Leveraging 3D imaging in the battle against microplastics
Some of the research work I help out with…
Ever heard of the phrase coined by Friedrich Nietzsche, “the devil is in the details”? Professors William Anderson and Boxin Zhao have advanced the battle against microplastic pollution by uncovering the intricate details of how microplastics degrade in the environment. Observation and understanding the fine details of microplastics are key to eradicating them from our environment. The research group has been able to observe the degradation of micro and nanoplastics with unprecedented detail. In collaboration with the National Research Council (NRC) researchers leveraged 3D imaging technology, which allows for a much deeper understanding of the microplastic degradation process than traditional 2D microscopy. This detailed observation is the first of its kind, demonstrating the potential of 3D imaging as a powerful tool in microplastic research.
Capstone Design Projects: Chem Eng
In March of every year, our fourth year graduating engineering students complete a “capstone” group design project. This is meant to be a significant design experience where students can pull together concepts from across their program, and it’s a requirement for engineering program accreditation. Some of these projects are inspired by faculty research, others by the students’ own ideas, and still others by collaborations with industry partners.
For anyone interested in finding out more about the types of things that certain engineering programs cover, it’s useful to have a look at these projects. For 2024, the Chemical Engineering project descriptions are available here. There are 28 projects, covering quite a wide range of topic areas. Here are just a few mentions of ones that caught my attention.
Continue readingYour First Choice Program?
We continue looking at some admissions data for some Ontario engineering programs, based on the CUDO public database. As a bit of background, applicants to Ontario universities all apply through a central system (OUAC) shared by the universities (which is where this data comes from, I assume). In this system, an applicant can rank their preferred choice of program and university. Presumably, applicants rank as first choice the university they most desire to attend. Let’s see from the data where people tend to want to go, and how many end up there after the admissions process is all done.
Continue readingEngineering Tuition Trends
Like some other professional programs, the tuition for engineering tends to be more expensive than of many other degrees. It’s useful to compare tuition across some of the Ontario universities, once again using the CUDO data to see if there are any significant differences. We can also look at the trends over a few years to see how much more expensive it’s been getting. For context before we get into the engineering fees, according to CUDO in 2022 a typical “Arts & Science” program fees is around $7,500 for the first year (including ancillary fees). So on to the engineering fees.
Continue readingEntrance Average Breakdowns
In a recent couple of posts we’ve looked at the overall entrance averages for some Ontario engineering programs, and the specific proportion of admitted students that had a 95%+ average. Let’s look at the full breakdown of the proportions of admitted students with averages of 75-79, 80-84, etc. This data gets a bit too messy to plot across several years, so I’ll just look at 2021, the most recent year available on the CUDO data website.
Continue readingAdmitted With a 95%+ Average
The previous post showed the overall averages of students admitted to engineering programs (based on CUDO and Ontario school data). Since CUDO provides the data broken down into grade range bins, let’s look at one in particular. This is the bin for admitted students with an admission average of 95% or higher. The graph below shows the proportion (%) of admitted engineering students that had a final admission average greater than or equal to 95%, from 2017 to 2021 (the last available year)
Continue readingEntrance Average Trends
Everyone is always excited, concerned, interested and/or complaining about entrance averages, whether your a potential applicant, parent, faculty member, secondary school teacher, accreditation board, etc. So let’s have a look at how Ontario engineering school entrance averages have faired over the past few years. As usual, the data is from CUDO and in this case it is only available up to the 2021 entrance.
Continue readingWomen in Engineering Trends
The Common University Data Ontario (CUDO) website has lots of accessible information about Ontario universities, and it’s been quite a while since I looked at it. Since there’s nothing more fun for engineers than compiling and looking at data, I’ll post some now and then. Today, let’s start by looking at female, full-time enrollment in some Ontario engineering programs, and how it has trended over the past few years.
Continue readingKilling Germs on Escalator Handrails
An example of some of the research we do in engineering. I collaborated on a small project to test how to apply antimicrobial copper coatings to the rubbery surfaces of escalator handrail materials, using a technology called “cold spray”. It’s essentially a high velocity shot of copper particles onto the surface, and my mechanical engineering colleague Prof. Jahed led the project with his expertise in this area. Getting metallic materials to permanently stick onto rubbery materials is no easy task, but this approach seemed to work pretty well. There are a lot of microscopic technical issues that need to be understood.
My other colleague, Prof. Marc Aucoin from Chemical Engineering and I helped assess the anti-viral and antibacterial efficacy of the material after coating. Basically we showed that it was pretty good and various viruses and bacteria died off at very respectable levels (over 99.99%) when exposed to the surfaces.
This was a nice collaborative project involving professors, students and other researchers from mechanical and chemical engineering, and a combination of materials science, virology and microbiology. The resulting article was published last year in the Journal of Thermal Spray Technology, and was recently picked as one of 6 “Editors Choice” articles in 2023 in that journal. Anyone can now read it without a subscription, at this link. I’m not sure where this might lead next, but it’s a small step forward in potentially reducing disease transmission in public areas.
Engineering Disasters
In posts on accreditation of engineering programs, I mentioned that ethics, professionalism, health & safety, and environment are all expected outcomes that graduating students should have some familiarity with. When I was a student (a long long time ago) these topics weren’t emphasized much, but thankfully they are now. In courses I have taught, I try to inject some examples of technical areas where special attention is required to minimize risks to health, safety and the environment.
It’s commonly known that physicians have ethical responsibilities to not harm their patients. A bad or incompetent physician might harm patients one at a time, typically, but bad or incompetent engineers and other technical people can harm dozens or even thousands of people all at once. Here are a few examples that come to mind, some of which I’ve used as case studies in courses. These incidents are often due to a series of issues and are not usually caused by a specific engineer or other person. But they illustrate why we need to emphasize how to recognize and prevent these sorts of things in engineering education.
Imperial Sugar Refinery Explosion: In 2008, a dust explosion at a sugar refinery in Georgia killed 14 and injured 36. Poor design, maintenance, hazard identification and risk mitigation.
Hyatt Regency Walkway Collapse: In 1981, overhead walkways at a hotel in Kansas City collapse, killing 114 and injuring 216 due to structural overload. The original (adequate) design had been modified during construction, but without proper design change management and review. Something vaguely similar happened to Terminal 2E at the Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris in 2004.
Piper Alpha Oil Platform Explosion: In 1988 the North Sea oil platform had an explosion and fire that essentially melted it into the sea, killing 167 with 61 escaping. There were numerous failures that contributed to it, but they include poor design and management of change, inadequate hazard recognition and mitigation, poor safety management system, and poor training.
Bhopal Gas Release: In 1984 a chemical plant in India had a toxic gas release of methyl isocyanate leading to 3,787 deaths and 574,366 injuries. Estimates vary, but the numbers are staggering no matter what the exact numbers. Again, there is a host of issues but they include: poor maintenance on multiple pieces of equipment and instrumentation, inadequate safety system design, poor emergency response systems, poor management of change. This event stunned the chemical industry and led to major increases in attention paid to “process safety“, including in chemical engineering education and program accreditation.
Texas City Refinery Explosion: In 2005 a flammable vapour cloud release lead to an explosion that killed 15 and injured 180. As usual, multiple factors at play including: poor design and maintenance, poor safety culture in the company, overloaded staff, poor hazard identification and risk mitigation, lack of investment.
So those are a few examples, mainly from the chemical industry because that’s what I’m more familiar with. There is a whole bunch more posted on the U.S. Chemical Safety Board website (a good resource for teaching materials). There are probably lots of others from various sectors that I could look for, including the obvious and infamous Chernobyl nuclear disaster. If anyone has interesting other examples feel free to post some information in the comments.
A Professor in Waterloo Engineering 