An academic-industry collaboration led by Professor Mohini Sain (MIE) has produced a new sustainably-sourced, production-ready engine component for high-performance vehicles. 

The new part reduces emissions by both, displacing fossil fuel-derived plastics with renewable alternatives that can be recycled, and by decreasing vehicle weight, leading to improved fuel efficiency. 

The Carbon Fibre-Composite 5.0L Engine Timing Cover was created over the course of five years through an NSERC-supported partnership and ORF-RE project between Sain’s lab group and Ford Canada’s Powertrain Research and Development Centre (PERDC), led by Dr. Jimi Tjong, the technical lead at its Essex Engine Plant in Windsor, Ont., which is equipped with more than 20 design and process engineers.  

“My goal is to not only do research; I want to be involved in the process from research to commercialization,” says Sain. “Our research group starts with the fundamental research and then we translate it into practice, going from concept to production-ready products.”  

“We constantly consult with our industry experts to bring synergy in our design engineering to develop optimal cost/performance balance. Pricing is a key factor in driving our innovation.” 

As the Director of U of T Engineering’s Centre for Biocomposites and Biomaterials Processing, Sain is a leading researcher in advanced low-carbon materials and sustainable bio-manufacturing. 

He has a track record of working with industry partners to create low-carbon, carbon-neutral, or carbon-negative products and advanced manufacturing processes that can help reduce greenhouse gas emissions.  

Sain previously commercialized bio-composites designed to be used in the interior of Ford vehicles. But focusing on the structure and the powertrain elements have a greater potential impact because these parts are among the heaviest components of a vehicle. 

Engine timing covers, which are typically made of metals like aluminum or fossil-fuel-derived plastic, protect the timing components inside a vehicle’s engine.  

By contrast, the material that Sain and his team have created is a novel multi-functional composite that combines engineered carbon material from sustainable sources with recycled carbon fibre that has a tunable carbon structure and interfacial chemistry, and engineered polyamides.  

Simply making a “greener” engine component is not enough to bring about a change in the industry, says Sain. The new material must perform as well or better than what it is replacing. 

“One of the challenges for us was competing with metal in terms of strain, structure, crashworthiness, esthetics and long-term stability. And metal is also very heavy,” he says.  

“We also wanted to build a circular carbon economy so that the material we make from sustainable sources can be recycled at the end of its life.” 

Sain and his team spent years collaborating with Tjong and the researchers at Ford to perfect the mechanical characterization and composite rheology of the new component. They also collaborated on developing the processes by which it is made. 

“Since it’s a new material and new design, we were involved with designing the mould and the manufacturing process,” Sain says. “At each stage of development, we had to work closely with the Ford team on specifications to get the product to the marketplace.” 

The final design not only introduces a new sustainable material into the automotive industry, but it is also seven pounds lighter than previous models, while providing a sleek appearance and functionality critical for reducing emissions and increasing the performance advantage for racing vehicles. 

Ford’s Carbon Fibre-Composite 5.0L Engine Timing Cover featured at the 2021 SEMA New Product Showcase in Las Vegas this past November and was recognized by its Global Media Awards, which are chosen by the automotive industry’s top publications. 

Sain hopes that the new timing cover can serve as a proof-of-concept that will enable further expansion of low carbon composites in electric vehicles. 

“The larger benefit of this new material and manufacturing process is its application in lightweight structural battery pack and fuel cell packs, with added functionality such as electromagnetic interference shielding,” he says. 

“If we want to reach carbon neutrality, we have to find ways to have more energy-efficient processes that use fewer materials and fewer resources with enhanced functionality. There are tremendous opportunities for transformative change.” 

– This story was originally published on the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering News Site on January 6, 2022 by Safa Jinje

U of T Engineering professors Aimy Bazylak (MIE), Vaughn Betz (ECE) and Frank Vecchio (CivMin) have been elected 2022 Fellows of the Engineering Institute of Canada (EIC), for “excellence in engineering and services to the profession and to society.”

As the Canada Research Chair for Thermofluidics in Clean Energy, Bazylak is working to advance fuel cells, electrolyzers and batteries for clean power production and energy storage without greenhouse gas emissions. Her research is focused on the use of modelling and real-time imaging to design new materials for high efficiency and performance. She has partnered with automotive and energy companies such as Nissan, Volkswagon and Hydrogenics Corp. to develop next-generation fuel cells and electrolyzers for higher efficiency, zero-greenhouse gas emission power and energy storage.

Bazylak has served as the Director of the U of T Institute for Sustainable Energy and Acting Vice-Dean, Undergraduate for Engineering, and has been a member of U of T’s Committee on the Environment, Climate Change, and Sustainability since 2017. Her contributions have earned her several prestigious awards, including the Canadian Society for Mechanical Engineering’s I.W. Smith Award, the Alexander von Humboldt Fellowship, and the Helmholtz International Fellow Award. She is a member of the Royal Society of Canada’s College of New Scholars, Artists and Scientists and a Fellow of the Canadian Society for Mechanical Engineering and the American Society of Mechanical Engineers.

Betz holds the NSERC/Intel Industrial Research Chair in Programmable Silicon. His work has revolutionized the use of field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), to allow engineers to rapidly create new hardware systems and realize their design visions. As a doctoral student, Betz created a packing, placement and routing tool and methodology, known as Versatile Place and Route (VPR), which is now the world’s most popular toolset for modelling new FPGA ideas. Betz cofounded Right Track CAD Corporation in 1998, growing the company to several million in annual revenue. After the company’s acquisition by Altera in 2000, he played a key role in the design of their next-generation chips, now used by tens of thousands of engineers.

In 2011, Betz joined U of T Engineering, where he continues to lead research to improve algorithms and design software to improve FPGAs. He mentors future entrepreneurs and has personally established several engineering scholarships. Betz holds more than 100 U.S. patents and has received 14 best paper awards from the field’s top conferences and journals. He is a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and the U.S. National Academy of Inventors, and recipient of the Ontario Professional Engineers Medal for Engineering Excellence.

Professor Emeritus Vecchio is the former Bahen/Tanenbaum Chair in Civil Engineering. An internationally respected authority on the behaviour of concrete structures, he has contributed substantially to increasing the safety and reliability of Canada’s infrastructure. Vecchio is the co-developer of the Modified Compression Field Theory, a groundbreaking conceptual model for describing the behaviour of reinforced concrete under general load conditions, which has been incorporated into design codes in Canada and internationally. He also developed a suite of software, called VecTor, for predicting the response of concrete structures to practically any action, which has been widely adopted for teaching and in industrial and research applications.

In addition to his research, he has significantly contributed to the development of standards and codes for concrete structures globally through his service on national and international technical committees. According to a recent Stanford University study, Vecchio has the highest citation score amongst Canadian researchers across all fields of Civil Engineering and ranks in the top 20 worldwide. He is a Fellow of the Canadian Society for Civil Engineering and the American Concrete Institute and has received several of these societies’ most prestigious awards.

“On behalf of the Faculty, my warmest congratulations to Professors Bazylak, Betz and Vecchio,” says U of T Engineering Dean Christopher Yip. “Their outstanding contributions illustrate some of the key areas in which U of T Engineers are making an impact across disciplines and sectors.”

Canada has formally committed to achieving net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 — and since 78% of greenhouse gas emissions globally are related to energy, finding cleaner sources is a big part of the puzzle. 

Researchers at the University of Toronto have responded to this challenge by forming a new research network: the Climate Positive Energy Initiative, which seeks to harness U of T expertise, across a wide range of fields, to develop clean-energy solutions that are guided by political, human and societal considerations. It’s one of 19 projects currently supported by U of T’s Institutional Strategic Initiatives (ISI) program, a tri-campus network that unites researchers, students, faculty and external partners to fuel multidisciplinary solutions to today’s problems. 

So far, the Climate Positive Energy Initiative comprises more than 100 faculty members from departments ranging from anthropology to electrical engineering. The initiative will work with community, non-profit, government and industry partners in a bid to address climate change. To enable this effort, the network aims to raise $100 million in external funding within three years. 

“If you have a very narrowly defined problem, you can collect a small group of experts, execute a solution and get it done,” said Professor David Sinton (MIE), the academic lead of the new initiative, and Canada Research Chair in microfluidics and energy. 

“But when you have a problem like how to respond to climate change, you’ve got an everybody problem. You have an all-profession, all-social sciences, all-natural sciences and all-humanities problem.” 

“We’re united by the climate challenge.” 

Sinton recently spoke to U of T News about the Climate Positive Energy Initiative, the problems it plans to tackle and what role students will play in the research network.  

How did this research network come to be?  

I’m trying to think if there was an apple-hitting-me-on-the-head kind of moment. I don’t think so. It was a realization that the University of Toronto has such incredible expertise — and such diversity of expertise. Great universities are unique in this regard. That’s something that struck me and others whom I was speaking to at the time.  

There are many notable national labs and large corporations with climate-centred mandates — but do they have a university-sized roster of climate scientists, ethicists, economists and sustainable architecture experts? No.          

That made me think: Not only is this a great opportunity, but we have a responsibility to organize around these multifaceted challenges. This is the kind of stuff that universities have to do. 

Can you elaborate on that? What is the university’s role in fighting climate change?  

If you have a very narrowly defined problem, then you get a very specific set of expertise and you can execute a solution and get it done. If you have a legal problem you need some lawyers. If you’ve got an engineering problem, you hire engineers and just go do it. 

But when you have a problem like how to respond to climate change, you’ve got an everybody problem. You have an all-profession, all-social sciences, all-natural sciences and all-humanities problem. 

Historically, we take an iterative approach toward solving problems related to energy. It’s usually tech-heavy, tech-led — and then after a decade or more we figure out what went wrong, do a cost-benefit analysis and do better next time. 

We can’t do that now. The issue is time. Ten-year iterations are too slow when you have 2050 [the year by which Canada aims to reach net-zero emissions] staring at you. We have a giant multidisciplinary challenge on our hands — and a tight deadline. That’s a unique scenario. 

What can we do about that? Universities can chart pathways that have some degree of consensus. We come to this challenge with a level of maturity and an understanding that no solution will be perfect. No solution will get everyone on this incredible roster of experts at U of T to align completely. But we can build a model of consensus at the University that could serve as a proxy — a way of demonstrating a pathway that was hard-fought and delivered in months instead of decades. 

We also have credibility. What other organization can present a solution for de-carbonizing Canadian communities without controversy? Plans put forward by government or industry would tend to engender more skepticism. That doesn’t mean those plans are not worthy of consideration — it just means they might be less actionable.  

On the other hand, a plan that comes from a university — because of its structure, academic freedom and diversity of expertise — might be more credible. We could present workable options for going forward that have a lot of traction. 

De-carbonizing the Canadian North came up in a recent panel you participated in about a climate-positive energy transition. Why will this be a challenge? 

We’re working on a project to bring together a national network, based at U of T, that would look at this question. The vision is to focus first on what forms of energy communities are using and what their needs are currently. What are their concerns, stated needs and opportunities for generation? Then assess if there are generalized solutions we can offer or develop together. Generalizability is important because it enables economies of scale, industry engagement and ultimate implementation. 

In an energy context, we would look at what supplies they have. There are some great examples of renewable energy production in the North, but they are very seasonal — ample renewable power in the summer, followed by a shortage in winter, that means relying on fossil fuels. Saving summer’s energy for winter is the big challenge — not just in the North, but throughout Canada and much of the world. 

We are engaging with local partners to tackle this seasonal energy storage conundrum and look for community-partnered solutions. Very few communities would have opportunities to store renewable electricity from summer to winter. Is it possible to store it in a chemical form compatible with their winter energy demands? We have U of T experts developing such technologies. 

One last point on the North: We’re particularly interested in the Yukon grid. It’s big, isolated and they spill water, which means they have hydro dams that waste energy potential in the summer because they can’t use it and can’t store it. This renewable power capacity is lost. In the winter, they have to buy diesel and there’s all sorts of challenges with that including the logistics of getting it there, safety, energy security and dependence on southern regions. 

That’s one example of a problem that requires experts across the academic spectrum — with social, political, legal, scientific and engineering backgrounds. There are opportunities to make big changes if you have those disciplines aligned. 

What are some other projects or questions that researchers with the Climate Positive Energy Initiative will work on? 

Closer to home, the U of T Scarborough team of researchers is looking at the transition to sustainable energy for urban communities, including Scarborough. They are studying how changes in energy use and energy systems transform the community and ecosystems. Their team is a microcosm for the whole Climate Positive Energy Initiative. They have a diversity of expertise in faculty in human geography, arts and culture, political science, management and the physical and environmental sciences. 

We also have researchers exploring how the university itself can reduce its emissions and serve as an example. We’re working with Climate Positive Campus and the President’s Advisory Committee on the Environment, Climate Change, and Sustainability to lever U of T’s research expertise to reduce energy use in our buildings, enable renewable power generation, and reduce the CO2 impact of operations, heating and cooling. 

The Climate Positive Campus team is hard at work and they have lots of cool projects on the go, including installing a geoexchange energy storage system under Front Campus that is projected to reduce GHG [greenhouse gas] emissions by 15,000 tonnes of CO2 equivalent by 2024. 

We’re working together by putting out a call for proposals. And we are asking researchers to propose how we can do better. If the outcome of a research program could be implemented on campus within five years, we’ll co-fund the research. 

Can students expect more opportunities to collaborate on research through the Climate Positive Energy Initiative? 

We see student engagement as central to our mandate. Students are in everything we do. They’re absolutely critical in every activity. 

We are forming a network of students from across the tri-campus with the full spectrum of expertise discussed earlier. There will also be direct support in the form of scholarships and opportunities to get involved in research projects. 

We’re also aiming to engage our undergraduate students. We recognize that a lot of researchers, myself included, first became aware of the research side of the University through an undergrad thesis or project. That exposure to — and engagement in — research is super important. 

Equally important is facilitating the peer environment — networks of undergraduates, graduate students and post-doctoral fellows. It’s just so enriching to work with people from diverse academic backgrounds, like those on the panel last month. You have ethicists, social scientists, scientists and engineers looking at climate and energy challenges from different vantage points. Students also benefit from this kind of multidisciplinary collaboration. 

We have a great network of faculty working in this area, as we do post-docs and students. Closer collaboration through the Climate Positive Energy Initiative will give them a chance to make meaningful connections that last throughout their careers.  

Consider the period between now and 2050, who’s working lifetime does that represent? Not mine. That timespan represents the professional lifetime of our current graduate students and post-doctoral fellows. This is their life. This is their challenge. 

Connecting them within a diverse network of experts united by a shared challenge — that’s powerful. 

Many are skeptical that we’ll meet our 2050 goals. How do you feel? Are you optimistic?  

There are a few things to unpack here. I share the concern regarding the speed of change. There’s broad agreement — we need to act more quickly than we are. 

In some ways we’re through with the denial phase. Most organizations and most governments are done denying climate change. We’re in the pledge phase. That’s better than the denial phase. We’re making progress.  

In practical terms, the pledges are ambitious. I don’t say that to make people more depressed. It’s just really challenging. I’m not going to comment on whether Canada or other countries should have promised more or less. It’s not within my expertise. But I will tell you that all of those pledges — including the corporate net-zero pledges that are now the norm — they’re all ambitious. They all involve transformations on a scale that few appreciate. 

So, it might mean — as one of our Climate Positive Energy researchers, Professor Shoshanna Saxe (CivMin), said the other day — the problem is harder than we want it to be. She’s right.  

Am I hopeful? Absolutely. We’re in a real moment right now. What am I worried about? A couple of things. We’re not moving fast enough. I share that worry. What else am I worried about? That the same people who are frustrated now will get completely discouraged three years from now, 10 years from now, 20 years from now.  

I feel that we need a strange combination of urgency and endurance: an urgency to get stuff done at the speed needed, and a perseverance.  

That’s the challenge we’re facing. We need to have that engagement and action orientation right now, but we’re also going to need that for decades.   

Where do you see the Climate Positive Energy Initiative in five or 10 years?  

We need to take U of T’s climate and energy research, which is broad and diverse, put it at the forefront worldwide and enable real solutions. We will raise U of T’s already excellent research capacity in this area by an order of magnitude or two. 

U of T has given us — departments and divisions across the three campuses have given us — tremendous support and they’re saying: Here’s the starting point — now get going, growing and make this a global entity.

– This story was originally published on the University of Toronto’s  News Site on December 15, 2021 by Geoffrey Vendeville

Now celebrating their 10th anniversary, the Schulich Leader Scholarships have allowed hundreds of students to explore, thrive and make a difference. Founded by philanthropist Seymour Schulich through his Schulich Foundation, the four-year awards support Canadian university students with entrepreneurial aspirations rooted in the STEM disciplines: science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

After 10 years of growing the program, the Schulich Foundation now awards up to 100 scholarships per year. In 2021, 10 went to University of Toronto students. Valued at $80,000 for science, technology or mathematics students and $100,000 for engineering students, the awards also include membership in the growing Schulich Leaders Network of successful alumni—like Kwan, Khan and McInnis.

“Warmest congratulations to Seymour Schulich and the Schulich Foundation on the 10th anniversary of these very important scholarships,” says Meric Gertler, President of U of T. “And thank you for the difference you’ve made, by supporting Canada’s next generation of leading innovators and problem-solvers. The Schulich Leader Scholarships help ensure that our greatest young minds can take advantage of the opportunity of a stellar education, so they can realize their full potential.”

The Schulich Leader Scholarships program is graduating talented future leaders every year. The stories of Kwan, McInnis, and Khan illustrate three inspiring paths to success, and the tremendous potential embodied the program.

Danny McInnis (MechE 1T9+PEY): Thinking like a leader

For Danny McInnis, being a Schulich Leader is about opportunities to develop—and exercise—creative and collaborative thinking. Entering U of T with the 2015 cohort of Schulich Leaders, McInnis completed a degree in mechanical and industrial engineering. Today, he’s working with Logitech in Ireland, in a job that “sits between engineering and design,” he explains. “The first product I worked on here, a minimalist keyboard, just got released, which was really exciting. I get to work on products for creatives like myself and gamers, too, which is super rewarding.”

At U of T, his opportunities to lead were tightly linked with opportunities to stretch his mind. It began with living in residence with students from 90 different countries. “You can imagine the range of experiences,” he says. “It was really, really cool.” He took leadership opportunities, first as a residence don and then as a team lead on the Hyperloop project, in which students create a pod to race in a vacuum tunnel. In both cases, he says, “I often found myself learning from the other students. It was cool, because the collective effort of a team of 40 versus just one person is hard to beat.”

Similarly, he appreciated the inspiration of the Schulich Leaders Network: like-minded friends doing amazing work. He’s mentored younger students and helped recruit companies to participate in the network’s job fairs. “Any way that I can help, I’m always happy to do it.”

McInnis holds patents for a concussion-prevention helmet and a robotic video control system, but he’s also shared an invention by making it open-source: a system for 3D printing low-cost custom prosthetics. “The part that I enjoyed the most was seeing the difference that it made for the five-year-old boy who tested our prototype,” he says. “We decked it out in a Spider-Man theme and you could just see him light up with excitement—it was probably one of my favourite memories from engineering.”

Impact and innovation are intertwined, says McInnis. “Making products that allow people to create and stay creative is really interesting to me.” He keeps his own mind nimble through filmmaking.

“When I moved out to Ireland I was looking for things to do. I’m a big boxing and martial arts fan, and I thought the traits that I see in professional fighters, like resilience and quick thinking, were very similar to the adaptability shown by businesses during Ireland’s strict lockdowns. Some of them had crazy ideas to keep their business afloat, but it was those ideas that saved them. It was a defensive move, that put them on offense—one of the many parallels to fighting. So I used my documentary to follow three pro fighters and three local business owners to show that maybe we aren’t so different after all!”

Read the full article and learn about other scholarship recipients at Boundless.

First year engineering students enrolled in Engineering Strategies and Practice (ESP) will spend the winter term tackling a design project for a client. Throughout the term student teams will utilize their design, communication, and problem solving skills to solve a problem posed by their client.

Clients come from a wide variety of areas including government, industry, community groups and can even propose a problem as an individual. Projects can come from a client’s personal or professional life and don’t have to be technically complicated.

“Our students are looking to for ways to use their engineering skills to contribute positively to the local community and society in general. They are extremely excited to be making a true impact on people’s lives.” says Course Coordinator Professor Jason Bazylak (MIE).

The Winter 2022 class is now seeking clients to work with student design teams. There are no fees to participate as a client, and if you have a problem to solve and can commit to three 30-60 minute meetings with your assigned team the ESP students are ready to find a solution for you!

Past projects have ranged from designing products and spaces to improve personal quality of life  to addressing unique accessibility concerns to reducing environmental impacts by designing  energy-saving systems. Learn more about past projects on the ESP website or hear from past clients in this this short video.

Ready to submit your challenge? Complete the Client Submission Form in early December to be considered by the ESP Office.

-Published December 2, 2021 by Lynsey Mellon, lynsey@mie.utoronto.ca

 

A novel method of creating 3D thermophotonic images developed by Andreas Mandelis (MIE) and his research team is highlighted in

Photonics Media. Their method, called “truncated-correlation photothermal coherence tomography (TC-PCT)”, uses infrared camera frames to reconstruct 3D thermal images. This allows for sharp, depth-wise thermal images to be created in materials like living tissues that typically scatter light profusely.  These materials normally give rise to diffuse optical and thermal images, but TC-PCT allows for  thermal-wave localization which is necessary for the  3D thermal reconstruction revealing previously impenetrable optical absorption images.

This unique technology will have a great impact in biomedicine as it allows for detailed, non-invasive imaging to be completed, leading to early and more precise diagnoses and more successful treatments. This technology can be used to detect dental caries, early cancer growths and even to map blood vessels that may alert to cancer-triggered angiogenesis.

Read the full article

A new method of creating hydrogen from natural gas — one which does not produce carbon dioxide as a byproduct — could open up a range of emission-free alternative energy technologies. The innovation was recently spun out into a company, Aurora Hydrogen, co-founded by U of T Engineering professor Murray Thomson (MIE), University of Alberta professor Erin Bobicki, and Andrew Gillis, who joined the team as CEO.

Hydrogen is attractive as a medium for storing energy because it contains no carbon. When burned as a fuel or combusted in a hydrogen fuel cell, the only substance exiting the exhaust pipe is pure water.

The challenge arises in generating the hydrogen in the first place. One method is to split water into hydrogen and oxygen gas using electricity. However, this process is energy inefficient, requiring large amounts of electricity to produce only small amounts of hydrogen.

Another approach is to react natural gas, also known as methane, with water in the form of steam. This process is known as steam methane reforming and is the source of 95% of hydrogen produced today. However, the carbon present in the natural gas leads to byproducts such as carbon dioxide.

Thomson and his collaborators are using a third approach, based on methane pyrolysis, a process that uses heat to break down natural gas into hydrogen gas and solid carbon particles.

One drawback of methane pyrolysis is that the heat required for this process has traditionally been generated by burning more hydrocarbon fuels. But recently Thomson, who has been researching pyrolysis for decades, began to envision another approach.

“The question began to form in my mind as to whether microwaves, a very efficient heating method, could be used to heat the methane. This would require less energy and generate less CO2 than the traditional pyrolysis process,” says Thomson.

Thomson then reached out to Bobicki, whose research focuses on applying microwave energy to industrial processes in the mineral processing industry. With Bobicki’s guidance, the two researchers tested their theory and developed Aurora Hydrogen’s CO2-free method of hydrogen production.

“After speaking with Professor Thomson and learning about methane pyrolysis, it became clear that this was an excellent application for microwave technology,” says Bobicki. “We quickly formulated the idea — which is inspired by a methodology to reduce uranium oxide — and set to work to demonstrate what is a very elegant process. It is very exciting to see the innovation that can result from interdisciplinary collaboration!”

The use of microwave energy in methane pyrolysis has several advantages. For one, using microwave energy significantly reduces the energy needed to break apart the methane. The solid carbon produced as a byproduct already has established markets: it is used in steelmaking, rubber production, in asphalt and graphite. And even if the solid carbon ends up in a form that is not marketable, because it is a solid rather than a gas, it can be sequestered much more easily than CO₂.

To test their theory, the team built a bench-scale reactor for the production of CO2-free hydrogen. After running it for over four hours, they measured its efficiency to be around 99%, meaning it converted the methane to hydrogen and carbon with minimal byproducts.

“We encountered many challenges when building the reactor, but it was amazing to see our technology work as expected,” said Mehran Dadsetan (MIE PhD candidate), who is supervised by Thomson. “Being able to validate this technology and move towards commercialization could have a huge impact on reducing CO2 emissions.”

Andrew Gillis joined Thomson and Bobicki to found Aurora Hydrogen and develop the business side of the venture.

“Aurora’s technology is unique in that it not only addresses a global need for ultra-low GHG hydrogen production, but it also allows us to access the energy in natural gas without generating carbon dioxide,” says Gillis.

“We’re seeing a lot of interest in the technology from both hydrogen consumers and natural gas producers. In fact, Aurora was recently selected into the Energy Stream of the Creative Destruction Lab program, at the University of Calgary.”

As Aurora Hydrogen moves toward its goal of making low-cost and low-carbon hydrogen energy a reality, funding from a consortium of natural gas producers, distributors and hydrogen producers will allow Aurora Hydrogen to participate in a field trial, where hydrogen created by Aurora will be injected into and distributed by existing natural gas pipelines.

If successful, this is a positive first step towards decarbonizing natural gas pipelines and bringing hydrogen energy to industries where reducing carbon emissions could have a huge impact globally. Hydrogen energy could also be used in applications where using batteries isn’t practical, such as in heavy duty trucks, ships, trains, and industries such as steel and cement making.

“It’s amazing to be a part of a team working on something that has the potential to do so much good,” says Fawaz Khan (MIE MASc candidate), another one of Thomson’s graduate students. “This technology could play a large role in the global mission of reducing CO2 emissions and contribute to a better future for all of us.”

-Published December 1 , 2021 by Lynsey Mellon, lynsey@mie.utoronto.ca

Professor Marianne Touchie (MIE, CivMin) has received the Rising Star Award from the Ontario Building Envelope Council (OBEC) for 2021. This award is given out biennially to recognize individuals that demonstrate exceptional knowledge of the design, construction and performance of the building envelope.

Touchie says, “Having worked with OBEC for a number of years and seeing the important work this organization does, I’m so honoured to be recognized by this talented, dedicated group of professionals!”

Since 1987 – The OBEC has been bridging the gaps amongst the architectural, engineering, research, manufacturers and construction communities. The non-profit organization addresses today’s challenges facing building performance and sustainability. One of OBEC’s keys to success is a dedication to building science education at all levels.

-– This story was originally published on the University of Toronto’s Department of Civil & Mineral Engineering News page on November 22, 2021 by Pill Snel

The Centre for Research and Applications in Fluidic Technologies (CRAFT) — a partnership between the University of Toronto and the National Research Council of Canada (NRC) — has launched a new research facility at U of T’s St. George campus. 

The Device Foundry will bring together researchers, clinicians, entrepreneurs and industry collaborators with a goal of advancing micro-nano fluidic device fabrication. Housing equipment to support large-scale production of biomedical devices, the facility has the capability to quickly take new technologies in healthcare to commercialization.  

“The opening of the new Device Foundry marks a huge milestone for CRAFT,” says Professor Axel Guenther (MIE), Co-Director of CRAFT. “Many individuals from U of T and the NRC came together to make this unique space a reality. With the launch of this open-research facility, we are now well positioned to advance the field of microfluidics and serve as a hub for collaborations that will bring innovative technologies to the health-care community.” 

The Device Foundry is set up to rapidly produce and deploy polymer-based biomedical microdevices, such as organ-on-a-chip models of heart tissues, and handheld 3D skin printers. The facility features a new micro-injection molder that will allow for thousands of micro-fluidic devices to be created every hour, a micro-milling machine for creating molds, a roll-to-roll polymer coater, multiple embossers, a laser cutter, a glass 3D printer and a nano-scale 3D printer. 

“Congratulations to the CRAFT team for the opening of the new facility in Toronto,” says Teodor Veres, Co-Director of CRAFT and R&D Director of the Medical Devices Research Centre at the NRC. “This space adds significant technological and scientific assets to the existing world-class microfluidic device R&D capacity at NRC in Boucherville, Quebec. Together, these two CRAFT labs will enable the development, deployment and validation in clinics, of emerging lab-on-chip systems made in Canada.”  

The University of Toronto has one of the world’s largest microfluidic device research communities with more that 50 investigators, including Professors Milica Radisic (BME, ChemE) and Aaron Wheeler (Chemistry, BME), both co-leads at CRAFT. Wheeler is also affiliated with the Donnelly Centre for Cellular and Biomolecular Research where his lab is located. The NRC in Boucherville has 40 scientists contributing to micro-nano device research in areas such as diagnostics, precision medicine and cell-based therapy. 

“The hope is for the spirit of collaboration that went into creating CRAFT, and this new space, to be reflected in the work that comes out of it. With the investment from the NRC, we now have dedicated technician support to train students, maintain the equipment and help researchers and start-ups bring their devices directly to the communities that will use them,” says Guenther. 

“CRAFT will aid Canada’s medical device sector growth and support the discovery of new knowledge that can be translated into innovative technology-driven products, processes and services. The Device Foundry will also offer a unique work-integrated learning environment and development opportunities for the workforce of the future, keeping our highly-trained personnel in Canada,” says Veres.  

A team of researchers from U of T Engineering and Rice University have reported the first measurements of the ultra-low-friction behaviour of a material known as magnetene. The results point the way toward strategies for designing similar low-friction materials for use in a variety of fields, including tiny, implantable devices. 

Magnetene is a 2D material, meaning it is composed of a single layer of atoms. In this respect, it is similar to graphene, a material that has been studied intensively for its unusual properties — including ultra-low friction — since its discovery in 2004. 

“Most 2D materials are formed as flat sheets,” says Peter Serles (MIE PhD candidate), who is the lead author of the new paper published today in Science Advances.  

“The theory was that these sheets of graphene exhibit low friction behaviour because they are only very weakly bonded, and slide past each other really easily. You can imagine it like fanning out a deck of playing cards: it doesn’t take much effort to spread the deck out because the friction between the cards is really low.” 

The team, which includes Professors Tobin Filleter (MIE) and Chandra Veer Singh (MSE), MSE postdoctoral fellow Shwetank Yadav, and several current and graduated students from their lab groups, wanted to test this theory by comparing graphene to other 2D materials. 

While graphene is made of carbon, magnetene is made from magnetite, a form of iron oxide, which normally exists as a 3D lattice. The team’s collaborators at Rice University treated 3D magnetite using high-frequency sound waves to carefully separate a layer consisting of only a few sheets of 2D magnetene. 

The U of T Engineering team then put the magnetene sheets into an atomic force microscope. In this device, a sharp-tipped probe is dragged over the top of the magnetene sheet to measure the friction. The process is comparable to how the stylus of a record player gets dragged across the surface of a vinyl record. 

 “The bonds between the layers of magnetene are a lot stronger than they would be between a stack of graphene sheets,” says Serles. “They don’t slide past each other. What surprised us was the friction between the tip of the probe and the uppermost slice of magnetene: it was just as low as it is in graphene.” 

 Until now, scientists had attributed the low friction of graphene and other 2D materials to the theory that the sheets can slide because they are only bonded by weak forces known as Van der Waals forces. But the low-friction behaviour of magnetene, which doesn’t exhibit these forces due to its structure, suggests that something else is going on. 

 “When you go from a 3D material to a 2D material, a lot of unusual things start to happen due to the effects of quantum physics,” says Serles. “Depending on what angle you cut the slice, it can be very smooth or very rough. The atoms are no longer as restricted in that third dimension, so they can vibrate in different ways. And the electron structure changes too. We found that all of these together affect the friction.” 

The team confirmed the role of these quantum phenomena by comparing their experimental results to those predicted by computer simulations. Yadav and Singh constructed mathematical models based on Density Functional Theory to simulate the behaviour of the probe tip sliding over the 2D material. The models that incorporated the quantum effects were the best predictors of the experimental observations. 

Serles says that the practical upshot of the team’s findings is that they offer new information for scientists and engineers who wish to intentionally design ultra-low-friction materials. Such substances might be useful as lubricants in various small-scale applications, including implantable devices. 

For example, one could imagine a tiny pump that delivers a controlled amount of a given drug to a certain part of the body. Other kinds of micro-electro-mechanical systems could harvest the energy of a beating heart to power a sensor, or power a tiny robotic manipulator capable of sorting one type of cell from another in a petri dish. 

“When you’re dealing with such tiny moving parts, the ratio of surface area to mass is really high,” says Filleter, corresponding author on the new study. “That means things are much more likely to get stuck. What we’ve shown in this work is that it’s precisely because of their tiny scale that these 2D materials have such low friction. These quantum effects wouldn’t apply to larger, 3D materials.” 

Serles says that these scale-dependent effects, combined with the fact that iron oxide is non-toxic and inexpensive, makes magnetene very attractive for use in implantable mechanical devices. But he adds that there is more work to be done before the quantum behaviours are fully understood. 

 “We have tried this with other types of iron-based 2D materials, such as hematene or chromiteen, and we don’t see the same quantum signatures or low friction behaviour,” he says. “So we need to zero in on why these quantum effects are happening, which could help us be more intentional about the design of new kinds of low-friction materials.”

– This story was originally published on the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering News Site on November 17, 2021 by Tyler Irving