Looking for lithium in oil field brines is a bit like looking for a needle in a haystack. Yet retrieving this valuable metal makes sense in a place like Alberta, the heart of Canada’s oil and gas industry. Find out how it’s being done.
Read More >>Scientists began reporting microplastic pollution in the ocean as far back as the 1970s but our understanding of these tiny particles’ impact on fish is only just catching up. Their harm is due to factors not generally considered in toxicology testing – the plastics’ size, shape and chemical makeup.
Read More >>Researchers at Memorial University in Newfoundland have demonstrated proof of concept for a polyurethane produced using fish heads, bones, skin and guts —parts usually discarded from fisheries and aquaculture industries.
Read More >>When Mary Kang landed an environmental policy fellowship at Princeton University in 2012, she decided to model methane emissions from abandoned oil and gas wells. It didn’t take long to discover a major roadblock. “I couldn’t find any data. And you need data for modelling,” recalls Kang, now a civil engineering professor at McGill University.
Read More >>Catalyst (noun): an agent that provokes or speeds significant change or action. ‘Catalyst for change’ is such a well-worn phrase that it has lost much of its descriptive power. But in the case of a new materials research centre in Mississauga, it is apt on so many levels that it’s hard to avoid.
Read More >>When something fails to pass the ‘sniff test’ – whether it’s a plan of action or the milk in the back of the fridge – it’s often best to leave it be. But when it comes to unpleasant odours in the air, we don’t have much choice. We have to breathe.
Read More >>The Embassy of Canada in Berlin and the National Research Council of Canada, in collaboration with Natural Resources Canada, will be hosting a free virtual event, “A Carbon Free Fuel: Hydrogen Can,” at Falling Walls/Berlin Science Week on November 6th, 2020. Hydrogen is a versatile carbon-free chemical fuel that could serve as an energy vector...
Read More >>A third year lab course on organic synthesis techniques should have been just one more milestone for University of Toronto chemistry students John Russell and Leanna Smid. Instead, it spawned an entrepreneurial adventure that could alter the environmental footprint of teaching laboratories everywhere. “We both noticed that the issue of solvent waste was ever prevalent...
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