Cement is a vital material in our modern society. It is the only thing that humans consume more of, by volume, than water. Conventional cement-based materials are usually brittle, have low tensile strength and exhibit bulk shrinkage. With the recent advancements in nanotechnology, many researchers investigated the addition of nanoparticles to the cement mix to […]

The interns involved in this MITACS cluster will work in close collaboration with the industrial partner, Grafoid, a Canadian company based in Kingston, Ontario, to develop a portfolio of graphene-based products, including autonomous sensors, energy storage, fuel cells and electrically conductive devices. The ultimate objective is to develop proof of concept products including automotive parts, […]

The needs for protective equipment are many, and range from use at home to many industrial sectors, such as: construction, mechanics, forestry, oil and gas, health, and manufacturing. There are many reasons to wear protective equipment: to provide improved grip and resistance to chemical exposure, pathogens, heat, cold, abrasion, punctures, cuts, crushing, and impact. In […]

The objective of this project is to use artificial intelligence (AI) approaches to solve complex industrial problems. The two biggest advantages of AI-based approaches are the ability to continuously learn and also learn adequately from historical data. Traditionally, many process information are unmeasurable during live operations because of instrumentation limitations. Also, plants are not sufficiently […]

Organs-on-chips are miniature devices mimicking aspects of human organ functions. Their main purpose is to serve as an alternative to animals as a testing ground for drugs, pollutants and toxins to see their effects on organs. The lung-on-a-chip device, which is the focus of this research, has been used to demonstrate how air-born nanosized particles […]

In case of an oil spill in a marine environment, an important aspect of an early response is to confine the oil spill and prevents it from getting dispersed. The objective of this master thesis project is to contribute to better understand the stability of a liquid/liquid flow subjected to imposed shear, as a toy […]

Twin Rivers Paper previously installed and ran a reject refining process in order to improve their pulp yield. However, once the process was implemented it decreased the cleanness in the produced pulp which is undesirable for customers therefore the process was shut down. Currently the rejected chips are either being burned or sent to landfill […]

Vaccines are a vital part of society’s arsenal for preventing the spread of infectious diseases. Since they are challenging to produce, vaccine manufacturing is largely concentrated in select locations in the developed world. This situation presents steep obstacles to transporting them to people in the developing world who need them the most. Moreover, transportation and […]

This proposed project focuses on American ginseng (AmG), a natural herb native to Canada that has been used as a traditional medicine for many generations. Southern Ontario has become the World’s largest producer of AmG with annual sales of over $400M at the farm gate. Polysaccharides (PS) are a major active component of AmG showing […]

Haematococcus pluvialis is a green microalga that concentrates the compound astaxanthin, a commercial product with nutraceutical, pharmaceutical, cosmetic, aquaculture, and food applications. Astaxanthin is a carotenoid pigment with high antioxidative activity, used as a feed additive to provide a characteristic pink color to salmonids and shrimp, as well as a human nutraceutical providing protection from […]

Driven by climate change induced water scarcity, further enhanced by rapid urbanization and population growth, potable water reuse initiatives are gaining interest. Potable reuse involves the indirect or direct use of highly treated municipal wastewater as a municipal drinking water source. Historically, the most commonly installed potable reuse train consisted of microfiltration, reverse osmosis (RO), […]

The proposed production optimizer uses production (rate, water/oil ratio, pressure) data, in either isolation or with geological data, and artificial intelligence to determine limiting factors in wells and fields. More specifically, the proposed production optimizer determines Original Oil in Place (OOIP), average permeability, permeability distribution, and relative permeability for wells and, by extension, reservoirs. This […]