, I was never required to work with students outside of technical disciplines,” says Knox. “I hope that other instructors will be inspired by this assignment and create a more cross-disciplinary and holistic educational framework.”

In addition to the new pilot project, U of T"s Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering leads a number of other cross-disciplinary collaborations in education and research, including:

The Centre for Global Engineering course: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Addressing Global Challenges, is offered jointly by U of T Engineering, the Dalla Lana School of Public Health, the Munk School of Global Affairs and the Rotman School of Management.
The Collaborative Program in Engineering Education, is offered jointly by U of T Engineering and the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education.
The Translational Biology and Engineering Program brings together principal investigators from U of T Engineering with others from the Faculty of Medicine and the Faculty of Dentistry to focus on stem cell technologies, cellular and tissue engineering techniques, cell signaling, experimental platform development, and clinical research in heart regeneration.
The Southern Ontario Centre for Atmospheric Aerosol Research is an interdisciplinary centre for the study of air quality, with a focus on how aerosols impact human health and the environment. It brings together principal investigators from U of T Engineering as well as the Faculty of Arts & Science and the Faculty of Medicine.

U of T engineer studying energy efficiency and indoor environment inside TCHC buildings

ullahnor — Wed, 25 Jan 2017 18:21:08 +0000

U of T engineer studying energy efficiency and indoor environment inside TCHC buildings

ullahnor Wed, 01/25/2017 - 13:21

Cutline

Assistant Professor Marianne Touchie is working with Toronto Community Housing and The Atmospheric Fund to better understand how changes to energy use affect indoor environmental quality in multi-unit residential buildings (photo by Kevin Soobrian)

Kevin Soobrian

Author legacy

Kevin Soobrian

Topic

Subheadline

Marianne Touchie is collaborating with The Atmospheric Fund to collect data on energy consumption, temperature, humidity and carbon dioxide concentration in more than 70 apartments spanning seven different TCHC buildings

From coast to coast, condominium towers are being constructed at an unprecedented rate in Canadian cities with 30,000 new units added in 2015 to the Toronto market alone.

This is driven both by recent advances in the design, engineering and construction of tall buildings, and a stark increase in demand for these multi-unit residential buildings (MURB).

“More people are moving downtown,” says Marianne Touchie, assistant professor of civil engineering at U of T's Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering. “There’s very limited space so we need high-density housing options and MURBs provide that.”

With a background in building science, Touchie studies the relationships between energy efficiency and indoor environment quality parameters such as thermal comfort in these high-density buildings.

In Toronto, one of the largest suppliers of MURBs is Toronto Community Housing Corporation (TCHC), which owns 50 million square feet of residential space and houses 110,000 residents. Many of these are older buildings without air conditioning.

“A lot of these buildings rely on ventilation through the building envelope, which is not terribly effective. At the same time, we need to reduce our energy consumption and energy use,” she says. “But reducing energy usage has implications for occupants, and that’s what I’m interested in studying.”

Touchie is currently collaborating with The Atmospheric Fund (formerly the Toronto Atmospheric Fund) on a large research project – one that she has been involved with since her role as the organization's building research manager from 2014 to 2015. She and her colleagues are collecting data on energy consumption, temperature, humidity and carbon dioxide concentration in more than 70 apartments spanning seven different TCHC buildings.

“It’s probably the most comprehensive MURB monitoring project in North America, if not the world,” says Touchie.

They are also working with Professor Jeffrey Siegel, who is examining concentrations of formaldehyde, particulate matter and through a partnership with Health Canada radon concentrations.

Touchie says that collaborations, such as those with TCHC, The Atmospheric Fund and Siegel, are critical to creating a comprehensive picture of the MURBs she studies.

“Buildings are so complex,” says Touchie. “I have training in one particular area, but I’m not an indoor air quality expert. When we make changes from an energy perspective to the ventilation system, or the heating and cooling system, it has an influence on the air quality. Working with other experts like Professor Siegel, we can gather data on all sides.”

Touchie’s findings with The Atmospheric Fund and TCHC have drawn the interest of Toronto Public Health. The agency is interested in the health impact of extreme heat, and the study has found that these TCHC buildings are often overheated, especially in the summer.

“Extreme heat is a health problem, especially for the most vulnerable populations,” says Sarah Gingrich, a health policy specialist at Toronto Public Health.

Very young children, the elderly and people with illnesses or taking certain medications are most at risk.

“This work is providing evidence that excessive heat is a problem in older apartment buildings in Toronto,” Gingrich says. “The research is showing that although the temperature cools down at night outside, in these buildings, it rises during the day, and they stay hot all night long.”

Touchie and her collaborators are finding that a major culprit for the inefficient heating and cooling performance is uncontrolled air leakage. These leaks often occur around windows, doors, exhaust fans and elevator shafts. She adds that “because people can do whatever they want in their own homes, like open and close their windows, MURBs combine the complexity of high-rise buildings with the occupant wild card,” which makes managing the indoor environment even trickier.

“The study provides valuable information on Toronto apartment buildings that will help to inform policy development,” says Gingrich. “It fills a very important gap by providing up-to-date data that highlights some of the challenges in this type of building and points to potential solutions.”

Next, Touchie hopes to expand her research to newer condos, where data is even scarcer.

“They’re going up so quickly, and we really have no information about the quality of the indoor environment or their energy performance.,” she says. “I am very curious whether their energy consumption matches the performance level promised at the design stage.”

U of T team advances to next round of Carbon XPRIZE competition

ullahnor — Wed, 23 Nov 2016 22:08:22 +0000

U of T team advances to next round of Carbon XPRIZE competition

ullahnor Wed, 11/23/2016 - 17:08

Cutline

Alexander Ip and his U of T research team, led by Professor Ted Sargent has advanced to the second round of the $20-million Carbon XPRIZE competition (photo by Kevin Soobrian)

Kevin Soobrian

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Kevin Soobrian

Topic

Breaking Research

Research & Innovation

Sargent Group

Ted Sargent

Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering

Sustainability

Energy

A team of researchers led by Professor Ted Sargent has moved on to the second round of the $20-million NRG COSIA Carbon XPRIZE. The international competition challenges teams to capture carbon-dioxide (CO2), a climate-warming greenhouse gas, from natural gas or coal power plant fuel emissions and convert it into valuable products.

U of T’s multidisciplinary team, called Carbon Electrocatalytic Recycling Toronto (CERT), submitted a technique they developed earlier this year to convert CO2 to carbon-monoxide using electrocatalysis. For the competition entry, the team has altered that technique by using nanoparticle-based catalysts to produce formic acid, a substance commonly used as a preservative for animal feed and within the textile industry.

“Basically, you take some of the hydrogen from water and connect it into your CO2 molecule to make your formic acid,” says Alexander Ip, director of research and partnerships for the Sargent Group. “But you can do different things. In principle, you can make any carbon-based product. The challenge is having the right materials to be able to selectively get what you want.”

Read about the technique the team developed earlier this year

Ip also noted that the method could be instrumental in closing the carbon cycle. Sargent and an international team of collaborators developed a highly efficient method for storing energy in chemical form earlier this year, raising the potential for intermittent, renewable power sources like solar and wind. This clean and renewable electricity is then used to capture and convert CO2 into an asset.

“One thing that is emerging right now that we think is interesting is using formic acid as a hydrogen fuel cell material,” says Ip.

Instead of storing a gas in pressurized tanks, hydrogen is stored within the formic acid liquid and released from there. This allows hydrogen to be safely stored and easily transported in a liquid form.

“It’s less developed, but we think it’s a way that the formic acid market might grow in the future,” Ip says.

The NRG COSIA Carbon XPRIZE launched last year, and CERT submitted its first round submission in July. They now have until August 2017 to prepare a submission for round two, in which teams must demonstrate an ability to scale their project. The team is currently working on less than a gram of CO2 in its experiments, but will have to reach a volume of 200 kilograms per day for round two.

“It’s a big jump, and I don’t think it’s something we would normally try to do in a year,” Ip says. “But, that’s what XPRIZE does – it challenges you to go for it.”

CERT chose formic acid as its product precisely because they anticipate that it will be easy to scale up, notes Ip. “Once we’ve gotten to scale, you can swap out the catalyst in your system to make a different product. It’s not quite that straightforward, but that’s the principle.”

The team of 20 includes researchers from across the university, many of whom came together through a $1-million grant from the ��Ƶ’s Connaught Global Challenge Fund. Nanoparticle expert Professor Eugenia Kumacheva from the department of chemistry and fluidics specialist Professor David Sinton from the department of mechanical & industrial engineering are among the faculty members collaborating on the project.

“Tackling critical sustainability challenges requires collaboration across traditional disciplinary lines,” says Sargent. “CERT’s method holds incredible promise for practical implementation of carbon capture and conversion – that focus on applicability is at the core of the XPRIZE competition.”

The next step, says Ip, is making varied and more complex products, such as ethylene, from CO2. “We’re looking at how we can get two, or three, or more carbons linked together because that’s where you start getting more energy density and value in products.”

Round 2 of the Carbon XPRIZE will be judged in late 2017, with the top five teams in the natural gas and coal power plant streams sharing $2.5 million in prize money and advancing to the final round. Finalists will apply their methods to real power plants and be evaluated by both the amount of CO2 they are able to convert, and the net value of their final product.

“It’s a big challenge for us, but we want to see where it goes,” says Ip. “We think it’s a very important problem being addressed in this competition, and we’re happy to be a part of it.”

Sustainability Office

sgupta — Thu, 07 Jan 2016 20:47:19 +0000

Sustainability Office sgupta Thu, 01/07/2016 - 15:47

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https://www.fs.utoronto.ca/sustainability/

U of T Engineering supermileage team wins Shell Eco-marathon in Detroit

sgupta — Wed, 15 Apr 2015 09:35:46 +0000

U of T Engineering supermileage team wins Shell Eco-marathon in Detroit sgupta Wed, 04/15/2015 - 05:35

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U of T Engineering team edges out 89 teams, including the dominant Université Laval, to take top prize in the hotly contested Prototype Gasoline category (photo by Rex Larsen/AP Images for Shell)

Marit Mitchell

Author legacy

Marit Mitchell

Energy

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Read about the technique the team developed earlier this year

Sustainability Office

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U of T Engineering supermileage team wins Shell Eco-marathon in Detroit