Anaerobic digestion is an environmentally-friendly process that breaks down biomass into simpler, more stable components, while simultaneously capturing energy in the form of a methane-rich biogas.  Digesters are usually used to treat wastes, such as at municipal waste facilities, or from livestock farms.  However, anaerobic digesters are not very reliable, suffering from occasional “digester upsets”.  […]

Water resources worldwide have recently appeared as vulnerable to climate change that may both reduce water supply and increase water demand, leading to frequent and/or severe water shortages. Water resources in Canada are also at risk posed by climate change. Sustainable water resources management plays a vital role in reducing the vulnerability of the water […]

  This project targets a major research gap of the recently proposed Sustainable Sites Initiative (SSI), which is a North American “green rating system” for landscapes; scheduled to be released in 2011. Our research will focus on establishing the characteristics of urban trees that affect their ability to “provision habitat” to urban biodiversity (insects and birds) […]

  The overall objective of the proposed project is to conduct long‐term performance analysis and evaluation of major renewable energy and advanced mechanical systems installed in the two TRCA‐BILD Archetype Sustainable houses located at Kortright Centre in Woodbridge. Ontario. The facility will be served as an education, demonstration, training, and research infrastructure for sustainable housing technologies in the […]

Our overall project objective is to determine factors to optimize removal of nutrients and organic micropollutants (e.g., pesticides, and pharmaceuticals and personal care products aka “drugs”) in rural municipal sewage lagoons, through manipulative experiments with bench-scale and field-scale constructed wetlands.  This work will provide sound science on how best to remove such contaminants from wastewaters […]

It has been a common practice to discharge water, wastewater and industrial effluents into open channels such as rivers and streams.   Such discharges, in the form of jets, often enter shallow bodies of water typically found in rivers and coastal bays.  In contrast to the existing body of knowledge on unconfined turbulent jets in which […]

Based on the recent summit in Copenhagen, it is obvious that all nations are taking climate change seriously. One of the areas that countries are focusing on is reducing their greenhouse gas emissions by reducing their overall energy consumption. Industrial Countries are encouraging consumers to buy appliances that are deemed energy efficient using an Energy Star […]

  The objective of this study is to determine how LEED Existing Buildings, Operations and Maintenance [LEED EB (O&M)] and BOMA BESt rating systems perfrom with respect to reductions in environmental impact, measureable resource use, continual improvement and perceived social values. The study will also place these two ratings into a context of other environmental […]

  The present project conducts a comprehensive thermodynamic analysis of the compressed air vehicle for its performance assessment and comparison with other types of vehicles, undertakes a life cycle assessment to study material, energy and environmental impact related aspects, investigates the physical limits of the compressed air technology, and develops a feasible conceptual design of […]

  This particular project pertains to the development of a proprietary algorithm that will source product reviews from sites like Goodguide.com, Ecologo.org, Gengreenlife.com and Zumer.com to breakdown a product’s environmental impact by analyzing and weighing variants such as social responsibility, materials, production facilities, location, transport, packaging and disposal.  EcoMeter will also allow consumers to customize […]

  To mitigate failures of large assets, companies sometimes practice condition-based maintenance. This involves inspecting a machine, gathering information on its health, and deciding whether it is more cost effective to perform some preventative maintenance on it, or to leave it alone until the next inspection. Condition-based maintenance is centered around the inspections that are […]

  Chinese cities are amongst the fasted growing cities in the world and they have per capita greenhouse gas (GHG) emission rates that are similar to western cities. This research quantifies GHG emissions for the three Chinese city-provinces of Beijing, Shanghai and Tianjin. A computer model is then developed for projecting the future growth in […]