ACCN, the Canadian Chemical News: July + August 2012

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Canadian Chemical news | l’actualité chimique canadienneCanadian Chemical news | l’actualité chimique canadienne

www.accn.ca� Chemical Institute of Canada

july | august 2012

water works

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july | august 2012 CAnAdiAn ChemiCAl news 3

Departments From the editor

letters to the editor

Guest ColumnBy Russell Boyd

Chemical news By Tyler Irving

society news

ChemFusion By Joe Schwarcz

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Featuresjuly | august Vol.64, no./no7

ChemiCAl enGineeRinG

ChemisTRy

business

water worksChemists are vital to addressing growing global demands on fresh water. By Alanna Mitchell

leveraging lignin a company in B.C. is among few in the world finding new value in lignin. By Roberta Staley

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20 big data, big moneyMultivariate statistical models can improve the bottom line for some of the world’s biggest chemical companies.By Tyler Irving

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Call for papers now open! submit your paper,panel or poster at bio.org/pacrim

july | august 2012 CAnAdiAn ChemiCAl news 5 july | august 2012 CAnAdiAn ChemiCAl news 5

FRom The ediToR

ExECutivE dirECtorRoland Andersson, MCiC

Editor Jodi di menna

nEws EditorTyler irving, MCiC

art dirECtion & graphiC dEsignKrista lerouxKelly Turner

ContriButing EditorsPeter CalamaiTyler hamiltonTim lougheed

soCiEty nEwsbobbijo sawchyn, MCiC Gale Thirlwall

MarkEting ManagErbernadette dacey, MCiC

MarkEting Coordinatorluke Andersson, MCiC

CirCulation michelle moulton

FinanCE and adMinistration dirECtorJoan Kingston

MEMBErship sErviCEs Coordinator Angie moulton

Editorial BoardJoe schwarcz, MCiC, chairmilena sejnoha, MCiCbernard west, MCiC

Editorial oFFiCE130 slater street, suite 550ottawa, on k1p 6E2t. 613-232-6252 | F. [email protected] | www.accn.ca

[email protected]

suBsCription ratEsgo to www.accn.ca to subscribe or to purchase single issues. the individual non-CiC member subscription price for 2012 is $100 Cdn. the institutional subscrip-tion price for 2012 is $150 Cdn. single copies can be purchased for $10.

ACCN (Canadian Chemical News/ L’Actualité chimique canadienne) is published 10 times a year by the Chemical institute of Canada, www.cheminst.ca.

recommended by the Chemical institute of Canada (CiC), the Canadian society for Chemistry (CsC), the Canadian society for Chemical Engineering (CsChE), and the Canadian society for Chemical technology (CsCt). views expressed do not necessarily represent the official position of the institute or of the societies that recommend the magazine.

ChangE oF [email protected]

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visit us at www.accn.ca

w elcome to your summer issue! In these lazy days of July and August, we

aren’t taking it too easy; for your patio or lakeside reading, we bring

you three hard-hitting feature stories. In our business slot, Roberta

Staley, former acting editor of this magazine, writes about how one British

Columbian company is using lignin — that organic polymer ‘glue’ that binds

cellulose together and notoriously complicates the refining of biomass — to its

advantage by creating a whole new value stream. In our Q and A, we talk to John

MacGregor, professor emeritus from McMaster University about how to make

sense — and more dollars — out of the reams of data gathered from industrial

processes. And if you find yourself wondering about water as you gaze out over your

favourite lake or river this summer, you’ve come to the right magazine. Alanna

Mitchell writes about how some key chemistry inventions could provide solutions

to the escalating demands on fresh water, if only they could make the jump from

the lab to the marketplace.

Hope you enjoy the read!

Write to the editor at [email protected]


Cross-culture connectionI offer a few non-political comments based on experience of

industry-academic collaboration (Guest Column, ACCN,

June 2012, p.9).

Time and patience are the first ingredients for successful

industry-academic collaborations (IACs). Time is a scarce

and valuable resource for today’s academics, contrary to the

“dreaming spire” stereotype of university life. Younger faculty

are the busiest, while the older academics are under slightly less

pressure and may have become disillusioned with the publish-

or-perish ethos. For such people, an IAC can give a sense of

usefulness in a world beyond the confines of academia.

The element of partnership is crucial. For a successful IAC,

the industrial partner has to realize that his academic collabo-

rator is not a corporate employee; moreover he should not

expect immediate problem-solving success. Projects have to

fit in with the academic’s skills and interests and the indus-

trial partner has to have a “holistic” view of adding value.

Does the academic partner produce students that the indus-

trial partner wishes to hire? Does the academic partner ask

questions and pursue topics that generate interest and new

ideas among the industrial staff?

Further, the industrial partner should recognize that the

academic partner wants and needs to publish some papers,

so publication should be supported and promoted as long as

the commercially valuable intellectual property is protected.

Another useful maxim for IAC partnership is to start with small

projects and then work up to larger ones.

Both sides of an IAC should be prepared to overcome their

inherent cultural differences. The plea “only connect” was

coined a century ago by the great English novelist E.M. Forster

who was concerned about the gap between the humanist and

the business cultures. His plea applies with equal force to the gap

between our academic and industrial cultures.

Malcolm Baird Emeritus professor of chemical engineering McMaster University,Hamilton, Ont.

First is firstI was interested to read the article titled “Chemical biology

program gets an ‘A’ ” in the May 2012 issue of ACCN (p. 8-9).

I congratulate McMaster on their achievement, but would like

to point out that theirs is not ‘Canada’s first undergraduate

program in chemical biology.’

In fact, our institution, Thompson Rivers University

(formerly University College of the Cariboo), established a

chemical biology major degree in 2001 within our BSc program.

We produced our first chemical biology graduate in 2002 and as

of this June, we will have produced 90 graduates with a BSc in

chemical biology.

As the article noted, the interdisciplinary nature of such a

program challenges students to solve complex problems and we

have found that our graduates have reaped the benefits of the

program’s rigour by being successful in professional careers and

graduate schools.

Thomas E. DickinsonDean of ScienceThompson Rivers University,Kamloops, B.C.

Grid glitchA point in an article in the June 2012 edition of ACCN

(“Think Big”) causes me some serious concern. Page 15

displays a picture of a transmission tower and the suggestion

that Canada create a national grid. Let us not forget that due

to a relatively minor “glitch” in a small system in Michigan,

the resulting cascade failure brought down the electrical

supply to much of the northeastern portion of the U.S. and

much of southeastern Ontario including Toronto.

No, I do not trust the engineers and for-profit energy

companies to bullet-proof a system. The expense to protect

from that remaining one per cent or so of exposure that has a

one in a million chance of occurring is still too much of a risk.

Gordon A. BoyceMember, Chemical Institute of CanadaDartmouth, N.S.

Corrections: The photo on page 17 of the June 2012 issue is

of the Darlington nuclear plant in Clarington, Ont., rather

than the Pickering, Ont. plant as implied. On page 28 of the

June 2012 issue it was stated that the IUPAC International

Conference on Chemical Education would be hosted in Canada

“for the first time” in 2014. In fact, it was hosted in Canada once

before, by the University of Waterloo in 1989.

Write to the editor at [email protected] have been edited for length and clarity.

leTTeRs To The ediToR

www.csc2013.ca

may 26–30, 2013Chemistry without Borders

QUEBEC CITY

www.csc2013.ca

may 26–30, 2013 | du 26 au 30 mai 2013

96th Canadian Chemistry Conference and exhibition96e Congrès canadien de chimie et exposition

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Bright prospects for chemical job hunters

C anadian Business magazine

published an article in their

April 30 issue entitled “Where

the Jobs Are,” that struck a chord for me.

The editors surveyed data on employ-

ment and wage levels for more than

600 occupations tracked by Statistics

Canada. They selected jobs with at

least 10,000 employed individuals and

ones that experienced employment

growth between 2006 and 2011. They

eliminated jobs with median salaries

below $60,000. The final list of the 50

best-paying, highest-demand career

choices today is based on three criteria:

job growth from 2006 to 2011, median

compensation in 2011, and the change

in the median compensation from

2006 to 2011. The weightings assigned

to the three criteria were 50, 40 and

10 per cent, respectively.

Of course, I immediately thought of

the oil sands and sure enough number

one on the list is petroleum engineer,

the person who figures out how to get

the oil out of the oil sands. According

to Canadian Business, it is the fastest-

growing occupation in Canada, with

employment increasing by 85 per cent

between 2006 and 2011 and a median

salary of $92,002 in 2011. I was not

surprised to see that number two is

nursing supervisor given our aging

population. Employment in this cate-

gory has increased by 46 per cent in the

past five years and the median salary

reached $74,880 in 2011. Electrical and

telecommunications contractors are

number three on the list with a 2011

By Russell boyd

median salary of $69,160, while data

analysts are in the number four posi-

tion at $66,040. The growth in these

two categories — 67 per cent and 64 per

cent, respectively — is not surprising

given the importance of information

and communications technology and

the impact it has on our society.

I was delighted to see that Canadian

Business placed chemist and chemical

engineer in the number five position

with a five-year growth rate of 53 per

cent and 2011 median salary of $67,330.

Initially, I thought that the need

might be tied to the oil sands and that

the article would emphasize chemical

engineering. (In fact, the story points

out that the oil and gas, and metals

and mining sectors pay chemical engi-

neers better than other sectors, but

they employ only about 7 per cent of

the profession. About 70 per cent of

chemical engineers work in manufac-

turing and related sectors as diverse as

waste management, pharmaceuticals and

food processing.)

As a chemistry graduate, I was gratified

to see that the article mentioned that

chemists are needed for many reasons,

including seeking out new sources of

energy. The full range of opportunities

for chemists was not outlined, but two

areas of growing demand were noted: the

environment and water-related fields,

and workplace safety and health.

I think this is very encouraging and

it makes me optimistic about the future

demand for chemists and chemical

engineers. It is apparent that the formal

education of chemists and chemical

engineers prepares them to be problem

solvers and leaders in many fields. (And

if the stature of Angela Merkel — phys-

ical chemist and German chancellor

— is any indication, this includes the

elected leaders of G8 countries.)

The CIC has an important role to

play in serving these future leaders in

the chemical sciences and engineering,

and making sure their contributions

are recognized and their potential

maximized. One important thing for

us to do is to continue to improve

communications with CIC members

and key stakeholders whose decisions

have both direct and indirect impacts

on our members and the CIC and its

Constituent Societies. Much has been

achieved in the area of communications

in the recent past, but much remains to

be done to engage and communicate

with our younger members and the next

generation of members. Also, we must

continue to build stronger ties to industry

and to make sure that the CIC does not

miss out on opportunities in areas such

as biotechnology and materials science.

I thank all members of the CIC for the

opportunity to be the Chair of your

board. I will do my best to serve the inter-

ests of the CIC.

Russell Boyd is the 2012-2013 Chair of the Board of Directors of the Chemical Institute of Canada and a professor in the Department of

Chemistry at Dalhousie University.

GuesT Column

10 CAnAdiAn ChemiCAl news july | august 2012

ChemiCAl newsd

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Imagine a fabric that could simply shrug off even the worst stains, from red wine to ketchup. That’s exactly what’s been developed by researchers at Queen’s University, who have created a superamphi-phobic coating for cotton textiles using a diblock copolymer.

The key to increasing the repellency of cotton is to coat it with compounds that have low surface energy, usually fluorinated ones similar to polytetrafluoroethylene, or Teflon. In the past, small mole-cules with fluorinated tails and reactive heads have been used to form low-energy films attached to the hydroxyl groups on cotton surfaces. While they do increase water and oil repellency, normal use often exposes gaps in these films, and washing can remove the coating.

Guojun Liu and Dean Xiong of Queen’s Department of Chemistry are experts in superamphiphobic coatings. In a paper recently published in Langmuir, they describe a diblock copolymer that consists of about 10 units of poly-3-(triisopropyloxysilyl)propyl methacrylate (PIPSMA) and 10 more of poly-2-(perfluorooctyl)ethyl methacrylate (PFOEMA). The PIPSMA block anchors the molecule to hydroxyl groups on the surface of the cotton, while the fluorinated PFOEMA

diblock copolymer creates stain-resistant fabrics

Cotton coated with a new diblock c opolymer repels hydrophobic and hydrophilic substances alike; drops of liquid can sit on the surface of the fabric for over a year.

PolyMERS

BIoChEMISTRy

shedding light on charge separationCanadian researchers studying a light-capturing enzyme complex have caused it to retain a charge for a hundred thousand times longer than usual. the results could have important implications for the engineering of artificial solar harvesting materials.

laszlo kalman and his team in the department of physics at Concordia university have been studying the light-harvesting apparatus of the purple bacterium Rhodobacter sphaeroides. the photosynthetic reaction centre (rC) of this organism is a trans-membrane protein incorporating various pigment molecules, including carotenoids and chlorophyll. when excited by a photon, an electron from one of these pigments is shuffled around to create a positive charge on one side of the membrane, and negative charge on the other. “given the dielectric properties of the protein, the laws of physics require that the electron has to return to the original pigment within milliseconds,” says kalman.

in a study recently published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, the team placed the R. sphaeroides rC in an artificial cell membrane made of phospholipids with shorter tails than those that make up the bacterial membrane in order to better examine its properties. the changes caused the membrane to stretch and the rC to be compressed. using optical spectroscopy, the team determined that the amount of time it took for the transferred electron to return to its original place was increased from 0.1 seconds to over eight hours.

Charge-separated proteins, which transfer charges within a complex, are very different from batteries which transfer charges over large distances from molecule to molecule, and it’s not clear that it would be possible to make them into a practical device. still, the discovery has impli-cations for those searching for new light-harvesting materials. “what i hope is that other researchers can utilize this information to make artificial photosynthetic reaction centres, which are not so sensitive to environmental conditions and which could exist in the solid state,” says kalman.

group gives the desired low-energy surface. Experiments showed that the polymers pack very densely on the cotton surface, giving rise to a thick amphiphobic surface that is hard to breach with normal use. The large PIPSMA anchor resists removal during washing.

Liu imagines many commercial applications, from stain-repellent lab coats to high-performance swimwear that could cut through the water by trapping a layer of air next to the fabric. If the cost is low enough, the coating could even be added to everyday clothing to prevent stains. “You’re not coating a lot of polymer, so I don’t think it would be too expensive,” says Liu, adding that the processes for making the polymers and coating the cotton are relatively straightforward and amenable to scale-up. Xiong and Liu have filed patent applications internationally and are working with Queen’s’ technology transfer office and an unnamed industrial partner to commercialize the innovation.

watEr diiodoMEthanE hExadECanE


Canada's top stories in the chemical sciences and engineering | ChemiCAl news

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the potential of stem cells to cure diseases can only be realized if they can be produced in large quantities with a high degree of control. two Canadian groups of researchers recently demonstrated that suspended culture bioreactors can be used to do just that.

differentiated tissue cells (somatic cells) can be reprogrammed back into pluripotent stem cells by activating certain genes, known as yamanaka factors, after their discoverer. the cells thus derived are called induced pluripotent stem cells (ipsCs) and are typically made from fibroblasts from skin. however, because fibroblasts can only grow when adhered to a solid substrate, to date ipsCs have been produced exclusively in petri dishes. two papers published in the May issue of Nature Methods show that this isn’t strictly necessary; as cells transform from fibroblasts into stem cells, they lose their dependence on adherent conditions.

peter Zandstra of the university of toronto’s institute for Biomaterials and Biomedical Engineering and his team used a trans-genic mouse cell line in which the yamanaka factors are induced by

Improved stem cell production enables new applications

Monoethanolamine (MEa) (top, reac-tant) is the industry standard for carbon capture. it forms an adduct with Co2, but requires a second molecule to accept the proton generated, form-ing a carbamate salt. the ratio of MEa:Co2 must be 2:1. diethylene-triamine (dEta) (bottom, reactant)contains multiple amine groups, and instead forms a zwitterionic Co2 adduct with posi-tive and negative charges in different locations. thus, dEta reacts at a 1:1 ratio, which could improve the efficiency of car-bon capture from flue gases.

CARBon CAPTuRE

new chemical combination could improve carbon capture Current methods for CO2 capture from flue gases are energy-intensive, and consequently too expensive for most applications. A new solvent/amine system developed at Saint Mary’s University could change that.

The standard practice is to bubble the gas through a solution of about 20 per cent monoethanolamine (MEA) in water. CO2 dissolves and forms an adduct with the MEA — this releases a proton which must be accepted by a second MEA molecule. The solution is then heated to release gaseous CO2 and regenerate the MEA. “The problem with these MEA/water catch-and-release systems is that they have a very high heat capacity,” says Jason Clyburne, professor of chemistry at Saint Mary’s University. “The catch is very good, but the release is very costly.” As a result, it is currently only useful in high-value applications, such as purification of natural gas; for economical greenhouse gas mitigation the cost needs to be reduced significantly.

Clyburne and his team surveyed many alternatives, both for the capture molecule and the solvents. In a paper published in Industrial and Engineering Chemistry Research, they point out that diethylenetriamine (DETA) is similar to MEA, but is much less volatile and contains multiple amine groups. This means it doesn’t require a second molecule to accept a proton, and can be used in a 1:1 ratio to capture CO2, rather than the 2:1 ratio required by MEA. As for the solvent, the team tested various compounds that would be non-volatile, robust under process conditions, and have a lower heat capacity than water. Several ionic liquids were investigated, but in the end a similar performance at much lower cost could be obtained with a commercially-available polymeric solvent.

The new solvent/amine system is undergoing testing, but so far indications are that it will release CO2 at significantly lower energies than traditional MEA/water systems. Clyburne has filed a patent application and is collaborating with GreenCentre Canada, a green chemistry commercialization centre in Kingston, Ont., to bring the discovery to market. “My gut feeling is it won't take very long,” says Clyburne.

the antibiotic doxocycline. in contrast, derrick rancourt’s group at the university of Calgary used viral vectors to get ordinary mouse fibro-blasts to express the yamanaka factors. in both cases, transformed stem cells were able to grow and proliferate in suspended-culture bioreactors of the type that are widely used in biopharmaceutical production. “By forcing them to survive in a suspension environment, we’re creating a selection pressure which enhances the repro-gramming process,” says rancourt. in addition to allowing for scaled-up production, bioreactors offer consistent control over culture conditions.

large quantities of cells produced this way could be used for personal-ized medicine in humans; for example, tissues derived from a particular patient could be screened for the most effective drugs. Eventually, replacements for damaged or diseased tissues could be grown in the lab. Both Zandstra’s and rancourt’s groups are extending the process to human stem cells. “we hope to take technologies like this and catalyze a cell manufacturing industry here in Canada,” says Zandstra.

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ChemiCAl news

Wheels on the MOF go round and round

MATERIAlS

to ‘spin one’s wheels’ usually means a failure to make progress, but last month a group of researchers from the university of windsor spun themselves onto the cover of Nature Chemistry. they’ve created the first metal-organic framework (MoF) with rotating dynamic components; the innovation could bring us one step closer to molecular computing.

stephen loeb’s group in windsor’s department of Chemistry specializes in rotaxanes, a type of mechanically interlocked molecule where a cyclical ‘wheel’ freely rotates around a straight ‘axle.’ large functional groups on either end of the axle prevent the wheel from slipping off. the group has even created rotaxanes where a single wheel can jump between two discrete locations on an axle, acting as a molecular switch that could encode digital information. until now such molecules had only been made in so-lution. “if you want to make random access memory using these things, then you’ve got to organize them in some way,” says loeb.

in the paper, the group describes a simple rotaxane in which the functional groups on the end have been modified into carboxylate groups. these groups interact with copper-based metal-organic complexes to form a solid-state, three-dimensional MoF. Experiments using nMr with deuterium labelling conducted by robert shurko’s group

causing differentiation of cancer stem cells but leaving normal ones alone. since differentiated cells eventually die, thioridazine could serve as an effective therapeutic against cancers like leukemia.

thioridazine is known to inhibit dopamine receptors. Further investigation showed that these receptors are indeed present in greater concentrations on the surface of cancer stem cells, indicating a potential new biomarker of cancer. “what’s so exciting about this work is the ability to use these chemicals beyond just drug response, as a way of probing signalling pathways that might be relevant to distinguishing cancer stem cells from normal ones,” says Bhatia.

PhARMACEuTICAlS

thioridazine, a drug normally prescribed as an antipsychotic, has been found by researchers at McMaster university to also target cancer stem cells. the finding led to the identification of new biomarkers that could lead to early cancer detection.

Cancer stem cells are hard to identify because they look so much like normal stem cell counterparts. their distinguishing characteristic is their ability to regenerate without differentiating into other tissues, which keeps tumours coming back even after radiation or chemotherapy.

Mickie Bhatia of McMaster’s department of Biochemistry and Biomedical sciences and his colleagues developed a high-throughput screen to compare the effect of a given drug on both pluripotent stem cells and cancer stem cells. “previous screens looked at the ability of drugs to kill cancer stem cells,” Bha-tia explains. “we were simply trying to make them differentiate like normal stem cells, something others hadn't done.” in a paper recently published in Cell, they tested 2,600 off-patent drugs of which only about one per cent showed activity. thioridazine had one of the strongest and most selective effects ,

Antipsychotic drug targets cancer stem cells

the antipsychotic drug thioridazine,

one enantiomer of which is

shown here, can selectively target cancer stem cells

and cause them to differentiate.


Canada's top stories in the chemical sciences and engineering | ChemiCAl news

in the metal-organic framework developed by stephen loeb's group at the university of windsor, circular crown ether 'wheels' (represented by yellow toruses) are able to spin around organic 'axles' connected by complexes of copper (brown spheres). this

is the first time a rotating mechanically interlocked molecule has been synthesized in the solid state.

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Curiosity, NASA’s latest Mars rover, will begin its search for chem-ical evidence of past life on the red planet in early August. But according to a new paper in Science, the surface of Mars contains organic carbon generated by non-biological sources, which could make that search even harder.

Very rarely, material ejected from the surface of Mars by cosmic impacts can make its way to Earth in the form of meteorites. Only about 60 martian meteorites are known, eleven of which were part of the study conducted by an international team of experts, including Chris Herd of the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Alberta. Inside the martian minerals, the team found particles of carbon. “What's interesting about this stuff is that it’s not just graphite, it's organic macromolecular carbon,” says Herd.

Organic carbon is present in the dust from which the solar system formed, as evidenced by primitive meteorites which can contain anything from polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons to amino acids. Similar material would have been incorporated into Mars as it formed, stored in its interior, and could later have reached the surface by means of lava flows.

To test this theory, lead author Andrew Steele of the Carnegie Institution of Washington used confocal Raman spectroscopy, which allows for accurate determination of both the form and location of the carbon within a given meteorite’s crystal structure. In every case, the organic carbon particles were found in inclusions within igneous minerals. “The only way it could get there is if it was present in the original magma,” says Herd. “If it had been formed by some kind of biological process, you'd expect to find it associated with rust or material that formed through alteration by water, not with the igneous minerals.”

Although the finding doesn’t completely rule out the possibility that Mars once harboured life, it serves as a reminder of just how hard Curiosity will have to work to prove otherwise.

organic carbon on Mars is abiotic

the tissint meteorite, a 58 gram sample of which is shown here, landed near tata, Morocco in july of last year and was confirmed as martian in january. a new study shows that it and several other martian meteorites contain organic carbon of non- biological origin.

in the same department demonstrated that the wheels were in-deed spinning, at speeds above 10 Mhz.

loeb’s group has made MoFs with switchable rotaxanes as well, but proving that the wheel can not only rotate but translate along the axle has proven difficult. another huge challenge lies in deter-mining how to trigger individual molecular switches by either elec-trical or photochemical means, something that loeb admits is still “science fiction.” still, if it could be done it would yield a material with a density of switches over a billion times higher than today’s most advanced devices.

14 CAnAdiAn ChemiCAl news junE 2012


afaint chemical odour, slightly astringent but not unpleasant, fills the

laboratory air at Lignol Innovations Ltd. “That’s ethanol,” says Michael

Rushton, Lignol’s Chief Operating Officer. “We love it,” he adds, striding

past gleaming white metal and glass lab equipment, through a heavy

door into a concrete labyrinth filled with fermenters, distillers, pipes and barrels.

Lignol is a Burnaby, B.C.-based, 2,140 square-metre, pilot-scale biorefinery

surrounded by fragrant woodland heralding a lush West Coast summer. Inside, the

scent of ethanol proclaims its own bright promise: progress, innovation and hope for

a renewable, low-carbon future.

Lignol Innovation’s parent company is Lignol Energy Corp., a small, TSX Venture

Exchange company. Lignol’s market capitalization is about $5 million, although

“our true valuation is many times that,” Rushton says. Despite its modest stature

on the stock exchange, Lignol is a global standard bearer — “perhaps not the world

leader, but a world leader” — in the development of biorefining technologies to

produce economically viable, fuel-grade ethanol and renewable chemicals from

cellulosic biomass feedstocks such as woodchips. Created in 2001, its potential has

been nurtured by various levels of government. This past February, Lignol received

$2-million in funding from Sustainable Development Technology Canada (SDTC),

a federally funded not-for-profit foundation. This bolsters the $4.72 million Lignol

received earlier from the SDTC Tech Fund, which backs innovative technology,

especially clean-technology projects.

business | lignin

British Columbia-based lignol innovation’s modest size belies its status as an emerging world leader in the development of fuel-grade ethanol and multi-purpose renewable products from lignin.

By Roberta staley

Leveraging

tanya souter and Brian Brittan attend to the fermenters at lignol’s pilot plant. inside the machinery, cellulose is converted to etha-nol with enzymatic hydrolysis and yeast fermentation.

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Such monies seed the ground of

what Rushton says will be a “north of

$100-million” integrated commer-

cial biorefinery in the near future that

produces cellulosic ethanol that is

cost competitive with gasoline. Such

a facility — blueprints have already

been completed that promise an initial

annual output of about 30 million litres

of cellulosic ethanol — is dependent

upon numerous factors: leveraging

Lignol’s intellectual property portfolio

and cultivating new relationships with

corporate investors and partners, says

Rushton. Just as exciting is the develop-

ment of lignin as a separate product

stream and source of revenue. With two

such key products, the end result of the

commercial facility is a fully integrated

biorefining process “with biomass

coming in and a whole bunch of prod-

ucts coming out,” Rushton says.

Lignocellulosic-based biorefineries

that generate fuel, power and renewable

products from biomass are likely to be

an integral part of the future of sustain-

able energy. One of the holy grails of

renewable energy is the development of

fuel-grade ethanol from locally-sourced

feedstocks. Brazil is a world leader in

first-generation ethanol production,

thanks largely to vast tracts of arable

land and a bounteous supply of cheap

sugar cane. Lignol is working to perfect

second-generation cellulosic ethanol,

using its pretreatment-process chips,

straw or corn stover to create a pulp

that, instead of being turned into paper,

is converted into fuel with new unique

enzymes. Perhaps surprisingly, says

Rushton, who is a chemical engineer,

there is very little cellulosic ethanol

available anywhere today. In Canada,

there are several factors slowing prog-

ress towards a more wholesale adoption

lignin from cellulose — known as

Alcell ™ — is a technology pioneered

by Kendall Pye of Philadelphia with

General Electric; today Pye is Lignol’s

septuagenarian Chief Scientific

Officer. Alcell is an ethanol-based

organic solvent system that, combined

with heat and pressure, separates lignin

from cellulose. This results in a much

cleaner separation than traditional

kraft pulping employed by most pulp

and paper mills, which relies on strong

bases to break down the lignin.

Once the lignin is separated, cellu-

lose and hemicellulose are converted

to sugars and then to ethanol through

enzymatic hydrolysis, fermentation

and distillation. Hydrolysis is typi-

cally limited by the efficiency of the

enzymes as well as the presence of

residual lignin, among other things.

“What gives us a competitive edge is

the fact that our cellulose is so easy to

degrade using enzymes because it’s so

clean — we’ve taken out the lignin,”

of such a biofuel. Natural gas is at its

lowest price in a decade and the price

of a barrel of oil is not yet high enough

to instil real urgency among govern-

ments or the public to push for greater

biofuel innovation and adoption.

There is some progress, however. Since

September 2010, the Canadian govern-

ment has mandated that refiners blend

a minimum of five per cent renewable

fuels into gasoline; in B.C., gasoline

contains 10 per cent ethanol. B.C.’s

ethanol is imported from the United

States or Ontario, where it is made from

corn, or Alberta, where it is made from

wheat, Rushton says.

Lignol is adapting cellulosic

ethanol production from wood for the

21st century. In the past, this process

has been complicated by the presence

of lignin, an organic polymer that acts

like ‘glue,’ strengthening the long

fibres of cellulose in plants and trees

and binding the cellulose and hemicel-

lulose. Lignol’s process for separating

Biomass

hardwoods, softwoods, agri-residues

AlcellPlusTMorganosolv Biomass

Extraction

Cellulose

Cellulose derivatives

sugars

• dissolving pulp• Cellulose chemicals• Fibre ingredients

mixed sugars (C5+C6) and chemicals

hemicellulosederivatives

Xylose, xylitol

Furan chemicals• Furfural• Furfuryl alcohol• hMF

Fermentation-basedbiochemicals

lignin derivatives

hP-lTm lignin

new functionalproducts• Carbon fibre• antioxidants• adsorbents• Feed additives

Petrochemical substitution • phenol• isocyanates• Furans• plastics• Coatings

biofuels• Ethanol• drop-in fuels• Bio-butanol

lignol innovations ltd. uses a patented organosolv biomass extraction process called alcellplus™ to produce three value streams from hardwood, softwood and agri-residue feedstocks.

ad

aptEd

FroM

lign

ol in

no

vation

s ltd.


says Rushton. To further enhance

hydrolysis, Lignol uses special enzymes

supplied by research and development

partner Novozymes, a global company

specializing in enzyme innovation.

The resulting sugars are fermented by

yeast in a process similar to making

beer, Rushton says. “In fact, we call it

beer: it has a lot of water and a bit of

yeast and about seven to 10 per cent

ethanol.” Any similarities with beer

end there. “It smells terrible.” This

“beer” then undergoes a standard

distillation process, turning it into

fuel-grade ethanol.

During the Alcell process, the

lignin is extracted as a liquid, then

washed and dried, resulting in choc-

olate-brown powder as fine as flour.

Currently, in most pulp and paper mill

operations, lignin is burned to produce

process heat and recover pulping

chemicals. Such conventional lignin

also has been used to replace petro-

leum-based substances for making

resins and dye dispersants.

But Lignol has taken it a step further,

finding numerous new applications for

its lignin. The company has created

“second-generation” lignin, High

Purity Lignin or HP-L™, to distinguish

it from conventional lignin obtained

from the pulping process. HP-L is a step

above both chemically and structurally,

Rushton says. It has very few contami-

nants and only traces of sulphur and

inorganic material. It also has a very

narrow molecular weight profile and

water repellent properties. This purity

means that it performs differently when

put into chemical systems, potentially

displacing an even wider range of fossil

fuel-derived products. Any remaining

residues from the process are used for

steam and electricity generation, thus

samples are taken from the distillation system at lignol’s pilot plant by operators tanya souter and Colin Braconnier. distillation is one of the final steps in the ethanol-making process, yielding 10 per cent alcohol as well as non-fermentable solids from the feedstock and yeast cells.

lig

no

l in

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vati

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s lt

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reducing Lignol’s dependence on natural

gas to provide energy. “The trick is

that you have to make these processes

all work together and that is where the

integration comes in — the chemical

engineers have to figure out how to do

this in an efficient way,” says Rushton,

who is one of about 30 staff at Lignol.

There are only a handful of companies

in the world that are advancing lignin

as a commercial multipurpose biomate-

rial. Two of the biggest players include

the venerable Norwegian chemical

specialty company Borregaard Industries

Ltd. — its lignin goes into well-estab-

lished end-uses. Another leader is Mead

Westvaco of Virginia, which produces

specialty papers and packaging as well

as specialty chemicals. Lignol is one of

just a few actors on the Canadian stage

producing either cellulosic ethanol or

lignin. A former bright light, Ottawa’s

Iogen Energy Corp., owned by Royal

Dutch Shell and Iogen Corp. announced

this past April that it had quashed plans

to build a larger scale cellulosic ethanol

facility in southern Manitoba. Iogen was

known for developing an enzyme-based

process that broke down crop-waste

cellulose, making the sugars easy to access

for conversion into ethanol fuel. But a

promising new upstart is G2 BioChem,

launched by GreenField Ethanol Inc.

of Chatham, Ont. Backed by compa-

nies like Novozymes, G2 BioChem was

created by Greenfield — Canada’s largest

ethanol company — to accelerate the

commercialization of its product.

One of Lignol’s preferred sources

of feedstock, says Rushton, is moun-

tain pine beetle-killed lodgepole pine

lumber, which forestry companies in

B.C. are hurriedly harvesting to allow

replanting of about 17.5 million hect-

ares of affected forest. “These are very

much the typical wood chips you would

find being fed to a pulp mill.” Rushton

says that the use of cellulose from B.C.’s

vast feedstock resources — especially

beetle-killed pine — is part of good

forestry management. Firstly, the dead

trees are extremely dry — tinder for

forest fires. Secondly, the millions of

hectares of dead trees must be removed

to allow replanting, and it would be a

waste not to use the wood. Although

B.C. is regarded as one of the largest

sources of raw material in Canada,

Rushton muses that the 20- to 30-year

gap needed for new trees to grow in

pine beetle-killed forest tracts may have

negative implications for feedstock

sources down the road.

As a research and development

facility, Lignol collaborates with a

number of companies to help develop

new uses for its lignin that will help

accelerate construction of a commercial

biorefinery. Recently, Lignol delivered

several tonnes of material to a major

manufacturer that makes coatings for

automobiles and industrial machinery

for testing in its facility. (Rushton

won’t name the company.) Lignol has

also begun carving out its own niche

for HP-L in collaboration with such

companies as Kingspan Insulation,

Huntsman Corp. and HA International

LLC, an Illinois-based global producer

of foundry resins. Lignol’s high-purity

lignin was used by HA International to

produce a new foundry resin used in the

production of metal castings, replacing

petrochemicals normally used in the

resins. Lignol’s HP-L can displace other

non-renewable resins used for manu-

facturing plywood, engineered wood

composites and oriented strand board,

which is used as a replacement for

plywood. HP-L can also be used as an

antioxidant in greases and lubricating

oils and friction materials such as brake

pads. Most interesting, perhaps, is the

use of HP-L by Tennessee’s Oak Ridge

National Laboratory in the manufacture

of carbon fibre. To date, carbon fibre has

been made from petroleum products.

Light and strong, carbon fibre is used

almost exclusively in the luxury car and

aerospace industries due to its high price.

HP-L will figure largely in the develop-

ment of future materials, possibly even

replacing steel for some applications,

Rushton says. “It’s very exciting.”

Some pundits have criticized Lignol

for being too dependent for too long

a time on the public purse — its

potential being its main selling point,

commercialization hovering just out

of reach. Rushton says that patience

is needed. The first oil well in Canada

was drilled in 1859, resulting in a

153-year evolution to achieve “this

very sophisticated integrated petro-

chemical industry that we have today.

I think the substitution with renewable

materials is a long path and we’re just

at the beginning of that path,” says

Rushton. “I think we’ve got time.”

Roberta Staley is a freelance writer based in Vancouver.

Michael rushton, Chief operating officer of Burnaby, B.C.'s lignol innovations ltd.

lign

ol in

no

vation

s ltd.

Risk Assessment Courseseptember 19-20, 2012

Toronto, ont.

risk Concepts • integrated risk Management • risk Management process • techniques for risk analysis • Qualitative techniques: hazard identification with hands-on applications • index Methods • sva, lopa • Quantitative techniques • Fault and Event trees • Fire, Explosion, dispersion Modeling • damage/vulnerability Modeling • risk Estimation • risk presentation • risk Evaluation and decision-Making • risk Cost Benefit analysis • process safety Management with reference to us osha psM regulations • Emergency Management with reference to Environment Canada legislation • land use planning • risk Monitoring • stakeholder participation

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accident theory and Model • loss of Containment • physical and process hazards • runaway reactions • Fire • Explosion • toxic Exposure • dust • Equipment Failure • human Factors inherently safer designs • Engineering practices • plant and Equipment layout • Facility siting • relief and Blowdown • Circuit isolation • Electri-cal area Classification • instrumentation and safety instrumented systems • Fire protection • process safety Management • leadership and Culture • hazard assessment and risk analysis • operating procedures and training • Management of Change • pre-startup safety review • Mechanical integrity • Emergency preparedness • Management review and Continuous improvement

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Continuing professional development presented by the Chemical institute of Canada (CiC) and the Canadian society for Chemical Engineering (CsChE).

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mEmBErs


&

sophisticated online sensors and increasingly efficient

computer storage banks have given chemical engineers

access to more data about their processes than ever before.

But more data does not necessarily equate to more knowl-

edge, and few people understand that as well as john

Macgregor. Macgregor, professor emeritus at McMaster

university, has dedicated his career to making sense of the

large and messy data sets generated by industrial processes.

as president of prosensus inc., he has helped Fortune

500 companies reduce costs, increase yields, and improve the

quality of products from polymers to potato chips. ACCN spoke

with Macgregor to find out how engineers can make the most

of industrial process data.

ACCn you have said that learning from data is “the engineer’s achilles heel.” why?

Jm During their undergraduate programs, scientists and engi-

neers are taught very simple statistical methods, aimed at

analysing a small number of variables in a designed experi-

ment, and where it is assumed that all process variables are

independent. This is very different from the data we collect on

industrial processes. Those data sets are huge, with hundreds

or thousands of variables from various points in the system:

temperatures, pressures, flow measurements and so on. Up to

20 per cent of the data is missing. Most importantly, this data

is not independent: when certain things happen in the process,

many variables move together. What that says is that the

system is really moving in a much smaller space, maybe only

five or six variables in dimension.

john Macgregor uses multivariate models to improve the bottom line for some of the world’s biggest chemical companies.

By Tyler irving

ACCn these are the latent variables?

Jm Yes. Latent variables are just linear combinations of

the original hundreds of variables which define the low-

dimensional space in which the process moves. They are the

underlying or hidden variables that characterize the process.

In order to get at these latent variables, you need multi-

variate statistical methods. That means modelling not only

the properties of the final product, but the process variables

themselves. It may seem strange to model the inputs, but if

you don’t, you can’t handle missing data, and you don’t get a

unique model which you can use for optimization or control.

That’s why it is the engineer’s Achilles heel; he’s never been

prepared to handle this type of data, and yet these are the

very processes that he has to deal with in his job.

Modelling the process variables and the product variables

(the x and y space) separately is not a totally new idea; the

original concept goes back to the introduction of principal

component analysis by a statistician called Pearson back in

1900. But without computers and big database systems, it

wasn’t really possible to take advantage of these tools in order

to predict and control the process.

ACCn what was the field like when you first started working in it?

Jm Until the late 1960s and early 1970s, process data was just

recorded with analog instruments; databases really didn’t exist.

Even after computers came in and people began to store the

data, there was no ability to extract, for example, a group of

daTamonEY


pro

sEn

sus

inC.

ChemiCAl enGineeRinG | data

30 or 40 variables over a given time period. Even until the

early 1990s, you would have needed someone to write special

software. The main objective of databases was to display the

data to the operators, not to analyse it.

I came to McMaster in 1972 after working with Monsanto in

Texas, and I accepted the position with the intention of doing a

fair amount of consulting. I felt it was important to play research,

teaching and industrial consulting off each other. So I would

talk to the big petrochemical companies like ExxonMobil,

British Petroleum, Shell and DuPont. I’d ask “How much money

have you made off your databases this year?” and they’d just have

a gentle laugh. By the mid 1980s, they stopped laughing. They

realized that if they had spent this much money on databases,

they should do something with the data they were collecting.

ACCn what happened next?

Jm We started getting some grants from companies. At that

time, very few academic researchers had grants from industry,

and the grants we got were very small. Eventually, we put

together something called the McMaster Advanced Control

Consortium (MACC). We had six sponsors, big petro-

chemical companies like Shell, Dupont and Suncor. That

eventually expanded to almost 20 big international compa-

nies, and the consortium is still running today, and greatly

improving the operations of the plants around the world.

ACCn one of your major innovations has been in multivariate modelling of digital images; how did that come about?

Jm In the consortium we had a number of companies that made

solid products, whether they were pulp and paper companies

like Tembec, steel companies like Dofasco or food compa-

nies like Frito-Lay. It’s not easy to stick a thermocouple into

a potato chip. In the late 1980s we started using colour digital

cameras to extract information on product quality.

Imaging companies of the time were mostly using

black-and-white cameras to simply monitor the process, as

operators do now. We looked at multi-spectral images and

realized that instead of treating them as images, we could

think of them as a source of data. We could use this data to

extract information, just like we would use thermocouples

or flow meters. Best of all, a good, robust industrial camera

costs only a few thousand dollars; if the public didn’t use these

things and you had to buy them as an industrial instrument,

they would perhaps cost half a million dollars.

ACCn so they’re the same as the digital cameras that everyone is familiar with now?

Jm Well, some are line-scan cameras that just capture the

image at multiple wavelengths along one line as the material

passes underneath. But we can also use an area scan, more

like a traditional camera. Many companies around the world

do image analysis, but very few of them get into sophisticated

analysis in the multi-spectral range. To do that you have to

know how to take megapixels of data every second and extract

useable information, which means you need multivariate

methods. So our past experience, combined with the new tech-

nology, enabled us to help companies that couldn’t previously

get this kind of online data.

ACCn Can you give some examples?

Jm Frito-Lay was one of our member companies in the consor-

tium, so we started imaging snack food products such as

Doritos, Cheetos and Tostitos as they passed by on moving

belts. We used the cameras to extract estimates of the distri-

bution of the seasoning applied to the chips and several other

By analysing the spectral data in digital images of corn chips (top row) prosensus inc. is able to develop computer models that accurately predict seasoning levels (bottom row) and correlate them to particular process conditions that can be controlled. systems like this are used for on-line feedback control in snack food plants around the world.

non-seasoned low-seasoned high-seasoned

seas

onin

g le

vel


organoleptic properties such as texture. They were astounded

at the information we were able to extract from the images.

Within a couple of years, we had systems online in many of

their plants in North America. They actually control parts of

the plant operation off the cameras.

Another project was with Dupont Canada. At their site

in Maitland, Ont., they had a waste boiler to generate steam

by burning many of their waste liquid streams. They had a

camera which was used by the operators simply to ensure the

flame was still lit. We decided to digitalize that flame image.

They had a hard time believing we could do anything with

that data, because the flame was bouncing all over the place.

But we showed that regardless of the turbulence, the spectral

data gave a consistent picture of the energy content in the

feed stream, as well as what pollutants were going out the

stack. So we could use multivariate analysis to predict and

control that. We’ve used that same technique with Irving

Pulp and Paper in monitoring lime kilns, and with steel

companies in their oxygen furnaces.

ACCn in 2004, you launched prosensus inc. why was it the right time to do that?

Jm I had thought about doing it before, but it was mainly in

order to spin off the multivariate image analysis. One of my

PhD students was graduating and wanted to continue working

in this area. However, there was no company that really

understood it well enough to continue. So we spun it off as a

company, to open up job opportunities for graduates from our

program, and to be able to advance these technologies further

with member companies from the consortium.

We quickly found that some companies weren’t quite ready

to make a leap into the advanced imaging work. So we went

back to multivariate methods for extracting data for other

purposes. One area that we got into was rapid product devel-

opment — how companies use all the data they’ve got on

raw materials, formulations, processes and quality control to

develop new products with desired properties.

ACCn such as?

Jm An example of early success in this field was a project on

advanced polymeric materials, which we did in partnership

with Mitsubishi. Some of these materials were for medical

devices, while others were for specialized applications like golf

balls. Golf balls contain multiple rubber cores to control the

distance, spin and about a dozen other properties. We built

statistical models that told them to use formulations containing

raw materials that they had never used before, but that we

predicted would have the desired properties. They tried it, and

met the specifications almost right off the bat. Our method-

ology was used to develop all the core functional polymers in

the Srixon golf ball; about 10 per cent of the world's touring

pros now use that ball. A company like Mitsubishi would typi-

cally take two to four years to develop new products, but with

our methods we can get that down to a couple of months.

ACCn should we approach statistics differently than we currently do?

Jm It’s coming, but very slowly. I think part of the problem is

that there are very few people trained in these multivariate

methods. That's why ProSensus developed multivariate soft-

ware, which we make available for free to the universities.

McMaster has introduced some of this into the undergrad-

uate courses, but most universities are using it at the graduate

level. American universities are behind the Canadian ones;

very few of the American engineering schools have statistics

as a required course, even for undergraduates. A lot of that is

because they are really gearing their students up for graduate

work, not for dealing with industrial data or everyday problems.

So while many companies do use this stuff, engineers more or

less have to learn it after they graduate.

ACCn what has kept you motivated about multivariate techniques all this time?

Jm For me, the interest — and the reason I formed ProSensus

even as I was getting close to retirement — was in seeing this

stuff through and having it applied in industry at a more rapid

pace. It’s exciting to do this research, but if you just publish a

paper on it, and it never gets used, it’s not very satisfying. We’re

taking it beyond the published literature, developing new

products in a fraction of the time it used to take, and creating

control systems to do things that nobody’s ever done before.

It has taken off extremely well, and that’s been extremely

satisfying to see.

Multivariate statistical methods can be applied to databases of raw materials, previous product formulations and processing conditions to design new products, such as high- performance cores for golf balls.

24 CAnAdiAn ChemiCAl news junE 2012

Few of those browsing the web know that Google was created by

university scientists. In fact, the Internet search giant, with market

capitalization of $193 billion and a new-found appetite for smart-

phones, was invented by two grad students and started life at

Stanford University in California.

Across the world, universities are hotbeds of innovation. And in Canada,

a growing amount of that Ivory Tower ingenuity involves a vital subject:

water. Unfortunately, many of the great Canadian solutions to water issues

stay locked away in labs, never making it to the market. That’s happening

despite the fact that the need for marketable, environmentally friendly water

inventions — a.k.a. the Blue Economy — is more pressing as climate patterns

change, the population increases and people all over the world strive for a

higher and more water-rich standard of living.

The result, say some of those charged with bringing lab-born brainwaves to

market, is that Canada has spent as much as $6 billion a year to fund academic

scientists, but their discoveries aren’t making life better, greener or bluer for

Canadian citizens.

“There’s no shortage of discoveries,” says John Molloy, president and chief

executive of PARTEQ Innovations, a Kingston, Ont.-based company set up

to take inventions from Queen’s University to market. But, unlike the United

States, Canada still lacks the suite of models necessary to push academic

inventions into the marketplace, Molloy says.

the work of chemists in university labs across Canada will be vital to addressing growing global demands on fresh water.

But only if their ideas can flow effectively into the marketplace.

By Alanna mitchell


ChemisTRy| watEr

A report from the Conference Board

of Canada in June 2011 ranking 17

developed countries on innovation

placed Canada near the bottom of the

heap — at 14th. The report said that

while scientific output is strong and

internationally respected, “Canada

does not take the steps that other

countries take to ensure science can be

successfully commercialized and used

as a source of advantage for innovative

companies seeking global market share.

Canadian companies are thus rarely at

the leading edge of new technology and

too often find themselves a generation

or more behind the productivity growth

achieved by global industry leaders.”

Not only that, but while the scientific

research on water is ripe for commer-

cialization and the need for innovation

is clear, the path to the market is

not straightforward, says Bernadette

Conant, executive director of the

Canadian Water Network in Waterloo,

Ont., which seeks to ensure that science

shapes the water-management innova-

tions that draw investments. Some of

the advances that could help instead fall

into a political vacuum.

“The needs are clear,” says Conant.

“What we lack is a single or clear client-

approval process.”

And, in a trend Molloy sees as

dangerous, more and more universities

are shying away from available market

mechanisms in favour of waiting for

industry to front the cash. “I’d like

to see it go the other way,” he says.

An early triumph for Molloy’s group

is a process developed by Stephen

Brown from Queen’s Department of

Chemistry and Peter Aston from the

university’s Department of Biomedical

and Molecular Sciences. They figured

out how to find E. coli and other

disease-causing organisms in drinking

water more quickly and reliably.

Brown had been working on using

fibre-optic sensors to detect aromatic

compounds as part of a study of the

impacts of contaminants on fish. By

optimizing the fibre-optic sensors to

detect aromatic metabolites of E. coli

they were able to detect it and other

coliform bacteria. Previously, those

pathogens would have been detected

by a lab technician performing a

visual interpretation of samples.

Brown and Aston’s automated test

is not only faster and more accurate,

but also works in highly coloured or

opaque samples. They were galva-

nized by the Walkerton, Ont., tragedy

of May 2000 in which seven people

died and thousands fell ill from the

notorious bacteria.

PARTEQ, which has about a dozen

industry sponsors who pay to sit at the

table and help decide what gets devel-

oped, helped license the Pathogen

Detection Systems technology. It was

eventually sold to the French multi-

national corporation Veolia, and spun

off into its offshoot, ENDETEC. The

new system is now being launched

internationally and PARTEQ and the

scientist inventors stand to make royal-

ties once the upfront development

costs are paid back.

One of the key organizations set up

to commercialize academic inven-

tions from all over the country is

GreenCentre Canada, also based in

Kingston. Established in 2009 with $22

million from the federal and Ontario

governments, it aims to match start-up

investment money with clean, energy-

efficient chemical processes — known

as green chemistry. It does that both by

buying licences to the technology and

selling them to industry, and by creating

new companies to house the innovations.

“The idea is to get it beyond: ‘Gee,

isn’t it a great idea!’ ” says Rui Resendes,

its executive director.

Resendes says in the three years since

GreenCentre began, there’s been a spike

in interest and investment around the

world in Canadian inventions. “Water

has become the new currency,” he says.

He points to an invention by Rob

Singer, a professor of chemistry at the

Maritimes Centre for Green Chemistry

at Saint Mary’s University in Halifax,

which is still at the laboratory stage but

has immense potential for commercial-

ization. GreenCentre has done a market

assessment and wants to license the

invention with a consortium of industry

partners. It involves low-temperature

ionic liquids, meaning salts that are

liquid at or below room temperature.

These have unique chemical properties,

Singer says, because they attract metals

and don’t evaporate as easily as other

solvents do.

That means they can grab onto metals

in water but not evaporate into the atmo-

sphere. And in turn that means they can

decontaminate water of metals, keep

them from polluting the atmosphere and

allow the metals to be harvested for reuse.

It’s a blue benefit on all fronts.

Many of the great Canadian solutions to

water issues stay locked away in labs, never

making it to the market.


Conceptually, the ionic liquids could

replace toxic solvents in hydrometallur-

gical metal refining, suck the valuable

metals out of discarded electronics for

resale and even clean up tailings ponds.

Singer is still trying to figure out how

toxic the ionic liquids are over time and

is focusing research on making them

both non-toxic and biodegradable.

Perhaps the most famous recent

success story is an invention by Don

Mavinic, a civil engineer at the

University of British Columbia in

Vancouver, who figured out how to

mine phosphorus from liquid sewage.

Phosphorus is a precious element,

mined in only five places in the world

and poised to run out in a century.

It is also crucial to feeding the global

population because it stimulates plant

growth, whether on land or in water.

Left in wastewater, it can run into

coastal waters and cause destructive

algae blooms and low-oxygen zones as

phytoplankton convert it to food.

Mavinic figured out how to cause

a chemical reaction in liquid sewage

to extract most of the phosphorus

and turn it into environmentally

friendly, slow-release fertilizer. The

process — which combines a nutrient

rich feed stream with magnesium

chloride and sodium hydroxide in a

fluidized bed to precipitate struvite

(MgNH4PO4.6H2O) in very pure crys-

talline pellets — is patented, licensed

and managed out of the Vancouver

company, Ostara Nutrient Recovery

Technologies. It’s in use at Edmonton’s

Gold Bar wastewater treatment plant,

in Portland, Oregon, and in Virginia

and Pennsylvania, and is being tested

in Europe. The fertilizer is used in

horticulture and on turf, marketed as

CrystalGreen.

in the world, along with another in the

Orkneys in Scotland.

A test turbine the size of a house went

into the Bay’s Minas Basin in November

2009 and came out 13 months later,

likely failing in the first few weeks

because of the ferocious flow, says Anna

Redden, a biologist with the newly

launched Acadia Tidal Energy Institute

and director of the Fundy Ocean

Research Centre for Energy.

Now, four sets of cables are going down

in the Bay so that energy from four new

test devices can feed straight to transmis-

sion lines this year. Redden says there are

still unknowns about the direct effects

on the environment and wildlife, but

she’s helping design tests to figure that

out. And although tidal power has gone

in and out of vogue every few decades,

Redden is sure it’s here to stay now.

“I think we’ve come to the point

where it’s never going away,” she says.

“We have to harvest tidal energy.”

While Redden and dozens of other

academic scientists continue to piece

together the complex puzzle of how to

help society benefit from their water

research, Conant of the Canadian

Water Network has some provocative

ideas about what the future will hold.

Because water is integral to life and a

shared commons, she posits that within

a decade, patents and licences on water

inventions may be passé. Instead, the

new trend may be to break open the

market, making patents openly acces-

sible in the hopes that innovation will

accelerate, and the Ivory Tower will

be an even nimbler and more powerful

driver of the Blue Economy.

This story originally appeared in the September 2011 issue of Corporate Knights.

Alanna Mitchell is an award winning freelance science writer. She is based in Toronto.

“We see ourselves as a fertil-

izer company,” says Ahren Britton,

Ostara’s chief technology officer,

who helped develop the idea as a grad

student of Mavinic’s in 2000. “We

just happen to mine from wastewater

instead of the ground.”

Britton says the company reckons

there are 200 to 300 plants in North

America that could use the system to

treat sewage and as many in Europe.

China and Southeast Asia are also pros-

pects. Ostara believes it will eventually

mine as much as one million tonnes of

fertilizer a year, reducing the amount

needed to be taken out of the ground.

Ostara, which has grown to 35 staff

from just three in 2006, has won awards

as a clean technology pioneer and was

invited to the World Economic Forum

in Davos, Switzerland, last year.

The innovations aren’t only chem-

ical, though; nor do they relate only

to water quality. One of the globally

significant water inventions under

development in Canada is a project to

harness tidal power in the Bay of Fundy.

It’s a collaboration among academic

and government scientists and industry,

including Nova Scotia-based companies

Nova Scotia Power, Minas Basin Pulp

and Power, and Fundy Tidal; French

company Alstom and U.K. company

Atlantis Resources. The Bay is consid-

ered the prime site in the world for tidal

speed and height, and the tidal power

would replace some of the coal-fired

electricity Nova Scotia uses now. It’s

one of just two massive commercial

tidal power turbines being developed

“water has become the new currency.”


soCieTy news | News from the Chemical Institute of Canada and its three Constituent Societies

Find more news from the CiC at accn.ca/societynews. is there something going on that you think we should write about in this section? write to us at [email protected] and use the subject heading “society news.”

In MEMoRIAM

The CIC wishes to extend its

condolences to the fami l ie s

of W.M. Osborne, MCIC and

T.L. Stubbs, MCIC.

save the date

August 28-30, 2012

oilsands 2012 Conference

Edmonton, alta.

www.ualberta.ca/oilsands2012

october 10-12, 2012

pacific rim summit on industrial

Biotechnology & Bioenergy

vancouver, B.C.

www.bio.org/events

october 14-17, 2012

62nd Canadian Chemical Engineering

Conference (CsChE 2012)

vancouver, B.C.

www.csche2012.ca

october 26, 2012

24e Colloque annuel de Chimie

sherbrooke, Que.

www.pages.usherbrooke.ca/colloque-chimie

may 27-29, 2013

3rd Climate Change technology Conference

Montreal, Que.

www.cctc2013.ca

June 15-19, 2013

world Congress on industrial Biotechnology

& Bioprocessing

Montreal, Que.

www.bio.org/events

August 18-23, 2013

9th world Congress of Chemical Engineering

(wCCE9)

Coex, seoul, korea

www.wcce9.org

Grapevine

André bandrauk, chemistry profes-

sor at université de sherbrooke was

named officer of the order of Canada

on May 25, 2012. the honour was

awarded for his groundbreaking work

in computational chemistry and mo-

lecular photonics. he is a pioneer of

attosecond science - the time scale of

electron movement - and is currently

researching laser control of electrons

for future applications in chemistry,

biology and even quantum informatics.

Terry mcmahon was reappointed the

university of waterloo’s dean of science.

previously, McMahon had been a profes-

sor of chemistry at the university of new

Brunswick and the university of water-

loo, the director of the guelph-waterloo

Centre for graduate work in Chemistry

and Biochemistry and the chair of wa-

terloo’s department of chemistry. he

was first appointed waterloo’s dean of

science in 2007.

sudhir Abhyankar assumed the role of

president of College Chemistry Canada

(C3) in May. C3 is a non-profit organiza-

tion dedicated to excellence in chemis-

try education. abhyankar is associate

professor of chemistry and environmen-

tal science at Memorial university’s

grenfell campus.

marie d’iorio was named the new Ex-

ecutive director of the national institute

for nanotechnology (nint) on May 31,

2012. d’iorio is a physicist and expert in

nano-electronics. nint, founded in 2001,

is a national research and technology de-

velopment organization based in alberta.

To read more from the Grapevine go to accn.ca/societynews.

over the course of four sunny days in Calgary this May, some 2,280 del-egates gathered at the 95th Canadian Chemistry Conference and Exhibition. above, panelists provide their insights on careers in industry for chemistry graduates at the CiC Chair’s Event (top). simon Fraser university gradu-ate student, danielle wilson, presents her poster at the evening reception. she won 1st place in the Materials Chemistry division poster competi-tion. the conference featured 582 posters and just over 1400 talks. For more from the Calgary conference, go to accn.ca/societynews

ConfEREnCES

susiE r

iEgEl (B

oth

)


soCieTy news

JouRnAlS

Engineering Journal Jumps UpThe Canadian Journal of Chemical Engineering is growing;

Beginning January 2013, it will be published 12 times yearly

instead of its current six, with 2,000 pages annually up from 1,200.

A hike in the number of papers being submitted— the

editors now get over 500 papers every year — and a desire

to reduce publication time for the printed version are what

sparked the change. “Online publication times are quite good

now,” says editor-in-chief Joao Soares, “But it is taking too long

to get in print.” There is also a backlog of articles accepted for

publication but delayed for printing because of the current

space limitation. A faster publishing time will mean the editors

can invite more authors to submit papers and still efficiently

handle the extra volume. “This will attract better papers and

increase the impact factor of the journal,” says Soares. “This is

a major, positive milestone.”

Things to Know

The CiC will now be providing video recordings of

key presentations from our annual chemistry and chemical

engineering conferences. recordings from this year’s Cana-

dian Chemistry Conference and Exhibition in Calgary, alta.,

can be viewed at http://cic.sclivelearningcenter.com

The CiC launched a new monthly electronic news-

letter in june that includes news about our societies’

activities , career resources, updates from industry,

trends in technology and international news. if you didn’t

receive the newsletter and would like to be on the mail-

ing list, send your email address to [email protected] with

the subject line “send me the newsletter.”

The program for the 62nd Canadian Chemical engi-

neering Conference in vancouver, october 14-17, 2012,

will be available on august 1 at www.csche2012.ca.

CiC members are invited to participate in a survey

being conducted by the Canadian national institute for the

Blind that seeks to better understand the incidence and na-

ture of laboratory eye injuries in Canada. it is hoped that the

information gained will help inform an awareness campaign

and advocacy in order to minimize vision loss from chemical

accidents in the laboratory. the survey can be accessed at

www.surveymonkey.com/s/chemicaleyeinjury

The international union of Pure and Applied Chem-

istry (iuPAC) is seeking Canadians involved in the chemi-

cal sciences to serve as officers and committee members.

these positions would encompass a two- to four-year term

beginning in 2014. interested and qualified individuals are

asked to submit their curriculum vitae to the Canadian na-

tional Committee (CnC) for iupaC no later than july 17, 2012.

More information and a list of open positions can be found

at www.iupac.org.

The deadline for applications for the 2013 CnC/iuPAC

Travel Awards is october 15, 2012. these awards are to

help young Canadian scientists and engineers, who should be

within 10 years of having earned their phd, to present a paper

at an iupaC-sponsored conference outside Canada and the

u.s.a. Find out more at www.cnc-iupac.ca/awards_e.html.

products + services

ChemFusion


How beta blockers broke new ground

anyone who has had cardiac

or hypertension issues is

familiar with beta blockers,

but less well known is the

milestone they represent in pharma-

ceutical history. Beta blockers were

the first class of drugs to be rationally

designed based on molecular structure.

Previously drugs came to light more or

less through accidental discoveries.

So what exactly do these drugs block?

Beta blockers constitute one of the most

important classes of medications because

of their ability to block the action of

noradrenalin or adrenalin, also referred

to as norepinephrine and epinephrine.

These two compounds play a critical role

in controlling how our heart beats and

how our lungs function. In the case of the

heart, they stimulate the smooth muscle

contractions that cause the heart to beat,

while in the lungs they stimulate activity

to relax the muscles that surround

airways. Blocking the action of noradren-

alin and adrenalin would therefore be

expected to reduce the workload of the

heart, but at the same time it would lead

to the constriction of airways. Reducing

the workload of the heart is advanta-

geous after a heart attack, as well as when

there is a need to control high blood

pressure or an irregular heart beat. The

pharmaceutical challenge is to block the

stimulating effect on the heart without

interfering with breathing. That is just

what beta blockers can do. But how?

Both norepinephrine and epineph-

rine are synthesized in the body from

tyrosine, a commonly occurring amino

acid in our food supply. They are termed

‘neurotransmitters’ because they are

intimately involved in how messages

get transmitted from one nerve cell to

another. Noradrenalin and adrenalin

exert their effects through the invol-

untary or autonomic nervous system,

a network of nerves that govern body

functions such as breathing and cardiac

activity. We don’t have to think about

making our heart beat, so the action

is appropriately called ‘autonomic’, as

opposed to walking or talking, activi-

ties that are controlled by the voluntary

nervous system. That part of the

nervous system uses acetylcholine as its

prime neurotransmitter.

Neurotransmitters are stored inside

nerve cells and are released into the

gap that separates nerve cells, known

as the synapse. They then migrate

towards neighbouring nerve cells

where they can fit into receptors

stimulating an electrical message to

be sent down that nerve cell. This in

turn triggers the release of neurotrans-

mitters into the next synapse which

then stimulate receptors in an adja-

cent nerve cell and so it goes on and

on. Receptors are actually protein

molecules that are configured in a

specific shape to match the molecular

structure of the neurotransmitter,

much like a lock is designed to accept

a key. But in the case of noradrenalin

and adrenalin, the key can fit into two

slightly different locks. Alpha recep-

tors are the ones that cause relaxation

of smooth muscles around bronchial

tubes when stimulated, while stimu-

lation of beta receptors increases

heart activity. As the name implies,

beta blockers can specifically block

beta receptors without interfering

with lung function. How they do this

comes down to the nuances of molec-

ular structure.

Morphine, digitalis, penicillin,

nitrous oxide and even aspirin are

classic examples of drugs that were

“discovered.” Aspirin, for instance, is a

synthetic modification of salicylic acid,

a compound that occurs in nature. It

would never have been made were it

not for the empirical observation that

an extract of willow bark was effective

against pain. Beta blockers, on the other

hand, were specifically designed to have

molecular structures similar enough to

noradrenalin and adrenalin to fit into

receptors, but different enough not to

stimulate these receptors. Sort of like

having a key that fits a lock but doesn’t

open it while preventing other keys

from being inserted.

By the 1950s researchers had shown

that noradrenalin and adrenalin were

neurotransmitters synthesized in the

body and that they could stimulate

two types of receptors which had been

termed ‘alpha’ and ‘beta.’ Scottish phar-

macologist James Black working for ICI

Pharmaceuticals in Britain took on the

challenge of constructing molecules

that would preferentially block beta

receptors. In 1962 he came up with

propranolol (Inderal), the first clini-

cally successful beta blocker. It has since

been joined by an array of more refined,

selective beta blockers but the planned

synthesis of propranolol based on the

structure of specific neurotransmitters

represents the turning point between

drug discovery and drug design.

Joe Schwarcz is the director of McGill University’s Office for Science and Society.

Read his blog at chemicallyspeaking.com.

By Joe schwarcz

62nd Canadian Chemical Engineering Conference

vanCouvEr British ColuMBia, Canada

oCTobeR 14–17, 2012Energy, Environment and sustainability

www.csche2012.ca

ACCN, the Canadian Chemical News: July + August 2012

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Transcript of ACCN, the Canadian Chemical News: July + August 2012