ACCN, the Canadian Chemical News: September 2011

Canadian Chemical News | L’Actualité chimique canadienneA Magazine of the Chemical Institute of Canada and its Constituent Societies | Une magazine de l’Institut de chimie du Canada et ses sociétés constituantes � Chemical Institute of Canada

September | septembre 2011

MethaneMachine

www.accn.ca

Harnessing tHe power of manure

tHe tao of tau CoAL CLeANS Up IN SASkAtChewAN

SepteMber 2011 Canadian CHemiCal news 3

fuelling Clean energy Advances in biogas technology are making farm manure a valued resource for generating electricity. By Tyler Hamilton

table of Contents

Features

glycobiology guruA class of biomolecules called glycans is finally beginning to give up its secrets.By Tyler IrvingPour obtenir la version française de cet article,écrivez-nous à [email protected]

Coal Comes Clean A billion-dollar retrofit will prevent carbon and sulphur from spewing into the atmosphere from Saskpower’s largest coal plant.By Tim Lougheed

2014

Departments

from the editor

guest ColumnBy Jan Kwak and John McIntosh

Chemical newsBy Tyler Irving

society news

Chemfusion By Joe Schwarcz

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September | septembre Vol.63, no./no 8

Chemical engineering

business

Chemistry

FroM the edItor

exeCUtIve dIreCtorroland andersson, MCIC

ACtING edItor roberta staley

edItor (on leave)Jodi di menna

NewS edItortyler irving, MCIC

CoNtrIbUtING edItortim lougheed

Art dIreCtIoN & GrAphIC deSIGNKrista lerouxKelly turner

SoCIety NewSbobbijo sawchyn, MCIC gale thirlwall

MArketING MANAGerbernadette dacey

MArketING CoordINAtorluke andersson

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 2011 is $100 CdN. the institutional subscrip-tion price for 2011 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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Indexed in the Canadian business Index and available online in the Canadian business and Current Affairs database.

ISSN 0823-5228

visit us at www.accn.ca

Gas — such a small word for a state of matter that has had such a

profound influence on scientific discovery. In this issue, we herald

several new advances involving this ethereal substance. Science

writer Tyler Hamilton, in his excellent feature “Fuelling Clean

Energy,” looks at Ontario’s biogas sector, which is making advances in

renewable energy thanks to a most-modest source — cow manure. Gas also

permeates contributing editor Tim Lougheed’s story “Coal Comes Clean”

about SaskPower’s ambitious project to divert one million tonnes of CO2 out

of the atmosphere. With two-thirds of Saskatchewan’s electricity derived from

coal, the province realized it had to devote considerable effort to cleaning up

CO2 emissions. This initiative by SaskPower will net the province not only

the green stamp of approval but a new multi-million dollar revenue stream.

In the rest of ACCN, news editor Tyler Irving chats with Simon Fraser

University’s David Vocadlo about the exciting potential that chemical

glycobiology holds for afflictions like Alzheimer’s disease and diabetes. In

“Chemical News,” ACCN offers up a cornucopia of cutting-edge scientific

discoveries that include the superiority of lithium-sulphur batteries, a

meteorite’s microscopic hitchhikers, the nurturing of stem cells and a facelift

for the Canadian greenback.

Finally, to our university readership: chemistry students, researchers and

professors, welcome back to a new fall semester — hope this one’s, well, a gas.

If you want to share your thoughts on any article write to Roberta Staley at [email protected]


GUeSt CoLUMN

ever since its inception in the early 1980s, the guidelines of the Canadian Society for Chemistry (CSC) accreditation system for undergraduate chemistry programs have been based on three

distinct objectives: to prepare graduates to practice their profession in a scientifically competent manner; to provide a broad basis for the recognition of acceptable degree programs; and to foster cooperation between educational institutions, industry and other employers of chemistry graduates.

Some years ago, several universities in the Middle East were looking for ways to benchmark their educa-tional programs against the standards of leading Western institutions. When the CSC was approached by Kuwait University in 2003, it was decided to use this as a first experiment in international outreach. After having prepared for a site visit in the same way as required from Canadian universities, the Kuwait University’s Department of Chemistry received a CSC site visit team in 2005. The visit resulted in a five-year, first-cycle CSC accreditation. Close connections between universities in the Arab Gulf quickly led to requests for site visits and subsequent full accreditation for the BSc chemistry programs of United Emirates University (UAE) in 2007, Qatar University and Bahrain University in 2009 and King Abdulaziz University (KAU) in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia in 2010, all for five-year, first-cycle accreditation.

There are both similarities and differences between Canadian and Middle Eastern universities. While the chemistry programs in most cases are remarkably similar, there are key cultural differences. The Middle Eastern universities use mainly North American textbooks and instruction is in English. Modern instrumentation is widely available, often more so than at Canadian universi-ties. What may have been the biggest surprise to site visit teams is the important role of women, who hold the posi-tions of university presidents and vice-presidents, deans and department heads. There is also a high proportion of female students — 75 per cent at Qatar University, for example — and more than half the faculty is female.

At Bahrain University and Kuwait University courses and labs are largely co-educational. However, UAE and Qatar University have duplicate labs and instrumenta-tion in male and female buildings on separated campuses and even different libraries. Yet at the four Gulf univer-sities male and female faculty and laboratory instructors

women play key role in Middle eastern chemistry programs by Jan Kwak and John mcintosh

teach both genders. One can see a pattern of increased culturally acceptable integration slowly finding its way. The sharpest difference as observed by the site visit team is at KAU in Jeddah. Even though Jeddah, with its many international relations, is often considered the most liberal of Saudi cities by Western standards, at KAU male and female campuses are strictly separated and male faculty cannot teach female students (although at the graduate and research level there is limited mixing of the sexes). As a result, the Canadian site visit team for KAU had to have two male and two female members who compared notes to reach their conclusions about the two programs. Thus, while at the other Gulf universities there was no need to make any distinction between the male and female students and their courses and exams, it is hoped that the site visit report and its recommenda-tions will lead to a strengthening of the role of female faculty at KAU.

There are also significant administrative differences. Canadian departments are largely autonomous in deciding on programs and curriculum, but at the Middle Eastern universities we visited there is a strong ‘top-down’ admin-istrative culture, leading to delays in program changes and heavy administrative procedures especially for ordering of supplies and equipment. While administrative account-ability might be a burden on the department head, the much higher supplies and equipment budgets would make Canadian departments envious.

In the past six years, the CSC accreditation committee has already made some adjustments to its process and guidelines for international accreditations. The process now requires a preliminary visit about a year before the site visit and a completely new assessment is required after five years. With the experience gained, the CSC can consider expanding its international role to other areas of the globe and it may decide to accept applications from universities where English is not the language of instruction. At the same time, our accreditation system provides significant international exposure for the CSC and it has certainly led to an increased mutual understanding and opportunities for collaboration.

Jan Kwak, FCIC, is professor emeritus at Dalhousie University and professor of physical chemistry and Head of the

Department of Chemistry and Earth Sciences at Qatar University. John McIntosh, FCIC, is professor emeritus at the University of

Windsor and Chair of the CSC Accreditation Committee.

8 l’aCtualité CHimique Canadienne SepteMbre 2011

CHemiCal news

Amino acids, the building blocks of proteins, are easy enough to find on the surface of the earth - just look inside any organism. but a recent study from the University of Alberta provides evidence that these molecules can also form inside asteroids.

In January 2000, a meteorite crashed through the atmosphere and into the frozen surface of tagish Lake in the british Columbia Interior. eventually, some of the fragments were acquired by a team headed by Chris herd, associate professor in the department of earth and Atmospheric Sci-ences at U of A. the meteorite turned out to be unlike any other. Not only did it contain organic molecules like amino acids - rare but not unheard of - but the composition of the organic matter in its fragments was highly varied. the differences were so dra-matic it was as if the meteor was composed of parts from entirely different meteorites. “our best explanation for this is that water percolating through the asteroid caused changes to the organic matter,” says herd.

the team was able to arrange four fragments in order from most altered to least altered. Surprisingly, the level of amino acids rose from the least altered to the second least altered fragment. that suggests that water inside the asteroid, formed either by impact or radioactive heating, provided the right environment to generate amino acids from precursor molecules like aldehydes and ketones.

Although organic molecules can form in the void of interstellar space, the theory that asteroids provide a kind of nursery for them explains why some meteorites are chock full of amino acids. It may also explain how these molecules first arrived on earth. “you can produce amino acids in hot water environments on the earth,” says herd, “but meteorites almost certainly provide an important component of ready-made amino acids that would have rained down at the right time.” that time was about 3.9 billion years ago, just before the first evidence of living organisms on earth, he adds. the research was published in a June edition of Science.

Asteroid nurtured life-giving chemicAls

EarTH CHEMISTry

A 10 centimetre-long fragment of the Tagish Lake meteorite contains evidence that the organic molecules within it have been altered by the presence of liquid water.

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this fall, the bank of Canada will begin rollout of its new polymer-based banknotes. the notes are made of a clear biaxially oriented polypropylene film with multiple layers of specialised coat-ings that contain added security features. they will be harder to counterfeit and are expected to last more than twice as long as the current, cotton-based variety.

CHemiCal news


Canada's top stories in the chemical sciences and engineeringby tyler irving

PHarMaCEuTICaLS

For sufferers of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), painful memories can be crippling. But research from the Université de Montréal shows that it may be possible to chemically influ-ence the brain’s ability to recall the details of negative events, even after the memory is formed.

Low levels of the hormone cortisol are known to have a negative impact on memory, but that effect was previously thought to be limited to their initial formation. “For a very long time, we thought that once a memory was stabi-lized in the brain, it was not possible to modify it once again,” says Marie-France

post-traumatiC stress sufferers get Help

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reseArcher develops fAster softwAre for folding proteinsthe process of folding a linear polypeptide into a complete protein with a specialized shape and function is one of nature’s miracles. Computers can model this process using molecular dynamics (Md) but it’s still an enormous task - determining the folding pathway for a single protein can take thousands of hours of processing time. Now a researcher at McGill University has developed a program that could greatly speed up this process.

Jerôme waldispuhl is an assistant professor in the depart-ment of Computer Science at McGill and has been working in the field of bioinformatics for more than a decade. he’s developed a program called tFolder, which is able to give a rough estimate of the structure for a particular protein in about half an hour. while traditional Md techniques use classical physics laws to compute a sequence of 3d structures, detailing each possible step along the folding pathway, tFolder takes a ‘birds-eye view’ approach. the program uses a coarse-grained energy landscape model that treats each amino acid as a discrete unit, which enables it to quickly enumerate all possible structures and calculate which ones are most likely. “It doesn’t aim to substitute for molecular

tFolder looks at a peptide sequence and enumerates all possible positions for structures known as beta sheets, which are represented by coloured arrows. The color gradient indicates the sequence position: yellow arrows are toward the beginning of the sequence, followed by green, blue and purple. The most likely structure is the largest one displayed.

Marin, one of the study’s co-authors. “However, there was animal research at the beginning of 2000 that challenged that theory.” The team hypothesized that the drug metryapone, which pre-vents synthesis of cortisol, might have an effect on human memories even after they were formed.

In the study, 33 test subjects were shown a slide show that told a story with both neutral and negative emo-tional elements. A few days later, they were divided into three groups, one of which received a placebo and the other two various doses of metryapone. When asked to recount the story, those treated

with the drug showed less recall of the story’s negative elements. This effect was still noticeable days later, after the effect of metryapone had worn off.

Marin cautions that more work needs to be done before the effect can be developed into a therapeutic. “We still need to establish whether the same effects could be attained with personal, autobiographical memory. Then we could move with a clinical popula-tion to see whether we could apply the same paradigm to post-traumatic stress disorder victims.” The work is published in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism.

dynamics, it’s a completely different approach,” says waldispuhl. “the idea is to sacrifice some precision but, on the other hand, we have a huge gain in terms of calculability.”

waldispuhl has already tested the model on a polypeptide called protein G, one of the few proteins for which information about the folding pathway is available. he hopes that in the future it could be used to narrow down the list of possible structures for other folding simulations, saving thousands of hours in processing time. the research is published in the Journal of Computational Biology and the software is at http://csb.cs.mcgill.ca/tfolder/.



CHemiCal news

MaTErIaLS SCIEnCE

buzz about new batteries

BIoTECHnoLogy

hematopoietic stem cells (hSCs) have the unique ability to give rise to all possible types of blood cells. despite this, they are hard to distinguish from other cells of the bone marrow, which makes study-ing them in v itro an enormous challenge. this could soon change thanks to a new microfluidic device developed at the Uni-versity of british Columbia.

the device is made of transparent polydimethylsiloxane (pdMS) and could comfortably fit inside a matchbox. In-side, there are hundreds of parallel channels studded with thousands of chambers, each about four nanolitres in size. the chambers are surrounded by an iso-osmotic bath which pre-vents dehydration and keeps finicky hSCs in their ideal growth conditions. the unique setup allows research-ers to grow hundreds of bone marrow

microfluidic device nurtures stem cells

False colour image of the microfluidic array showing the arrangement of chan-nels and chambers. The matchbox-sized device contains 1600 chambers.Each chamber is 160 µm along each side.

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Although still in the experimental stages, lithium-sulphur (Li-S) batteries could offer three to five times more energy density than lithium-ion, the current industry standard for personal electronics and electric vehicles. Now, a discovery at the University of Waterloo has brought Li-S batteries one step closer to commercial viability.

Li-S batteries depend on a reversible reaction that converts elemental lithium and sulphur to Li2S. The problem is that the reaction has a number of intermediate species — a series of polysulphide ions — which are soluble in the electrolyte. If these species dissolve and are lost from the positive electrode, they can no longer do useful work, reducing the capacity of the battery.

In 2009, Linda Nazar and her team at the University of Waterloo came partway toward a solution by embedding the sulphur in a polymer-coated mesoporous conductive carbon matrix. This mate-rial creates an environment that delivers the electrons required for the electrochemical reaction, but also holds in most of the soluble polysulphides. Now, Nazar’s team has gone one step further by add-ing silica particles with a very high surface area and pore volume into the same carbon matrix. The silica particles have a weak affinity for the soluble polysulphides, which physically absorb within their pores instead of leaving the matrix. Although the polysulphides can’t undergo further electrochemical reaction within the silica, the weak binding means that they are gradually released later in the charge cycle to form insoluble Li2S and complete the reaction. Importantly, this process is reversible.

The ability to hold the polysulphides in silica particles allows the carbon matrix itself to have larger pores. This increases the rate of discharge up to 10-fold while maintaining energy density. “We’re hanging on to 82 per cent of the polysulphides over 30 cycles, but you can tune the pore size and the surface area of this additive to really improve upon that process,” says Nazar. The work was published this past May in Nature Communications.

cells in parallel while monitoring their growth in real time using automated microscopy. this level of detail makes it possible to look for the tiny changes in growth cycles that can distinguish sub- populations of hSCs.

As a proof of the concept, hSCs in the device were exposed to a reduced concentration of a certain growth fac-tor (steel factor, or SF) for various peri-ods to see how long they could survive under these conditions before being rescued. the crucial time turned out to be between 16 and 24 hours, when the cells exit from a quiescent state to enter cell cycle. “this is an example of an experiment that just could not have been done otherwise; we could not have answered this question with the current techniques,” says veronique Lecault, lead author of the study and

a graduate student in the department of Chemical and biological engineering at UbC. the technique could be applied in any situation where heterogeneous cell populations need to be examined, which includes fields like cancer re-search and drug development. the work is published in the July issue of Nature Methods.



PoLICy and Law

stAndoff in pesticide chAllengeboth sides are claiming victory in a settlement regarding quebec’s ban on the cosmetic use of pesticides containing the chemical 2,4- dichlorophenoxyacetic acid (2,4-d).

2,4-d is one of the world’s most widely used pesticides, but debate over its possible carcinogenicity continues. In 2006 it was banned for cosmetic use in quebec. In 2008, a review by Canada’s pest Management regulatory Agency (pMrA) concluded that products containing 2,4-d “do not pose an unacceptable risk to human health or the environment, provided that the instructions on their label are followed.”

In 2009, dow AgroSciences, which makes 2,4-d, challenged quebec’s ban under the North American Free trade Agreement (NAFtA), seeking $2 million in damages. this past May, dow agreed to withdraw the challenge with no compensation, provid-ed that the quebec government acknowledge and agree with the

CLIMaTE CHangE

It seems logical enough: if deforestation raises CO2 emissions, then afforestation — planting more trees — should be an effective way of combating climate change. But a new Canadian climate model shows that while this is true, the effect is smaller than you might expect.

Previous climate models have been somewhat unrealistic when it comes to afforesta-tion, says Alvaro Montenegro of St. Francis Xavier University, one of the co-authors of the study, which is based on a computer simulation called the Canadian Earth System Model (CanESM1). Unlike previous models, CanESM1 accounted for the dynamics of forest growth, a slow process that can take decades. It also accounted for the fact that in areas like the Prairies, low rainfall precludes forest growth, even if agriculture were to cease. Finally, while forests do reduce atmospheric carbon, they are also darker than most cropland. This means that they absorb more sunlight and thus generate more heat than open fields.

According to the model, global average temperatures will have increased between 1850 and 2100 by about 3 C. Replacing 100 per cent of the world’s cropland with forest — an unrealistic scenario — would only reduce this by 0.45 C. Montenegro cautions that this is only one study, but says that the results point to the importance of decreas-ing emissions, rather than trying to compensate for them. “What the paper says is that if we continue to emit the way we are, planting trees, even over a very large fraction of our present day crop land, will do very little to reduce global temperature.” The study is published in the June issue of Nature Geoscience.

more trees won’t solVe Climate CHange

conclusion of the pMrA. the ban, however, will remain in place. In a media release, Jim wispinski, president and Ceo of dow

AgroSciences Canada, characterized the settlement as positive, saying that “quebec has agreed with the federal government’s findings as to the safety of our product when used correctly.” however, theresa McClenaghan, executive director of the Cana-dian environmental Law Association says that the challenge was never about the damages. “Most of us felt at the time that bring-ing the challenge under Chapter 11 of NAFtA was a rhetorical and advocacy device by dow,” McClenaghan says. “the associations representing the producers did a pretty thorough round of litiga-tion twice and the Supreme Court has already ruled definitively on it.” McClenaghan notes that the settlement says nothing about the use of pesticides in agriculture and forestry - markets many times larger than that for cosmetic use.


ong before most of us were worried about climate

change, various industries had developed an

interest in capturing carbon dioxide. The gas

would prove invaluable to such venerable

19th-century innovations as bubbly soft drinks or

fire extinguishers that starve flames of oxygen. By the end of

the 20th century, the oil and gas industry had nurtured its own

appetite for CO2, which can be injected into mature wells to

extract more of their contents.

The latest priority is simply preventing the gas from

making its way into the atmosphere, thereby eliminating

its contribution to the greenhouse effect that is blamed

for altering the world’s climatic patterns. Major sources

like industrial smokestacks are therefore being targeted

for the collection of CO2, which is then put into a form of

storage known as sequestration. The fundamental process of

extracting this material from flue gases has been in place for

decades, along with reliable technology that can be scaled up

to meet this new environmental challenge.

Now a project in Saskatchewan is tackling that challenge

in an even more ambitious way. About one million tonnes of

CO2 will be diverted annually from SaskPower’s coal-fired

Boundary Dam generating station in the southern end of the

province, near Estevan. It will take $1.24 billion to outfit the

plant over the next few years, an outlay that the provincial

government approved last April.

Dubbed the Boundary Dam Integrated Carbon Capture

and Sequestration Demonstration Project, it is one of the

largest construction ventures Saskatchewan has ever seen.

SaskPower has a lot riding on it, since almost two-thirds of

the province’s electricity comes from coal, which is burned

in plants that are more than 40 years old.

“We had to answer the question for ourselves: can we rely

on coal as a fuel source for electrical generation?” says Mike

Monea, the project’s vice-president. “We felt that if we could

clean up the emissions, then we knew that we could keep coal.”

Monea points out that this option was compared directly

with the prospect of converting generating stations to

run on natural gas. Efficient carbon capture allows coal

to compete with that alternative, especially if the costs

of this process can be recovered by selling the CO2 to oil

well operators. “We have 300 years of coal here, at a very

low cost,” he says. “We now have a fuel supply that we can

predict for 30 years, which we can’t do for natural gas.”

In fact, the redesigned plant will run much more cleanly

than it could on natural gas. All of its sulphur dioxide (SO2)

emissions and 90 per cent of its carbon dioxide emissions

will be recovered and sold, thanks to a system developed by

Montreal-based Cansolv Technologies Inc. That firm was

founded in 1997 to commercialize SO2-scrubbing tech-

nology originally acquired from Union Carbide. Cansolv’s

R&D activities subsequently expanded its capabilities to

saskpower is backing a new, billion-dollar carbon and sulphur sequestration initiative that will - almost - turn coal into clean energy.

by tim lougheed


CHemiCal engineering | Co2 CAptUre

CO2-scrubbing and in 2008 the company became a subsidiary of Shell Global

Solutions International.

Cansolv’s system employs the organic compounds known as amines, consisting

of ammonia derivatives in which hydrogen has been replaced by some member of

a hydrocarbon group. In this case, a unique class of diamine absorbents capture

and regenerate SO2 and CO2. More specifically, gas going up the power plant’s

chimney will be cooled and diverted to an absorber tower, where it will interact

with the amine, which collects the pollutants. The amine stream is subsequently

re-heated and its contents returned to a gaseous phase, so it can be dehydrated and

compressed for storage.

According to Malcolm Wilson, CEO of the Petroleum Technology Research

Centre (PTRC) in Regina, the approach is reliable and proven. “Right now, if you

are going to want to be successful in developing a capture project, amines are the

only way to go,” says Wilson, who notes that these agents have long since demon-

strated their effectiveness in cleaning up flue gases. What remains to be seen is the

level of efficiency that can ultimately be obtained. “We know the technology will

work,” he adds. “We just don’t know how well it will work.”

Wilson is referring to the fact that the Cansolv hardware

will be driven by the Boundary Dam station itself, creating a

parasitic power loss. The amount could be considerable, with

some estimates suggesting that this 150 MW plant might

only yield a net load of 110-115 MW once the clean-up

equipment is running. However, this drop could be mini-

mized by modifying and improving the design, says Wilson.

The exact placement of heat exchangers, for instance, could

turn out to offer great gains. Such tweaking can be planned

in advance, through simulations or pilot plants, but the

actual impact can only be assessed by trying it out in a full-

scale installation, Wilson adds.

SaskPower will also be gauging the influence of weather, which

on the prairies can go from -40 C to 40 C over the course of a

year. The region is thus a perfect place to try out equipment for

use in more benign environments. PTRC

regularly hosts delegations from Europe

or Asia, who are curious about how well

a carbon capture strategy copes with

Saskatchewan’s extreme climate. Wilson

anticipates even more of these visits as the

Boundary Dam project proceeds.

According to the Paris-based

International Energy Agency (IEA),

power generation represents the

single greatest energy-related human

contribution to CO2 in the earth’s

atmosphere. In 1990, it made up

36 per cent of the total, jumping to

41 per cent by 2007. By 2030, IEA

predicts this will rise to 44 per cent, as

well as accounting for more than half

of the increase in overall CO2 emis-

sions. As in Saskatchewan, a majority

of that increase will come from coal.

China is expected to be another

place where coal will continue to

play this dominant role. Cansolv has

already been testing its SO2-scrubbing

technology on commercially oper-

ating facilities all over that country.

SaskPower’s Mike Monea says that

track record made the company an

attractive contender for the Boundary

Dam project. “They’re one of the few

companies that could demonstrate

the efficiencies of their process,”

[LEFT] CO2 purchased from Dakota Gasification completes a jour-ney of more than 300 kilometres to arrive at the end of this pipeline in Weyburn, where it will help oil companies restore production on depleted wells.

[RIGHT] SaskPower’s coal-fired Boundary Dam Power Station, located in southern Saskatchewan near Estevan.

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a new rationale for carbon capture

the market for Co2 is more than a century old, but the business model associated with the gas has evolved rapidly in recent years. when it was being used primarily for beverage carbonation, food preservation or refrigeration, the emphasis was on creating a highly purified product that would meet government inspection agency standards. Cost was a secondary consideration, as was the need for mass quantities.

today’s carbon capture regime is much more of a numbers game. buyers now want lots of the stuff and at the cheapest possible price. “the paradigm shift here is that we’re less worried about the quality and more worried about the cost,” says Malcolm wilson, Ceo of the petroleum technology research Centre (ptrC), based in regina. “we’re now engineering to maximize energy efficiency and minimize the cost of the product,” wilson says.

he has helped turn this paradigm into a practical reality. the ptrC, a not-for-profit research and development agency that was established in 1998, belongs to a group of organizations that is currently wrapping up 11 years’ worth of work on a major effort that has used Co2 to breathe new life into some 250 sq. kilometres of depleted oil fields. Since 2000, this $85 million international project has studied the sequestration of Co2 received from a large coal gasification plant in North dakota. that Co2 is piped 320 kilometres to the weyburn-Midale region of southeastern Saskatchewan and injected into two depleted oil fields.

For the American firm, dakota Gasification, the initiative has been nothing less than a life saver. by investing in the necessary infrastruc-ture to capture Co2 that would otherwise have gone up a chimney, the company created an entirely new revenue stream worth tens of millions of dollars annually. that cash helped dakota withstand major drops in the price of natural gas that were threatening to put it out of business. Near the beginning of 2011, managers proudly marked delivery of the 20 millionth metric ton of Co2 through the pipeline.

he says, adding that the deal was

further sweetened by the expertise

of SNC Lavalin to carry out the

installation. “Combining Cansolv

with SNC Lavalin made for a tight

package, which also went along with

well defined costs.”

Monea insists that the move to

retain coal-fired generation does not

exclude the possibility of other sources

of energy, including renewable options

such as windmills. However, just as a

Boundary Dam station model based

on coal won out over a model based

on natural gas, these alternatives will

have to stand on their own merits.

“The real message is that we need all

forms of fuel for generating power,”

he says. “Coal will be an option for

us, and we’ll show through good engi-

neering that we can have a business

case that is positive.”

People at the receiving end of the

pipeline were just as pleased. By 2005,

CO2-primed oil wells around Weyburn

had returned to production levels that

had not been seen since the 1970s, just

in time for a spike in the price of this

commodity. Above all, the outcome

bolsters the business case for an under-

taking that might be a tough sell:

preventing CO2 today from contrib-

uting to changes in climate that may

not occur for a century or more.

The results also bolstered the case

SaskPower could make for its own

massive investment in infrastructure

to capture both CO2 and SO2 at its

Boundary Dam generating station.

The scope of this project should set

the standard for utilities around the

world, especially in places like China,

which are highly motivated to reduce

The interior of Unit 3 of SaskPower’s Boundary Dam Power Station, site of the utility’s Integrated Carbon Capture and Sequestration Demonstra-tion Project.

the environmental impact of their power generating systems without sacri-

ficing access to the country’s rich coal resources. “All eyes are going to stay on

Saskatchewan,” says Wilson.

SASk

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Registration Fees* CIC Members $550Non-members $750Student Members $150*includes Laboratory Health and Safety Guidelines 4th ed.

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the Catalysis AwardCall for NominationsThe Catalysis Award, sponsored by the Canadian Catalysis Foundation, is awarded biannually to an individual who, while resident in Canada, has made a distinguished contribution to the field of catalysis. The recipient of the Award receives a rhodium- plated silver medal and travel expenses to present the Award Lecture at the Canadian Symposium on Catalysis or the annual conference of the Canadian Society for Chemistry or the Canadian Society for Chemical Engineering.

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while the study of DNA and proteins has become

almost routine, another important class of

biomolecules — glycans — is just beginning

to give up its secrets. David Vocadlo of Simon

Fraser University in Burnaby, British Columbia is a researcher

at the frontiers of chemical glycobiology. ACCN spoke to

Vocadlo to find out how the study of glycans is changing our

view of biochemical processes and why they may be key to

treating diseases like diabetes, Alzheimer’s and cancer.

aCCn what is a glycan?

dV Glycans are one of the key classes of biological molecules.

You have nucleic acids like DNA and RNA, proteins, lipids

and carbohydrates, which are also called glycans. The other

biomolecules are quite heavily studied, but glycans are more

difficult to study for a number of different reasons, so the field

hasn’t advanced as far. Simply put, glycans are an assembly of

different sugar units that form very specific structures. When

someone ingests some sugar such as glucose, it gets converted

within cells into other types of sugar building blocks. In

humans there are essentially 10 different types of sugar units

that are used to build up glycans. Glucose is just one of them,

there are others such as mannose and galactose. In principle,

the diversity of different structures is tremendous, there was

recently a paper conservatively estimating that mammals

have 7,000 different types of glycans.

aCCn how do you study them?

dV Our laboratory is mostly interested in chemical glyco-

biology. We study enzymes and other proteins that interact

with carbohydrates and then develop chemical tools with

which we can study those biological processes as well as the

enzymes themselves. Ideally, we use these tools to look at

them in cells or even in vivo to try to discern what their func-

tion is. It’s exciting because it’s a frontier area; there’s a lot

AQ& david Vocadlo’s insights into glycans may lead to therapeutics for c ancer and alzheimer’s disease.

by tyler irving

Glycobiology Guru

to discover in the field of glycobiology. And it’s turning out

that these glycans are very important in a number of different

diverse biological processes.

aCCn Can you give some examples?

dV Every animal cell has a carbohydrate coating around it,

known as the glycocalyx. The glycocalyx extends out from

the cell surface and is the first line of contact between the cell

and other cells or, alternatively, viruses or bacteria. It’s what

the other cells see and they use it to communicate with each

other. Some beautiful work has shown how some glycans on

the cell surface are essential for organisms to develop in an

appropriate way.

An older example that people can relate to is the

ABO blood group antigens, which are glycans. The differ-

ences between them are simply the presence or absence of

different sugar units within the glycan structure. For example,

the O-type glycan has one less sugar unit than the A-type or

the B-type. These blood group antigens are interesting: we

know that they exist and we know that they’re important for

transfusion, but it’s not known what their precise biological

functions actually are or why there are different types. We

speculate that this diversity has been important historically to

make sure that populations are resistant to epidemics. Blood

group antigens have a long history in Canada; Ray Lemieux,

of the University of Alberta, was the first to synthesize them

chemically, a fantastic feat at the time.

aCCn Much of your work revolves around the o-GlcNAc post-translational modification. what is this?

dV Proteins can be modified in many ways: they can be

phosphorylated, acetylated, methylated and of course glyco-

sylated. O-GlcNAc is a form of glycosylation, a modification

of proteins found inside the cell. It’s just a single saccha-

ride unit, O-linked N-acetylglucosamine (O-GlcNAc)


CHemistry | GLyCoSCIeNCe

that gets added on to proteins. There are two enzymes

involved: one called O-GlcNAc transferase (OGT) that

puts O-GlcNAc on the proteins and one that removes it,

called O-GlcNAcase (OGA).

We started off trying to understand how these enzymes

(OGA and OGT) work at a mechanistic level and how

they catalyze the reactions that they do. We then developed

inhibitors that would target them in a specific way. We’ve

developed very good inhibitors of both of them, so we’re

now using those to understand what some of the biological

roles of the O-GlcNAc modification are. The modification

is interesting since it’s been implicated in both diabetes and

Alzheimer’s disease.

aCCn how so?

dV It’s an elegant hypothesis. When glucose is taken up by

cells, a certain percentage of it is shunted into a biosynthetic

pathway, the end result of which is the substrate for OGT.

OGT takes that substrate, adds it on to proteins and the

net result is increased O-GlcNAc levels. The second theory

is that O-GlcNAc glycosylation and phosphorylation of

proteins are sometimes reciprocal. This is important because

insulin signaling depends on phorphorylation pathways.

When you take those two ideas together, what you can see is

that with increased blood glucose levels — one of the symp-

toms of diabetes — proteins within cells are going to have

increased O-GlcNAc levels. If O-GlcNAc levels on proteins

go up, they might compete with and impair phosphoryla-

tion and that might attenuate insulin signaling. It becomes a

vicious cycle where increased blood glucose has toxic effects

and impairs insulin signaling, which results in even higher

blood glucose and more damage. So we started to develop

selective compounds that would target OGA, the enzyme

that removes the sugar, in order to determine the involve-

ment of O-GlcNAc in insulin resistance. What we found out

by doing this was that you could increase O-GlcNAc levels

dramatically, but it didn’t actually result in insulin resistance.

aCCn were you surprised that the results didn’t fit with the hypothesis?

dV For us it was a very surprising observation. But that is the

nature of science and what makes it continually interesting to

me — there are always surprises. In any case, the experiments

we did suggest that the current proposal is not as simple as

thought and offer some new approaches and ideas as to how

the model might be refined. I think in the end our findings

turned out to be quite important for other reasons as well.

They show you can inhibit the enzyme and not cause serious

problems like insulin resistance. Actually, that is what

prompted us to consider looking at Alzheimer’s disease and

the potential benefit of increasing O-GlcNAc levels; you

obviously don’t want to cause insulin resistance while trying

to improve Alzheimer’s.

OGT

OGA

In the body, proteins (represented in red) are converted between their native form (left) and glycosylated form (right). The enzyme OGT adds the glycan O-GlcNAc (in black) onto the protein while the enzyme OGA removes it. David Vocadlo’s team has developed robust inhibitors of both OGA and OGT to probe the role of this modification in such biological processes as diabetes, cancer and Alzheimer’s disease.

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aCCn how does Alzheimer’s come into it?

dV One of the hallmarks of Alzheimer’s are these

neurofibrillary tangles in the brain, which contain a hyper-

phosphorylated form of a protein called Tau. A lot of people

are interested in blocking the aggregation of Tau and its

toxicity by blocking its phosphorylation. In addition to that,

it’s known that in Alzheimer’s disease, one of the early symp-

toms is an inability of neurons to appropriately use glucose. So

the idea there is that if you get decreased levels of O-GlcNAc

within cells, this might enable hyperphosphorylation of Tau,

which leads to its aggregation and downstream toxicity.

We published a paper on using our inhibitors to block

OGA, the enzyme that removes O-GlcNAc. It showed that

if you increase O-GlcNAc levels dramatically with this

inhibitor, you see decreases in phosphorylation of Tau at

certain specific sites that are pathologically relevant.

aCCn Are there other diseases where o-Glc-NAc is thought to play a role?

dV Recently there have been a few papers published

implicating O-GlcNAc in cancer and there’s some fairly

good data supporting that idea. The theory in that particular

case is that somehow O-GlcNAc is involved in the ability

of cancer cells to survive and proliferate. If you can decrease

levels of O-GlcNAc in cells, you may be able to prevent the

progression of cancer. That’s one of the really nice things

about inhibitors — you can quickly deploy them in different

experimental models.

aCCn tell us about your company, Alectos therapeutics, formed in 2007 to commercialize these discoveries.

dV A lot of the large pharmaceutical companies are very

interested in Alzheimer’s disease because there’s no thera-

peutic right now that will block its progression. Alectos

Therapeutics contacted Merck about the possibility of

establishing a research-collaboration and licensing agree-

ment and they were very interested in the target as well as

the technology. So Alectos is focusing on developing inhibi-

tors of OGA for Alzheimer’s disease. The ones we have are a

starting point; although they’re quite good in terms of speci-

ficity, there are always things that may need to be tweaked to

generate compounds that have the most desirable properties

in the body. Right now we’re looking at a number of different

issues that have to be addressed for the program to progress.

aCCn why is it so much harder to study glycans than dNA or proteins?

dV It’s been difficult to dissect the critical functions of glycans

in biology because, in many cases, if you just knock out an

enzyme that’s involved in building up a glycan, you can have

developmental effects in the organism that you’re studying. It’s

not comparable to changing the levels of glycans in an adult

organism. Also, knocking out an enzyme is not the same thing

as the enzyme being inhibited; if you knock out the enzyme

the protein is gone and that can complicate issues. That’s why

we’ve gone with an inhibitor-based approach.

Another factor is that glycans are difficult to synthesize. If

you want to synthesize a nucleic acid, you can use a nucleic

acid synthesizer — you can just call up a company and get

it delivered. For glycans that’s very difficult; it’s a tremen-

dously laborious process. You have to use traditional chemical

synthesis. It’s a really time-consuming process and there are

people who specialize only in synthesizing different glycans.

To make a glycan with just six units can take from six months

to one year.

aCCn have there been any major advances in the past few years?

dV There’s been some really tremendous efforts directed at

solid-phase synthesis of carbohydrates and there are a number

of groups around the world that are working on that. Basically

you use polymer beads as an anchor, just like with peptide

synthesis and then you add to the glycan chain while it’s on the

beads and cleave it off at the end. It’s not in the mainstream

yet but there are now carbohydrate synthesizers that have been

developed and they’re being prototype tested. Researchers have

also been advancing the use of enzymes to rapidly build glycans

and this has shown a lot of promise as well.

aCCn what excites you about glycobiology?

dV When you teach science, often you’re teaching people

about what is known, but the most exciting part of science

is what’s not known. In the field of glycobiology and

glycoscience, there’s a tremendous amount that is not

known and that’s the stuff that is really exciting. It’s pushing

that limit of what we know, seeing what lies just over there.

What will this study show about the role glycans are playing

in biology? Can we manipulate this system for potentially

therapeutic benefit? I think those are some of the really

interesting questions in the field.

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this is a year long opportunity to educate the public on the wonders of chemistry.

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Trying to produce clean water from sewage?

Then microorganisms are your enemy. Trying

to produce clean energy instead? Then these

disease-causing critters can be your closest ally.

Andrew Benedek has made microorganisms his ally in a

clean-energy venture that recently chose Ontario as the home

of its future global headquarters, set to open in 2013. The

company, Anaergia, specializes in the design and manufac-

ture of biogas systems that rely on microorganisms to convert

organic waste, such as sewage and animal manure, into renew-

able fuel. The process, called anaerobic digestion, is widely

accepted in Europe but has been slow to catch on in North

America. Benedek plans to change that.

Six years ago, the 68-year-old Canadian water purification

pioneer, who now lives in California, would have considered

these microscopic bugs his enemy. Benedek spent most of his

career trying to eliminate harmful microbes from the water

water purification pioneer andrew benedek is leading a biogas revolution in ontario.

by tyler Hamilton

that gets flushed down our toilets or ejected from industrial

processes. As CEO of ZENON Environmental, the water

innovation company he founded in 1980 in Oakville, Ont.,

Benedek developed a cost-effective membrane technology

for wastewater facilities that could filter out the smallest and

nastiest of microorganisms, from bacteria such as E. coli to

pathogens such as Cryptosporidium.

It worked so well that General Electric acquired ZENON

in a 2006 deal valued at $760 million, making Benedek

a rich man (he owned nearly 20 per cent of the company’s

shares) and giving the former McMaster University chemistry

professor a chance to re-enter academia after a 26-year hiatus.

Indeed, within no time he became a semi-retired research

associate at the Scripps Institute of Oceanography, a depart-

ment within the University of California, San Diego.

It was at the Scripps Institute that Benedek began seeing the

microorganisms found in sewage in a different, more beneficial


fuelling cleAn energy


light. Water purification was his lifelong passion, but increas-

ingly he was concerned about climate change, energy security

and the importance of weaning the world from fossil fuels. “I

looked at the different ways I could do something about the

energy problem, and in the end it came down to the fact that I

understood anaerobic digestion,” Benedek says.

Anaerobic digestion (AD) is a multi-staged process

through which certain microbes break down organic matter

in an oxygen-free environment. It can happen slowly

and naturally, such as in a municipal landfill, or it can be

dramatically accelerated in a special tank called a digester.

“It’s basically a giant stomach being optimized to flatulate

24-seven,” said Dan Jones, a principal with biogas systems

supplier European Power System in Mississauga, Ont.

There are typically four stages. The process begins with

hydrolytic bacteria, which secrete the enzymes necessary to

break down complex organic molecules into soluble organic

compounds like simple sugars, fatty acids and amino acids.

Acidogenic bugs take over next, converting the soluble

compounds into volatile fatty acids and alcohol, which aceto-

genic bacteria then turn into acetic acid, CO2 and hydrogen.

Running the last leg of the race are the methanogens, which

make methane out of acetic acid and hydrogen. To make sure

there’s a healthy balance of the right microbes, manure is

often mixed with oils — old restaurant grease works fine —

and some kind of substrate, such as crop residue.

“You have thousands of species in there, but as long as

you consistently create the right conditions the species will

sort themselves out,” said Chris Ferguson, managing director

of biogas systems developer CCS-agriKomp, which is in

the process of building its first facility in Millbrook, Ont.

The end result is the production of a methane-rich biogas,

which can be burned for its heat or to generate electricity.

The renewable biogas can also be cleaned and upgraded for

injection into natural gas pipelines. Upgrading is necessary

because biogas has high levels of hydrogen sulphide and

other contaminants compared to pipeline-quality gas. It also

contains about 40 per cent less methane than natural gas,

so methane content must be concentrated to similar levels.

AD is an old idea that emerged in the late 1800s. The first

patent for such a system was issued in 1907 in Germany,

which along with France used the bacterial-driven process

to treat manure during the Second World War. Facilities are

now deployed widely throughout Europe, but the hotbed for

development remains Germany, where systems are used on

more than 4,000 farms to produce biogas. Larger “district”

systems that process high-volume organic waste streams

from industry and municipalities are also plentiful.

The technology, however, has gained relatively little

traction in North America. In Ontario only about a dozen

on-farm anaerobic digestion systems were operational by

the end of 2010, representing 65 per cent of all installed

systems across Canada. In the United States there are only

162 operational systems, according to the Environmental

Protection Agency. It estimates that dairy and swine farms

alone could justify deployment of more than 8,000 systems,

which collectively could produce enough electricity each

year for 1.3 million homes.

Jennifer Green, executive coordinator of the Agri-Energy

Producers Association of Ontario, says that the renewable

energy that can be harnessed from AD systems is, in many

ways, just the icing on the cake. For farmers, it’s an effective

approach to waste management that mitigates odour (versus

manure spread on an open field) and neutralizes pathogens

that could contaminate ground water. The process also

produces a safe, nutrient-rich “digestate” that can be used as

a fertilizer for crops.

For municipalities and industry, it’s a way to divert the

amount of organic waste that goes to landfills, where the

material would naturally decompose and slowly emit

methane — a highly potent greenhouse gas — into the

atmosphere. Green says the quality of energy AD systems

produce is also superior. The biogas can be stored anytime

and burned on demand to generate electricity, making it a

more reliable source of power than wind or solar. “It’s an

opportunity completely untapped,” Green says.

That was Benedek’s thinking. He saw no clear technology

leader in North America’s fledgling biogas market and felt it

was time to create one, though without having to reinvent

the wheel. “I decided I would invest in a European company

and then bring the technology to North America, while also

bringing improvements to the field,” he says.

Within a year of selling ZENON Benedek travelled

to Germany to research the technology landscape. One

company that caught his eye was UTS Biogastechnik

(formerly UTS Umwelt-Technik-Süd), which had supplied

business | bIoGAS


[TOP] Andrew Benedek

has allied with microorganisms

to produce clean energy.

[RIGHT] Aron Hamm,

biodigester manager at

Ontario’s Delft Blue, explains

that the manure from 2,700 veal

calves undergoes a biochemical

process that triggers biogas

production, used to produce

electricity to run the farm.

equipment to more than 1,500 biogas plants worldwide.

Benedek saw huge growth potential in the company and

in 2007 acquired majority control. Two years later, he

cracked the U.S. market with the opening of a subsidiary,

UTS BioEnergy, in Encinitas, Calif., and soon established a

presence in Michigan and Idaho.

Canada was next. Benedek discovered the UTS brand had

already been trademarked by a publicly traded oil company in

Calgary, so he devised the name Anaergia — a mix of “anaer-

obic” and “energy” — and announced plans this past May

to establish the company’s global headquarters in Southern

Ontario. It was a coup for the province, which agreed to

contribute $16 million (half grant, half zero-interest loan)

toward the $70 million project. The headquarters is expected

to include R&D capacity, equipment manufacturing and

create more than 200 jobs.

Why pick Ontario? It helped that the government was

willing to contribute 23 per cent of the new facility’s start-up

costs, but Benedek also appreciated the province’s long-term

support for renewable energy. It has progressive legislation

such as the Green Energy and Green Economy Act 2009,

and progressive energy policy, such as a comprehensive

feed-in-tariff (FIT) program that was modelled after similar

programs in Europe.

The FIT program pays developers of green energy projects

a generous rate for the power they produce over a period of

20 years. Developers that choose to produce biogas and then

burn it to generate electricity, for example, can earn anywhere


from 10.4 cents per kilowatt-hour for

the largest projects up to 19.5 cents

per kilowatt-hour for the smallest. (For

comparison, Ontarians pay between

5.9 cents to 10.7 cents per kilowatt-hour

for the electricity they consume,

depending on the time of day).

The program is supposed to reduce

risk and create stability in the market.

Projects become more economical

because of the premium paid for the

electricity that’s produced. Investors,

asked to pay upfront development

and construction costs, are comforted

knowing they have 20-year power

purchase contracts that assure they’ll

get a decent return on their invest-

ment. “I’ve seen this approach work

very well in Europe, and Ontario is the

only place in North American that has

gone in this direction,” says Benedek.

“I liked that the government was being

intelligent in this area.”

The program appears to be working.

Cambridge, Ont.-based Delft Blue, one

of Canada’s top suppliers of veal prod-

ucts, took advantage of the FIT program

and now has one of the largest on-farm

biogas systems in the province. Manure from its 2,700 calves

drops through floor grates in its barns and is collected by gravity

to a central location. To keep the process balanced, the manure

is mixed with food waste from local grocery stores and locally

sourced restaurant grease that is pasteurized on site.

Inside Delft’s digester building the organic cocktail is

heated to 38 C, sparking the biochemical processes that

trigger biogas production. The biogas rises and collects

inside an expandable membrane-lined roof. From there the

gas is piped to a separate generator room where grid-ready

electricity is produced for sale. Waste heat from the genera-

tors is recaptured and used on site to heat the stables and

water tanks. “The heat cost on the farm is just astronomical,

so if we can offset that, we’re looking at a 5½-year payback

on the total system,” says Aron Hamm, biodigester manager

at Delft, a division of sustainable agriculture company

Grober Green.

This assumes one has the upfront capital. Many farmers

lack such financial resources and Canadian banks haven’t

proved eager to lend, even with the guarantees offered by

the FIT program. If farmers do have the cash they often

complain that it takes too long to get environmental

approvals, or that local utilities won’t take their power

because of grid constraints. Some even say the FIT rates

for AD-system biogas aren’t high enough. Why, they ask,

does a 400-kilowatt solar PV project get 65.5 cents per

kilowatt-hour while a similarly sized biogas project only

qualifies for 15 cents? After all, biogas systems can dispatch

electricity when needed; with solar you have a half-day

window and are at the mercy of clouds.

Program numbers speak for themselves. As of June 10,

there were only 42 major biogas projects registered to

participate in the FIT program, according to the Ontario

Power Authority, the provincial agency that issues power-

purchase contracts. Of those projects, only seven are

currently operational. Hardly a booming market and well

short of the province’s potential. Benedek doesn’t seem

concerned — Ontario is part of a much larger opportunity.

“We can sell from Ontario into the United States,” he says.

As well, UTS’s initial focus will be on large municipal and

industrial biogas projects that have better access to capital.

The company will also focus on innovation. AD control

and monitoring systems can be enhanced, equipment can

be better integrated and construction and assembly methods

can be improved, all with an eye to raising the bar on system

efficiency and reliability. Benedek says the technology isn’t

overly complicated, at least on the surface. Like anything,

it can be built poorly or to the highest standards, and inno-

vation can help raise those standards and lower costs. “A

car isn’t all that complicated either, but over time you make

them more sophisticated, reliable and design them for better

gas consumption,” he says. “It’s the same with anaerobic

digestion, when you have already built 1,600 systems you

ultimately wind up learning a great deal about making it

better, faster and more reliable.”

That’s the edge Benedek hopes Anaergia will bring to

Ontario — and beyond.

roSS

bLA

INe


SoCIety NewS

ouTrEaCH

rECognITIon

In MEMorIaM

Chemistry fun on youtubeMiddle and high school students nabbed cash prizes in the first-ever Chemical Institute of Canada-sponsored YouTube video contest held in honour of the International Year of Chemistry and sponsored by Esso-Imperial Oil. Students submitted three-minute videos based on the theme, “Chemistry — our life, our future.” Each submission was judged on creativity, educational value and quality of video. First prize of $2,500 in scholarship funding went to Pascal Turmel and Jonathan Kwok of Vancouver for their video “Combustion’s Not Always Destruction.” Elisha Walker of Vancouver took second place and $1,000 while third prize of $500 for creativity went to students from Monterey Middle School in Victoria for the video “Chemical Girl,” a parody of Madonna’s 1985 hit “Material Girl.”

H2o under global microscopeAs part of the International Year of Chemistry, IUPAC has launched the Global Water Experiment, where students from around the world explore properties of the planet’s most crucial resource — water — and submit their findings to a global database. Four experi-ments have been designed using common household or classroom materials such as pop bottles and coffee filters. In Canada, students will submit their findings to the database during National Chemistry Week, Oct. 15–22. The experiments include determining the pH and salinity of water and constructing water filters and solar stills.

High school chemistry winnersChristopher Dee of St. George’s School in Vancouver is the winner of this year’s Canadian Chemistry Contest for high school and cégep students, organized by the Chemical Institute of Canada’s Chemical Education Division. Dee was chosen from among the first-place finishers representing six regions across Canada. The other winners include: Saba B. Balvardi, Halifax West High School, Atlantic Region; Étienne Lantagne-Hurtubise, CÉGEP de Trois-Rivières, Région de Québec; Melody (Yun Jia) Guan, University of Toronto Schools, Ontario Region; Kaien Gu, St. John's Ravenscourt School, Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Nunavut Region; and Justine Zhang, Sir Winston Churchill High School, Alberta and North West Territories. Contestants, who took home cash prizes and a certificate, were drawn from the top 10 per cent of high school chemistry students.

Cupcake caperThe chemistry department at Memorial University of Newfoundland recreated a famous 1907 event where Ida Freund, Britain’s first woman chemistry lecturer, tested her students on the periodic table by preparing small cakes representing each element. The event was held to celebrate the International Year of Chemistry.

Emmanuel Somers, FCIC, has died in London, Ont. at the age of 85. ACCN extends condolences to the family.

student Chapters get an ‘a’This year’s Canadian Society for Chemistry winner of the Student Chapter Merit Award is the University of Toronto at Mississauga’s Erindale Society of Chemical and Physical Sciences. Canadian Society for Chemical Engineering winners are: the University of Western Ontario, which took first place, and University of Toronto’s Student Chapter, which received honorable mention. The annual awards are given out in recognition of student chapters at universities and colleges across Canada that engage undergraduates both academically and socially. Merit Awards are presented for each society and recognize and encourage initiative and originality in student chapter programming in chemistry, chemical engineering or chemical technology.

order of ontario for shoichetMolly Shoichet, MCIC, University of Toronto’s world-renowned biomedical researcher of regenerative medicine, is among 30 new appointees to the Order of Ontario. Shoichet, who holds the Canada research chair in tissue engineering, is one of 30 appointees to Ontario’s highest honour who were chosen for their contributions to the arts, justice, science, medicine, history, politics, philanthropy and the environment.

faculty advisor accoladeKing’s University College’s Kristopher Ooms, MCIC, won the 2011 Canadian Society for Chemistry Faculty Advisor Award. This award is based on a nomination submitted by the Student Chapter recognizing the excep-tional performance of their faculty advisor to the planning and implementation of Student Chapter activities.

new president for upeiAlaa Abd-El Aziz, FCIC, has been appointed president of the University of Prince Edward Island. Abd-El Aziz was formerly provost at University of British Columbia Okanagan.


The culinary delights of meat glue

he idea of eating a steak made from pieces of meat scraps glued together is likely to stick in the craw

for most people. But there are also those who are ready to shell out a small fortune at New York’s uppity WD-50 restaurant for a chance to sink their teeth into shrimp noodles concocted with the same ‘meat glue.’

Rest assured that no horses were condemned to the glue factory to produce transglutaminase, colloquially known as meat glue. This enzyme cata-lyzes a reaction between lysine and glutamine and therefore can link protein strands that include these amino acids. If these proteins are located on the surface of adjacent pieces of meat, the pieces get stuck together almost like magic. The joint then looks just like one of the white streaks of gristle or fat commonly seen in meat. It’s so strong that the meat doesn’t even tear along the ‘fault line.’

Transglutaminase is not foreign to the human body. It is endogenously produced to aid in blood clotting, a process that requires protein molecules to form interlinked complex structures. Skin and hair are also composed of proteins that have been bound together and transglutaminase plays a role here as well.

In the 1990s, the food industry discovered that this enzyme can be isolated in good yield from the bacterium Streptoverticillium mobaraense and that it can be used to restructure meat, fish and poultry. For example, artificial crab legs and shrimp can be made by sticking together ground pieces of cheaper

seafoods such as pollock. While the taste of such artificial foods can be criticized, there is no health issue associated with consuming transglutaminase. As with any other protein, it is readily broken down into its component amino acids in the digestive tract.

Meat glue is produced for the food industry under the name Activa by the Japanese company Ajinomoto, which also markets monosodium gluta-mate (MSG). Celebrity chef Heston Blumenthal brought transglutaminase out of the shadows at the Fat Duck, the restaurant outside London that some consider the best in the world. Blumenthal’s enthusiasm for creating novel dishes with this enzyme rubbed off on Wylie Dufresne of New York’s famed WD-50 restaurant, who managed to grind shrimp into noodles with the help of transglutaminase and served it on a bed of smoked yogurt.

Other chefs who pursue molecular gastronomy, defined as the application of scientific principles to the creation of new dishes, are pushing the transglutaminase envelope. Around the corner are filet mignon with strips of bacon glued to its surface, fish coated with chicken skin to enhance flavour and shrimp burgers held together by cross-linked proteins. How about chicken fat stuck to steak to add a new dimension to chicken fried steak? Just in case your cholesterol isn’t high enough.

Unfortunately, transglutaminase also lends itself to some less-savoury applica-tions. Some producers or butchers use it to bind meat scraps into expensive prime cuts like filet that they price

accordingly. Any butcher engaging in such a clandestine practice may pay a price. While ingesting transglutaminase is no problem, inhaling the powder can damage the lungs. Consumers don’t have to worry about this, but there is an issue with cooking glued meat. The surface of meat is always covered with bacteria that are killed by cooking. However, with structured meat, some of the outside becomes the inside and if the meat is served rare — as many people prefer — bacteria on the inside may survive. This is the reason why hamburger meat has to be cooked thoroughly.

What if meat glue gets on the hands? No sticky fingers here, contact time is not long enough to do anything. The only sticky fingers are the ones involved in extracting money from people by passing off glued scraps as prime cuts.

There are other issues as well. Transglutaminase can be isolated from blood, with bovine and pig blood being used commercially, creating a problem for people adhering to religious dietary laws. Meat glue is not allowed in Europe, but can be used in Canada as long as it is declared on the label like any other additive.

Finally, one wonders if Lady Gaga’s famous meat dress was held together with transglutaminase. Only her butcher knows for sure.

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

Read his blog at chemicallyspeaking.com.

CheMfusion

by Joe schwarcz

2012awardsCanadian Society for Chemical engineeringNominations are now open for the

do you know an outstanding person who deserves to be recognized?

deadlinesThe deadline for all CIC awards isdecember 1, 2011 for the 2012 selection.

Nomination procedureSubmit your nominations electronically to:[email protected] Nomination forms and the full terms of rweference for these awards are available at www.chemeng.ca/awards.

Canadian Society for Chemical engineering

act now!

bantrel Award in design and Industrial practice

d. G. Fisher Award

process Safety Management Award

r. S. Jane Memorial Award

the Syncrude Canada Innovation Award

Innovation, Industry and Internationalization

61st Canadian Chemical engineering

Conference

London, ontario, Canada

october 23—26, 2011

Innovation, industrie et internationalisation

61e Congrès canadien de génie

chimique

London (ontario) Canada

du 23 au 26 octobre 2011

Canadian Society for Chemical engineering

Société canadienne de génie chimique

www.csche2011.ca

SCGChCSChe

ACCN, the Canadian Chemical News: September 2011

Documents

Transcript of ACCN, the Canadian Chemical News: September 2011