ACCN, the Canadian Chemical News: Nov | Dec 2011

www.accn.ca

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

November • December | novembre • décembre 2011

Molly Shoichet getS creative with regeneration

Body of Work

the big deSalination Sell

RUbbeR ReNAISSANCe

NoveMbeR • DeCeMbeR 2011 canadian cheMical newS 3

Salt-lution A thirsty world dependent upon desalination is a glass half full to a vancouver pair with an ingenious solution.By Tyler Hamilton

table of contentS

Features

reinventing rubberThe rubber meets the road at the new LANXeSS AG centre for R&D in London, ont.By Tyler IrvingPour obtenir la version française de cet article,écrivez-nous à [email protected]

body of work University of Toronto’s Molly Shoichet is tilling the field of regenerative medicine, which seeks to stimulate human organs to self-repair. By Peter Calamai

2014

Departments

from the editor

guest columnBy Karen Burke

chemical newsBy Tyler Irving

Society news

chemfusionBy Joe Schwarcz

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November • December | novembre • décembre vol.63, no./no 10

business

chemistry

chemical engineering

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.

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Molly Shoichet is not quite a household name. But it seems inevitable

that this University of Toronto professor of chemical engineering and

applied chemistry is well on her way to joining the ranks of such

Canadian icons as Banting and Best, whose discovery of insulin earned them

an enduring place not only in the annals of science but the hearts of Canadians.

Shoichet has already captured the national imagination with her research into

regenerative medicine technologies, which have the ultimate goal of stimulating

human organs to repair themselves, promising mobility for those with spinal

cord injuries and renewed health for those with diabetes, cancer or heart disease.

A few months ago, Shoichet was awarded an Order of Ontario, adding to a

veritable charm bracelet of endowments that includes Canada Research Chair in

Tissue Engineering, Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and of the American

Association for the Advancement of Science, as well as Killam and Steacie

fellowships. Such laurels, however, have not lulled Shoichet into a more leisurely

research pace. Her latest groundbreaking work, the creation of three-dimensional

protein-patterned scaffolds for tissue engineering, was the cover story in

last month’s Nature Materials. And while ACCN may not have quite the same

international stature as Nature, we are proud nonetheless to present an update on

Shoichet’s research in our cover story “Body of Work.”

Equally laudable is a breakthrough by Saltworks Technologies co-founders

Joshua Zoshi and Ben Sparrow, who have engineered a deceptively clever

new method of desalination, as described in the feature “Salt-lution.” This

Vancouver invention is sure to help alleviate serious water shortage and

pollution problems throughout the world.

Finally, the chemistry family as a whole bids farewell to the United Nations’

International Year of Chemistry. ACCN was honoured to record the creative

outreach initiatives undertaken across the country by thousands of people

in university departments, colleges, high schools, local CIC sections and

industry. IYC may be over, but the good will and interest generated should

be considered a building block for further outreach in 2012. As Karen Burke,

president of the Canadian Society for Chemistry, discusses in this issue’s

guest column, opportunities abound for chemists to participate in outreach

activities. It is not outreach for outreach’s sake, however. Rather, young

students need to be inspired to join the ranks of chemistry researchers because,

as Burke points out, “society cannot survive without chemists.”

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

IchIkIzakI Fund For Young chemIstsThe Ichikizaki Fund for Young Chemists provides financial assistance to young chemists who show unique achievements in basic research by facilitating their participation in international conferences or symposia.

eligibility:• be a member of the Canadian Society for Chemistry or

the Chemical Society of Japan;• not have passed his/her 34th birthday as of December 31

of the year in which the application is submitted; • have a research specialty in synthetic organic chemistry; • be scheduled to attend, within one year, an international

conference or symposium directly related to synthetic organic chemistry. Conferences taking place in January to March of each year should be applied for a year in advance in order to receive funding in time for the conference.

Deadline: december 31, 2011

For more details:

www.chemistry.ca/awards

FUNDING CheMICAL eDUCATIoN call for

ProPoSalSDeADLINe: December 15, 2011

The CIC Chemical education Fund (CeF) is looking to support original and innovative chemical -related

educational projects. The CeF has sponsored student conferences , science fairs, chemical outreach

programs , a Summer Institute, and more.

For more information, contact [email protected]

or visit www.cheminst.ca/cef


gueStCoLUMN

Chemists must inspire young students

C ompanies cutting their R&D budgets. Pharmaceutical research facilities being closed across Canada. A recent article on the website

BNET listed 10 “High Paying Jobs with No Future.” Number eight on their list? Chemist.

Should we still recommend that students study science?Sir Harold Kroto, 1996 Nobel Prize winner in chemistry,

says that “science is the only way we can understand truth.” From his perspective, it is an ethical issue — we must teach science to children so they learn how to assess claims based on evidence, not blind faith. Clearly that is important, but can it translate to a career?

There is concern in Canada that you may have to abandon your science studies to have a successful career. While chemistry jobs in the pharmaceutical industry may be fewer than in past years, they still exist. Even if one follows a non- traditional career path for a chemist, we rarely “leave it behind.” We build on our science background as a lawyer, a regulatory affairs professional, a clinical researcher, or a CEO. A science education provides skills that support success in a career: the ability to think critically, to communicate effectively and to solve problems.

I think a science background is beneficial not only for the individual, but important for the economic health and growth of our country. I am not alone in this belief: nearly 90 per cent of Canadians believe that young people’s interest in science is essential for the country’s future prosperity. The issue may not be in what to do with a science degree, but rather how to get students interested in science in the first place.

So where do we stand in Canada? A 2010 Angus Reid survey found that only 37 per cent of Canadian teenagers aged 16 to 18 are interested in taking a science course at the post-secondary level — and these are students currently enrolled in at least one high school science course. And while 82 per cent of Canadian teenagers recognize that studying science opens many different career options, only four per cent of them perceive people working in science-related professions as ‘cool.’

How can we shift that perception? I offer a few suggestions:• Support science education. The company where I work,

Amgen Canada, is strongly committed to science education. To that end, Amgen honours outstanding science teachers with the Amgen Award for Science Teaching Excellence (AASTE). In 2011, four teachers across Canada received this award, which consists of a $5,000 unrestricted grant for

by Karen burke

the teacher and a $5,000 grant for their school to be used to fund science education. This type of recognition promotes and rewards excellence in science teaching, while helping attract bright young minds to science. It would be a posi-tive step if even more support would come to our valuable science teachers from industry. But of course, the future of our children is not all in the hands of the school teacher.

• Get involved. Numerous opportunities exist for chemists to participate in outreach activities in their communities, such as:

• Local Chemical Institute of Canada sections or public events like Edmonton’s Cafe CIC (contact this section for more details or ideas);

• Offer your time to non-profit educational outreach groups. One such group is Let’s Talk Science, which provides resources and education programs that help inspire creativity, curiosity and a life-long love of science and learning in Canadian youth;

• Volunteer to be a judge at a local science fair. Your science expertise will be greatly welcomed;

• Be an ambassador. Learn how to speak about chemistry in simple language. Share the wonder that we feel about chemistry with young people and give them hands-on experiences. A few months ago, while at an airport in the United States, I came across a store where every product they sold, whether clothing, jewellery, or toy, changed colour in sunlight. Even the bag in which they placed your purchase was a colour-changer: white transformed to a soft pink in the sun then returned to white. This is pure chemistry, delivered in a way that engages people;

• Give out glow-sticks to kids at your next evening get-together, drop Mentos candies into Diet Coke (I recommend doing this outside!) or have a fireworks display next Victoria Day long weekend.

Chemistry is fun and we all know that society cannot survive without chemists. Build and keep that sense of magic in the student, so that they consider pursuing studies in chemistry. As scientists, we all have an important role to play in making this happen.

Karen Burke is an executive at Amgen Canada and president of the Canadian Society for Chemistry.

8 l’actualité chiMique canadienne NoveMbRe • DÉCeMbRe 2011

cheMical newS

AnAlyTICAl CHemISTry

nAnoTeCHnology

The reaction between polyanaline and formaldehyde is shown above. The polymer is normally planar (A) but contorts on bonding (b) which changes its conductivity. An array of similar polymer-based sensors comprises the electronic nose (bottom).

The human nose contains millions of cells coated with more than 1,000 types of olfactory receptors. Now, researchers at the National Research Council (NRC) have found a way to mimic this process, creating a prototype ‘e-nose’ that can detect a range of substances, from toxic pollutants to dangerous goods.

Three years ago, a group led by Gerardo Diaz-Quijada at the NRC’s Steacie Institute for Molecular Sciences was asked to develop a more effective chemical sensor for formaldehyde, a toxic compound that often leaches out of building materials. They did this using polyaniline (PANI), a polymer that consists of phenyl rings connected by nitrogen groups. The unique structure of PANI contains many de-localized bonds, which allow electrons to flow along the chain and give it a mild conductivity. At the same time, the nitrogen groups are reactive and can temporarily bond to molecules like formaldehyde. This bonding contorts the polymer and changes the electrical conductivity. By detecting this change, the sensor can identify the presence of formaldehyde in less than a second, even at the parts per billion level.

electronic noSe develoPed at nrc

Even more promisingly, PANI’s structure — and therefore its reactivity — can be easily altered by the addition of various side chains. Diaz-Quijada imagines creating a family of related polymer sensors, each one of which would bond to a given molecule in a slightly different way. “This is exactly how we sense smells with our noses,” Diaz-Quijada says. “You smell something not because we have highly selective receptors, but because the molecule will partially bind to many different receptors and your brain is able to decode this as a pattern.” This pattern or ‘fingerprint’ model explains how humans are able to detect about 10,000 different odours, despite having far fewer unique receptors.

The formaldehyde detector is currently on track to be commercialized within a year, although the e-nose will take longer to develop. The team is currently shopping the prototype to companies interested in sensing applications from environmental pollutants to explosives. Diaz-Quijada estimates that the e-nose might be sniffing around airports or factories in about five years.

nanoParticleS could iMProve nicKel recovery

Nano-scale bumps on this lotus leaf [left] improve its hydrophobicity. Similarly, by decorating particles like this glass bead [right] with nanoparticles of polystyrene (each about 290 nm in diameter) researchers can alter its hydrophobic properties. The technique could improve the recovery of nickel from low-grade ores in Canada.

A b


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

BuSIneSS

bioAmber currently produces 3,000 tonnes of bio-based succinic acid per year at this demonstration plant in pomacle, France. The company has selected Sarnia, ont. as the location for its first commercial-scale plant.

BIO-BASED SUCCINIC ACID PLANT PLANNED FOR SARNIA

The world’s first commercial-scale bio-based succinic acid plant is set to be built in Sarnia, ont. The announcement was made this past August by bioAmber Inc., which will build the plant through its subsidiary, bluewater biochemicals.

Succinic acid is a chemical building block used in a variety of biodegradable and non-biodegradable plastics. It’s also an ingredient in many flavourings and fragrances, as well as engine coolants and even salts that melt ice and snow. Although it’s traditionally sourced from petroleum products, bioAmber has de-veloped a process that uses microorganisms to produce succinic acid from a variety of biomass sugars. “The initial feedstock for the plant in Sarnia will be corn syrup, which is mostly glucose,” says Jim Millis, bioAmber’s chief technology officer. “our intent is to source whatever will be the lowest-cost glucose, but certainly the ontario-based corn processing plants are one of those op-tions,” Millis adds. eventually, the company plans to use cellulosic agricultural waste like corn stover as a feedstock.

In addition to being close to agricultural land, Sarnia was chosen for its combination of chemical infrastructure, skilled labour and competitive transportation costs. In addition, the plant received a total of about $35 million in support from the ontario Ministry for economic Development and Trade, Sustainable Development Technology Canada and the Sustainable Chemistry Alliance. “This is the first biobased chemical company to build a plant in North America,” says Murray McLaughlin, president and Ceo of the Sustainable Chemistry Alliance. “It says that Sarnia and Canada are a place to do business in the new economy of biobased chemistry.”

The plant is expected to cost about $80 million and is set expected to begin production in 2013. Its initial capacity will be 17,000 metric tonnes of biosuccinic acid per year. Through the introduction of next-generation yeast, the company hopes to eventually double that production to 35,000 metric tonnes per year. The product will be sold in markets in North America, Asia and europe.

As high-grade ores becomes depleted, Canadian nickel miners are looking for new technologies to make recovery of low-grade ores more economical. That’s just what a team at McMaster University is developing, with a new froth-flotation strategy based on nanoparticles of polystyrene (PS).

Froth-flotation involves pulverizing minerals into a wet slurry of particles around 100 µm in size then adding chemical agents known as collectors, which are often short chains of hydrocarbons with surfactant properties. These molecules selectively bind to nickel-rich particles and increase their hydrophobicity, allowing them to hitch a ride on air bubbles and float to the surface, where they are skimmed off.

Robert Pelton of McMaster’s Department of Chemical Engineering, along with PhD candidate Songtao Yang, have been looking for new types of collectors. Since naturally hydrophobic surfaces like lotus leaves have nano-scale bumps on them, the pair reasoned that coating the micro-scale mineral particles with nanoparticles of polymers like

polystyrene might improve flotation. Preliminary studies on glass beads have shown even better performance than theory predicted. “You can get it to work with as low as five per cent coverage,” says Pelton. “That’s really important commercially, because you can’t afford to paint the whole mineral surface with these hydrophobic nanoparticles.”

The researchers are now working on altering the polystyrene to make it stick to pentlandite, a common nickel-bearing ore. It’s a difficult balancing act; the nanoparticles have to be hydrophilic enough to be colloidally stable in water but hydrophobic enough to float. “Our first indications are that pure polystyrene is pretty good, it seems to be kind of a sweet spot. So the real challenge becomes, how do you get the selec-tive deposition onto real minerals without sacrificing those properties?” If successful, the new technique could apply not only to nickel mining but other precious metals like copper and gold. The work is published in two recent articles in the journal Langmuir.

bIo

AM

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INC.


cheMical newS

bioplastics made from starch or oil crops are nothing new, but researchers at the University of Alberta have gone one step further — they’ve created a structural polymer from unwanted beef parts.

The project began in the wake of the bovine spongeform encephalopathy (bSe) crisis which turned animal parts like the brain or spinal column from a valuable source of protein for animal feed into a liability to be disposed of. one disposal method is hydrolysis — treating the mate-rials with hot water or caustic solution to break down the proteins and destroy any infectious prions that might be present. The result is a deep brown, molasses-like material of dubious value.

In 2007 a team led by David bressler of the Department of Agricultural, Food, and Nutritional Science at U of A set out to find a use for the waste material. “Until we got started, I don't think anybody knew chem-ically what it was,” bressler says. The team discovered that hydrolysis broke proteins down from 150—200 kilodaltons in size to about 10. Their next move was to see if the nitrogen groups on these small protein pieces could be knitted together into some kind of structural matrix. As it turned out, several cross-linking agents that were already known to the polymer industry worked well.

PolymerS

envIronmenT

POLYMER MADE FROM RECYCLED BOVINE BITS

Unwanted cow parts from meat processors can be broken down into short peptides and then cross-linked to create structural polymers for possible use in automobiles and other applications.

by adjusting their recipes, bressler’s team can alter the properties of the plastics to fit any number of applications. “Right now, we're targeting the automotive industry because they have some of the most rigorous standards and testing,” he says. “If we shoot for Mars and we end up on the moon, that's still pretty cool.” The process was patented earlier this year and the team is currently working with companies like the woodbridge Group to meet the desired standards. bressler says the most rewarding part is the fact that a waste material has been turned into something valuable. “It's one of the first stories about bSe that’s positive.”

Fines — clay particles less than 44 µm across — can take years to settle from oil sands tailings ponds. but a new chemical approach developed at the University of Alberta could greatly speed this p rocess, which is poised for commercialization.

Traditionally, two methods have been used to accelerate the settling of fines. Coagulation involves adding positively charged ions like calcium or aluminum to attract the negatively charged fine particles together. by contrast, flocculation employs a high molecular weight polymer, usually polyacrylamide (pAM), to act as a microscopic spider web, entangling the fine particles and forcing them to sink. however, both methods often fail to collect all the particles, leaving behind a dirty supernatant.

CHEMICAL AGENT SPEEDS SOLIDS SETTLING

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

Six per cent may not sound like a big number, but for Ted Sargent, Canada Research Chair in Nanotechnology at the University of Toronto, it’s meaningful. It represents the power conversion efficiency of his group’s colloidal quantum dot (CQD) solar cells — the highest ever reported for this technology.

Traditional silicon photovoltaics are fabricated as a single rigid crystalline layer. By contrast, CQD technology is based on nanoparticles of semiconducting materials (in this case, lead sul-phide) that can be spin-coated or sprayed on a substrate surface, including ones that are lumpy or flexible. Because the size of the particles is on the same scale as the wavelengths of light, research-ers can tune them to absorb whatever wavelength they like by making them slightly bigger or smaller. This past July, Sargent’s group published a paper in Nature Photonics reporting the first-ever tandem CQD solar cell, which absorbed sunlight from two different frequencies using two different sizes of CQD particles.

Their latest breakthrough concerns the passivation layer, a coating that surrounds each nanoparticle and holds them together in a matrix. Traditionally, this layer was composed of bulky organic compounds like ethanedithiol. But in their latest paper, published in Nature Materials, the group was able to replace this compound with inorganic compounds: ions of bromine, chlorine and iodine. This effectively shrunk the passivation layer to the thickness of a single atom, which greatly improved the transport of electrons through the quantum dot layer. It led to the six per cent efficiency, beating the previous record of 5.1 per cent, also set by Sargent’s group.

In the future, it is hoped that CQD technology will lead to highly efficient solar cells that take less energy to produce, are flexible and absorb more of the sun’s energy than silicon,

mATerIAlS SCIenCe

SiX Per cent Solar cell SucceSS

A team headed by Zhenghe Xu, who holds the NSeRC Industry Research Chair in oil Sands engineering at U of A, along with former chair holder Jacob Masliyah, decided to use a hybrid approach. They prepared a chemical called Al-pAM, which consists of a positively charged aluminum hydroxide core surrounded by branches of polyacrylamide. In lab tests, Al-pAM performed better than traditional floccula-tion agents. “The settling rate is comparable to conventional polyacrylamide and its derivatives,” says Xu. “but it flocculates fine particles very effectively, so the supernatant is much clearer.” This allows for effective filtration of fine tailings and recycling of the water and could reduce or even eliminate the use of tailing ponds.

Although Al-pAM is easy to make in the lab, it remains to be seen if it can be produced effectively on the large scale. Currently, that research is being carried out by one of Xu’s industrial partners, Champion Technologies. “It’s very

exciting to see them take over what we discovered in the lab,” says Xu. “That’s one of the most rewarding aspects of research, when we discover something that will have a benefit for people’s lives.” If successful, Xu hopes to see Al-pAM being used in tailings ponds within three to four years.

which is limited by its inherent absorption spectrum. Sargent admits that the group has more work to do in order to meet the 10 per cent efficiency that’s considered the target for CQD solar cell commercialization, or the 14 to 18 per cent achievable with silicon. But he’s confident that within the next decade or so, CQD will come into its own. “This shows that inorganic passivation strategies can be extremely effective and there’s no reason to believe that we’ve come anywhere close to what’s possible,” he says. “I think we’ve just scratched the surface.”

A Bbulky organic molecules like ethanedithiol (yellow and blue spheres) are often used as a passivating layer on colloidal quantum dots made of lead sulphide (red and green spheres) in solar cells (A). by replacing these with halogen ions (b, blue spheres) a team at the University of Toronto has improved electron transport between the quantum dots and increased the efficiency of the solar cells to record levels.

JIAN

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The Chemical Institute of Canada’s highlights from the International Year of Chemistry (IYC)

• A Guinness world Record is set at Université Laval

• Dr. Joe Schwarcz represents chemists on Daily Planet

• Alex Trebek informs us about IyC in an episode of Jeopardy! which featured chemistry trivia

• Canadian students participate in the Global water experiment to create a worldwide database for water quality

• Canada post launches a commemorative stamp for IyC

• british Columbia students receive $4,000 in funding for further education by sweeping the “It’s Chemistry, eh!?” youTube contest for high school students

• Canada’s high school student chemistry team performs their best ever at the International Chemistry olympiads in Turkey

• Across the nation, thousands particapate in chemistry demonstrations and lectures during Science Rendezvous

• Canada’s university chemistry and chemical engineering departments join in the celebrations, hosting public education events throughout 2011

• The Canadian Society for Chemistry hosts its largest ever chemistry conference

• More than one million Canadians reached by IyC activities

For more success stories, visit IYC2011.ca

Chemistry — Our Life, Our Future

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Silver

bronze Partner

SuPPorter

Chemical Institute of Canada

Sponsors current as of october 7, 2011

TM

The Chemical Institute of Canada thanks all of the sponsors of our Canadian programs for the

International year of Chemistry.

@iyc2011_canada chemical institute of canada - international year of chemistry (iyc2011)


or decades, observers have bemoaned the gap between the curiosity-driven

mission of academic researchers and the commercial-based needs of

industry, blaming it in part for Canada’s lacklustre record in innovation.

“I call it the ‘development void,’ ” says polymer chemist and biomedical

engineer Molly Shoichet, a woman of infectious enthusiasm, gamine-like

charm and boundless energy.

Unlike the hand-wringers, however, Shoichet is taking a central role in

an effort to build a bridge across that void in one specific research area, the

field of regenerative medicine that uses stem cells, tissue engineering and

biomaterials to stimulate organs in the human body to repair themselves.

A professor in the University of Toronto’s department of chemical

engineering and applied chemistry, Shoichet is the lead scientist for

biomaterials and tissue mimetics (imitations), one of three “platform areas”

of the Centre for the Commercialization of Regenerative Medicine.

Headquartered at U of T, the centre was formally established this past

June on the basis of a five-year, $15 million federal government grant

Molly Shoichet is the leading researcher at university of toronto's new centre for the commercialization of regenerative Medicine, creating technologies to treat and possibly cure diabetes, cancer, heart disease and spinal cord injuries.

by Peter calamai

Body of Work


cheMical engineering | ReGeNeRATIve MeDICINe


frontier research areas is reflected in

a plethora of honours and awards: an

initial Tier 2 Canada Research Chair

in Tissue Engineering followed by a

Tier 1 Chair which runs until 2013,

Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada

and of the American Association for

the Advancement of Science, holder of

both Killam and Steacie high-prestige

fellowships, the Order of Ontario

and a Young Explorer’s Award from

the Canadian Institute for Advanced

Research back in 2002.

Yet it almost didn’t unfold that way.

When the Toronto native finished

her PhD in polymer chemistry at the

Amherst campus of the University

of Massachusetts in 1992, she had to

choose between two job offers. One

was from a small, American biophar-

maceutical start-up working at the

leading edge of science on a scheme

to deliver cells encapsulated in a

hollow fibre membrane to the central

nervous system. The other was from a

major cosmetic corporation, designing

lipsticks and nail polishes. “I followed

my passions,” says Shoichet about the decision to join the

start-up, and about her career path in general.

One of those passions is medicine, a legacy of pre-medical

studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology — and

of parental insistence on having a career. Another passion

is polymers, sparked when she produced polyvinyl alcohol

in an MIT lab. “It’s a simple reaction but it was the first

chemistry experiment where I could see the result.” Finally,

there’s the passion of engineering a mechanical solution

to a medical problem, most likely involving a minimally

intrusive way of delivering drugs or stem cells to a hitherto

irreparable organ.

Shoichet’s return to Canada came after she and her

husband, a Harvard MBA, extensively surveyed the best

locales for their respective careers. Toronto came third in

that hard-headed analysis, but again Shoichet followed her

passions. During an international conference she quizzed

and almost as much in cash and in-kind commitments from

industry, institutional and other partners.

The centre’s mission is to be an incubator for regenerative

medicine technologies in their early stages and develop a

commercialization pipeline to bring the technologies to market,

ideally through companies in Canada. Technologies that could

treat — and possibly even cure — afflictions such as diabetes,

cancer, heart disease and spinal cord injuries are priorities.

“We’re really excited about working at the interface of

engineering, chemistry and medicine,” Shoichet says during

an interview at the new Donnelly Centre for Cellular

and Biomolecular Research at the U of T where her labo-

ratory spreads across a large sunlit swath of the top floor.

The 46-year-old scientist-engineer has been beavering

away at that particular triple interface throughout her

career, continually devising structures to bridge gaps,

both conceptual and physical. Shoichet’s success in these

peTeR CALA

MA

I


U of T tissue engineering guru Michael Sefton about

opportunities in her home town. “After just a few minutes

of talking with her, I realized that Molly was a keeper and

that we had to get her here,” Sefton says. But it was 1995

and cash-strapped universities in Canada were imposing

salary freezes. The only way U of T’s chemical engineering

department could hire Shoichet was for her to win a special

University Faculty Award from the Natural Sciences and

Engineering Research Council (NSERC) which provided

five-years salary and a research grant.

“Writing that grant forced me to think of a research

project right away. I figured that I had a PhD in polymer

chemistry so I could make my own materials, which not a lot

of people then in biomedical engineering could. I thought

about where in the central nervous system would you want

to implant materials. And I said to myself: ‘I bet I could

design a better material that we could implant into a spinal

cord that’s been damaged.’ That was how my first foray into

spinal cord engineering began.”

From that spinal cord beginning Shoichet’s research

interests have since extended to regenerative strategies for

stroke and for severe vision impairment such as age-related

macular degeneration and retinitis pigmentosa. Some of the

approaches centre on drugs that spur the body’s own stem cells

to transform into specialized cells and repair damaged tissue,

others involve transplanting stem cells from elsewhere.

In all cases, however, what’s needed is a way to deliver the

drugs or cells with minimal harm to the already damaged

tissue in the spinal cord, brain or eye and then to keep the

cells alive. “The two fundamental problems in cell delivery

are survival and regeneration — 99 per cent of transplanted

cells don’t survive. My lab’s approach is to provide the cells

with a wonderful soup and then be the FedEx of cell delivery

or drug delivery.”

Like FedEx, the Shoichet laboratory has perfected

its own exclusive packaging over the years, a hydrogel

(a water-based gel) known as HAMC that is a physical

blend of hyaluronan and methylcellulose. Hyaluronan

occurs naturally in human skin and cartilage; combining it

with methycellulose speeds up the gelling process allowing

HAMC to be injected by ultrafine needles yet quickly set

into a protective scaffold for drugs or cells.

Gary Goodyear, the federal Minister of State for Science

and Technology, got to experience these specialized

properties for himself when he was handed a syringe loaded

with HAMC during a visit to Shoichet’s lab this past June.

Goodyear had no trouble getting the drop of gel to appear on

the end of the needle.

Shoichet’s research at the U of T has led to 30-plus patents

(some covering HAMC formulations), more than a 110 peer-

reviewed journal articles, at least 240 invited lectures and the

training of 13 post-doctoral fellows and 46 graduate students.

“She is one of a half-dozen leaders around the world who set

the agenda in neural tissue engineering as well as a spectacular

collaborator,” says Sefton, a distinguished university professor

in the Institute of Biomaterials and Biomedical Engineering.

As a patron of the Koffler Centre for the Arts and the

Mount Sinai Research Foundation, Shoichet is also a force

to be reckoned with well beyond the university. In addition,

starting in 1998, she’s been a founder or co-founder of three

biomedical start-up companies. This combination of corpo-

rate sector experience and bench researcher makes Shoichet

a much-valued member of the Science, Technology and

Innovation Council, says Howard Alper, who chairs the

federal advisory body. As both a scientist and an engineer

Shoichet brings unique qualities to STIC deliberations.

“She’s truly multi-dimensional in terms of her interests,” says

Alper, a catalysis chemist who is the former vice-rector of

research at the University of Ottawa.

Among other interests and activities on her CV, Shoichet

lists mother of two sons, skiing, fluent French, half-mara-

thon runs and reading fiction. Plus a private pilot’s licence,

which she hasn’t kept current. Soon she’ll be able to add

video producer. For the past two years, Shoichet has been

promoting the idea of videos to boost science engagement

by the general public. A prototype about cardiac stem cells

has been produced by Mark MacMillan of Toronto’s Lithium

Studios and will shortly be shown to potential funders to

raise funds for a series of one-minute online videos and

30-second versions for commercial broadcast. Shoichet

remarks: “Right now in Canada we have a ‘pull’ mentality to

science engagement. We wait for people who are interested

to find out about our work. Instead we went to switch to a

‘push’ mentality, with these videos acting like commercials

for the value of basic research.”

The campaign slogan is “Today’s Research, Tomorrow’s

Reality” and if it succeeds it will be just one more example

of the kinds of bridges that Shoichet builds across gaps.

www.csc2012.ca

95th Canadian Chemistry Conference and exhibition

May 26—30, 2012 CALGARy, ALbeRTA

Energizing Chemistry

energy futures Symposium application deadline: december 15, 2011

energy futures: A multidisciplinary symposium for graduate students involved in energy related chemical research in Canada.

The organizing committee of the 95th Canadian Society for Chemistry Conference and exhibition is pleased to announce “Energy Futures ,” an afternoon symposium for outstanding chemistry graduate students performing energy related research - broadly defined - in any subdiscipline of chemistry.

The symposium will be held on Tuesday, May 29, 2012 and feature seven to eight 20- minute oral contributions by selected graduate students and a keynote lecture by Thomas Meyer, Arey Distinguished professor of Chemistry at the University of North Carolina, Chapel hill.

The selected graduate students will each receive complimentary registration and a contribution towards their travel expenses from the organizing committee and the best presentation will be awarded the “energy Futures prize.”

eligibility:

• Students must be carrying out energy related research (broadly defined) at a Canadian University in an M. Sc or phD program.

• Applications must be supported by the student’s supervisor. • Students from the University of Calgary will not be considered.

Applications should include the following:

• A draft abstract describing the topic of the research to be presented in the 20-minute oral timeslot.

• A brief (one page or less) explanation of how the research relates to a problem in energy research (e.g. conversion, storage, provision, recovery, carbon management or the environmental effects of the energy industry).

• A letter of support from the student’s supervisor. • all documentation should be combined into one .pdf file and sent by email to

Prof. curtis berlinguette at [email protected].

host Sponsor for energy Futures: www.solar.ucalgary.ca

Canadian Society for Chemistry (CSC)


LANXESS AG is a major producer of butyl rubber,

a chemical found in such commodities as car tires

and chewing gum. This past June, the global giant

officially opened its new research and development

centre at the University of Western Ontario Research

Park in London, Ont. ACCN spoke to Ralf Ingo Schenkel,

vice-president, LANXESS Butyl Rubber Global Research

and Development, about what the centre means for the butyl

rubber business worldwide.

accn what is butyl rubber and where is it used?

rS Butyl rubber is essentially poly(isobutene) with two mol

per cent of isoprene in the polymer chain. The small amount

of isoprene in the polymer backbone means that it contains

roughly two mol per cent of unsaturation. This makes it

reactive and allows it to be vulcanized or halogenated.

Butyl rubber has excellent impermeability to air and

moisture, which leads directly to the most important

application of this polymer: the inner liner in automobile

tires. You don’t see it from the outside, but this is the part

of the tire that keeps the air inside, providing safety and

endurance. The second most important application is in

pharmaceutical closure systems. These are the small seals that

are used to close vials containing pharmaceutical solutions.

The reasons are the same: impermeability against air and

moisture and also chemical and biological inertness. In both

of these applications, butyl rubber is used as a halogenated

polymer, which we call halobutyl.

There is also an interest in niche applications for butyl

rubber that is not halogenated. This is a very high quality

grade and is used in gum base, which is a key component in

AQ& lanXeSS ag’s newest research facility in ontario is uncovering new uses for an old material.

by tyler irving

Reinventing Rubber

chewing gum. It’s one of the few products of the chemical

industry that can be eaten.

accn what is the history of LANXeSS in Canada?

rS LANXESS is the leading manufacturer for rubber

polymers. If you look just at butyl rubber, we are the second-

largest manufacturer in the world and the only company

that is truly global in that market. We have two existing

plants: one in Sarnia, Ont. and the other one in Zwijndrecht,

Belgium. Most of the butyl rubber that’s manufactured is

used by the tire industry worldwide. In recent years, the tire

industry has shifted to Asia and we are currently constructing

a new production site for butyl rubber in Singapore.

The history of the Sarnia plant goes back to Polysar,

a Canadian company that in the 1980s was one of the

largest manufacturers of rubber. Polysar was acquired by

Bayer AG in 1990 and in 2005 Bayer spun off most of

the chemical and polymer activities into a new company,

which is LANXESS.

accn what convinced you that LANXeSS needed a new global R&D centre for butyl rubber?

rS It sprung from the changes going from Bayer to

LANXESS. The rubber business within Bayer was not a core

business, so it did not receive much management attention,

nor the necessary capital for investment. Within LANXESS,

the strategy changed; the butyl rubber business was one of the

most important business units and in 2006 a strategic review

was conducted. Our questions were: how do we want to

operate our innovation, do we need innovation, is innovation

even possible with butyl rubber? We saw a lot of innovation


buSineSS | RUbbeR INNovATIoN

potential for butyl and wanted to lead this innovation. We

concluded that we needed a world-class R&D organization.

accn why did you decide to put it in Canada and London in particular?

rS We looked at sites all over the world; we could have put it

next to our corporate headquarters, which was in Leverkusen,

Germany, or our business unit headquarters in Fribourg,

Switzerland. But we also considered our manufacturing sites.

These have some key know-how and we wanted to make sure

we didn’t lose that.

Sarnia today is the largest manufacturing site and it’s

also the place where most of our know-how is located. The

people who know how to work with butyl rubber and who

understand the applications work there. So then we tried

to find a place that would provide a world-class innovation

culture. There are many research and innovation parks in

Ontario, but London and Sarnia are just a one-hour drive

apart. What we found in London at the University of

Western Ontario (UWO) was really excellent. In 2008 we

started construction at UWO research park and the building

was ready by the end of 2009. Then we set up the labs. The

organization still had to be staffed and we did that in 2010.

Currently we have 60 people with diverse backgrounds:

organic chemists, polymer chemists, chemical engineers and

technologists and some other specialists.

accn how do you innovate with a material as familiar and established as butyl rubber?

rS The global tire industry today is under a lot of competitive

pressure. Oil prices are going up but demand is increasing as

people worldwide want to drive cars. The economic growth,

especially in China and India, drives research to some extent.

And there’s real pressure on tire companies to develop new

tires that are more energy-efficient and safer in terms of

reduced braking distance. We are developing new materials

for tires together with the tire industries.

But that is only the current markets; there are also new

areas that have not been exploited. The polymer butyl

rubber has many interesting properties such as its biological

inertness. This means we can use it for applications in the

health sector, maybe even in the human body. We see a lot

of future potential.

LAN

XeS

S

accn Can you give some examples of projects you’re working on?

rS As mentioned earlier, in the tire market brominated

butyl rubber is currently used inside tires only. We are

working on a new application for brominated butyl rubber

for the outside tread portion of the tire. If you put a specific

amount of brominated butyl rubber into the tread, you

can increase traction, so that means you reduce braking

or stopping distance significantly. That in turn improves

safety, especially on wet roads or under winter conditions.

So that’s in the process of being commercialized.

On the medical side, in any health care application, it’s

important that systems are clean. Normally, vulcanization

requires chemicals like sulphur and zinc oxide, which are not

much liked in the health-care industry. We have developed a

new polymer that can be cured by using peroxides, which leave

no trace behind and represent a very clean pure system.

I would also like to highlight the raw material aspect.

For the past 40 or 50 years, butyl rubber has been made

Ralf Ingo Schenkel, vice-president, LANXeSS butyl Rubber Global Research and Development


from crude oil. What about the next 50 years? How are we

going to supply the industries with these polymers if the oil

price is too high? That is one of the big challenges for our

generation — to shift the raw material base from crude oil

to a renewable raw material base. And that’s what we are

currently working on, together with the US-based biotech

company GEVO. Initially, the feedstock will be based

on corn, but in the medium-term the idea is also to use a

cellulose product from the forestry industry.

accn what challenges do you face in shifting to a bio-based feedstock?

rS Butyl rubber is created by polymerizing isobutene with

small amounts of isoprene at roughly –100°C, using cationic

polymerization. This kind of polymerization is very sensi-

tive to impurities, even in the parts per million or parts per

billion range. Both crude oil based and bio-based feedstocks

contain isobutene as the main component, but you’re dealing

with a totally different spectrum of impurities. So these are

the scientific and technical challenges: to get the impurities

under control and make sure that the bio-based feedstock

leads to exactly the same polymer as we get from crude oil.

The project is definitely in a very advanced stage already,

not only in research but also in engineering. We have demon-

strated the feasibility in the laboratory and now the project

has moved on in its last stage. We’ll scale it up, likely build a

plant and within a few years manufacture butyl rubber based

on renewable feedstocks. So that’s one of the first success

stories from London that we can now communicate.

accn how important is collaboration with other groups in the research park?

rS Surface Science Western Institute is there and they are

one of our partners. We have more than one research project

together with them. The research park is an entity of the

university and they are a strong partner.

accn how important is this centre for the future of your business?

rS Going forward, the butyl rubber business will become even

more global. Our business headquarters are now in Singapore.

Everything will be international; we will expand the business

further, we will expand capacity and we will also diversify.

The tire application remains an important application for us,

but other market segments will also become more important.

We will be larger, more successful, but also more sustainable.

Bio-based raw materials are only one component; there’s only

a selected number of projects we can communicate at this

time. But as an R&D group, we’re involved in all these activi-

ties supporting the whole business.

Personally I’m proud of the team we have developed. Within

record time they were working together as a high-performing

team, as proven by the success stories. This is what I’m most

proud of.

Inaugurated earlier this year, the LANXeSS Global Research and Development Centre in London, ont. will search for new applications for butyl rubber, which is currently used mainly in the inner liner of automobile tires. The facility will also assist in the commercialization of a new form of butyl rubber made from renewable feedstocks.


vancouver's Saltworks

technologies has captured

the attention of the desalination

industry and a petroleum sector

thirsty for solutions to water quality

problems.

by tyler hamilton

The sun is strong, as is the smell of fish and the sea at the headquarters of

Saltworks Technologies, a small start-up nestled between a seafood packing

plant and a cold storage facility near East Vancouver’s harbour.

A young man with black dishevelled hair, wearing jeans and a dock worker’s

rubber boots, walks out of the building, once home to a fish processing plant. This is

Saltworks co-founder and chief executive Ben Sparrow, whose casual appearance

belies a high-minded ambition — to create technology that will quench the thirst of an

increasingly parched planet.

Sparrow strides to a shipping container and opens up its doors, revealing a complex

arrangement of plastic pipes, rubber tubing and insulated water tanks, all connected

to proprietary thermo-ionic de-salting devices and a central control system.

“This is our pilot plant,” Sparrow says, then launches into a description of how

his desalination machine works, why it’s better than rival technologies on the

market and why it matters.

That last part — why it matters — is an easy one. “One-third of the world’s

population lives in water-stressed countries,” chemical engineering professors

William Phillip of the University of Notre Dame and Menachem Elimelech of Yale

University write in a paper recently published in Science. “Increasing population,

contamination of fresh water sources and climate change will cause this percentage to

increase over the coming decade.”


cheMiStry | DeSALINATIoN

In other words, the world is running out of fresh water at

a time when people, animals, crops and industrial processes

are increasingly demanding it. This makes desalination

big business, a market expected to become bigger as more

countries turn to the oceans as their prime source of drinking

water. Market intelligence firm Pike Research estimates that

annual investment in desalination technologies will rise to

nearly US $17 billion by 2016, double the investment levels

seen in 2010.

There are nearly 15,000 desalination plants in operation

around the world today and two technologies currently

dominate the market. One is multi-stage flash distillation,

which involves the rapid vaporization of seawater followed

by condensation to produce fresh water. This process is

energy-intensive, as it requires huge amounts of heat.

The other leading and increasingly popular approach is

reverse-osmosis, by which salt water is forced through special

membranes that selectively prevent salt ions from passing

through. Reverse-osmosis uses less energy than flash distilla-

tion, but because of the high pressures needed to reverse the

osmotic flow of water a considerable amount of electricity is

required to operate the pumps.

Saltworks boasts a more efficient technology that can cut

energy costs by at least half compared to a reverse-osmosis

system. It also works under low pressure — as low as five

pounds per square inch versus 1,000 psi for reverse-osmosis

— meaning expensive stainless steel and titanium pipes

aren’t required. All of it can run on low-cost plastic piping of

the sort found at Home Depot.

Key to the process is the concept of concentration gradi-

ents and the tendency of sodium, chloride and other ions

found in salt water to flow naturally, without outside energy

inputs, from higher to lower salinity concentrations.

Sparrow explains that a Saltworks desalination plant

would begin by taking in an initial batch of seawater, which

contains about 3.5 per cent salt and further concentrating

it to 18 per cent or higher. This would be accomplished

through evaporation, using low-grade waste heat from a

nearby industrial process or by way of a shallow-pond system

exposed to the heat of the sun.

That salt-concentrated ocean water would then be

pumped into a tank, called tank A. Next to it are three other

tanks: B, C and D, which contain seawater with normal

concentrations. When A is connected to B and C, the

ions in the more concentrated tank A are naturally drawn

to the two tanks with lower concentrations. Separating

this flow, however, are chemically treated filters called ion

exchange membrane stacks. These stacks are manufactured

by Saltworks and together with process arrangement repre-

sent the company’s core innovation.

The membrane stack between tanks A and B only lets

negative ions pass through. The stack between tanks

A and C only lets positive ions pass through. The result is

that tank B ends up with a higher concentration of negative

ions, such as chloride, and tank C ends up with a higher

concentration of positive ions, such as sodium. As a result,

tanks B and C are out of balance.

Regular seawater is still sitting in tank D. When tank B

with the surplus negative ions is connected to D, it desper-

ately wants to be in balance again, so it strips out all of the

positive ions (such as sodium, magnesium, calcium) from D.

Likewise, when C is connected to D it pulls the negative ions

(such as chloride, sulphate, bromine) out of D in an effort to

rebalance itself.

This leaves tank D completely salt free.

Sparrow is an engineer as well as an executive, born in

1976. It’s also the birth year of Saltworks’ president Joshua

Zoshi, Sparrow’s schoolmate from Simon Fraser University

and co-founder of the company. Both men had no previous

experience in the desalination industry. This, combined

with their age, left them somewhat naïve about the initial

market opportunity for their technology. “We worked on

desalination for a year and a half before we realized there

was a bigger market to pursue,” says Sparrow, explaining that

producing drinking water from seawater was their original

focus. “We thought our attention had to be on the Middle

East and Australia” — two regions of the world becoming

increasingly dependent on desalination.

This perspective evolved, however, after Sparrow and

Zoshi travelled to Dubai in 2009 to demonstrate their

technology at the World Congress on Desalination

and Water Reuse. To impress attendees, they created a

mini-version of their desalination process and packaged it

within a briefcase, allowing them to desalt small amounts of


seawater for anyone who asked. “We initially saw reverse-

osmosis as our main competition,” says Sparrow, joking that

he and Zoshi tried to avoid crossing paths with their market

foes. “But when we started presenting at this and other

conferences, the overwhelming pull we received actually

came from the reverse-osmosis people. It turns out they are

looking for a way to treat their waste brine.”

The bottom line, says Sparrow, “we’re now working with

the competition.”

Waste brine — the rejected salty water left over from

reverse-osmosis treatment — isn’t a problem with coastal

desalination plants. It simply gets returned back to the

ocean. Inland systems, however, don’t have anywhere

convenient or economical to dispose of their waste brine.

Sparrow and Zoshi quickly learned that Saltworks could solve

a major problem for the inland market. The opportunity was

huge — potentially eight times larger than the seawater desali-

nation market. More communities, such as El Paso, Texas, are

being forced to depend on inland desalination of brackish water

found in huge underground aquifers. “It turns out a lot of the

U.S. desalination market is inland,” Sparrow says.

As well, industry — such as the oil and gas and mining

sectors — is increasingly dependent on desalination as a

way to comply with strict water regulations. “Treating brine

water is a huge industrial application,” says Rick Whittaker,

chief technology officer at clean-technology granting agency

Sustainable Development Technology Canada (SDTC),

based in Ottawa. “In the oil sands we’re finding that permits

for expansion are now largely limited by water availability.”

Alberta, for example, has issued draft regulations that

would require in situ oil sands projects to recycle more water,

rely more on brackish resources and reduce the amount of

brine waste they discharge.

Reverse-osmosis has been the technology of choice for

these industries, but it can’t do the job on its own. Brackish

water, for example, tends to contain about one per cent salt.

When put through a reverse-osmosis process, 75 per cent of

that water comes out pure and the other 25 per cent left over

contains up to eight per cent salt.

At that concentration, reverse-osmosis reaches its opera-

tional limit. Industry is left with the high cost of injecting the

brine back underground, assuming the geology is available.

TyLeR hA

MILTo

N


Alternatively, the brine can be evaporated in open ponds

(a land-intensive option often prohibited by regulation) or

put through special crystallizers to produce pure salt. Both

options come with a high price tag.

This is where Saltworks enters the picture. Its process can

turn about 60 per cent of that leftover brine water into pure

water, boosting total recovery from 75 to 90 per cent and

leaving behind a much smaller volume of brine waste. But it

can go a step further. The company has developed a new evap-

orator tower technology that can retrieve the remaining water

from the brine and leave behind an easy-to-handle solid salt.

“I can’t say too much about our salt maker,” says Sparrow,

explaining that patents for the process have been filed but are

not yet granted. What is known is that Saltworks has co-devel-

oped the product with SPX Cooling Technologies, a global

manufacturer of cooling towers and air-cooled condensers.

Whittaker says Saltworks’ process dovetails nicely with

reverse-osmosis and industry likes it because it doesn’t

undermine existing capital investments in reverse-osmosis

systems — it adds value to them. “The more incremental you

can make the change, the easier it is for industry to adapt,”

says Whittaker.

Sparrow is quick to point out, however, that Saltworks

does have an edge over reverse-osmosis when it comes to

the petroleum sector. Oil and gas often emerges from wells

along with salty water and that water has to be treated.

The residual hydrocarbons in that water will gum up

reverse-osmosis membranes, but they don’t have an affect on

Saltworks’ low-pressure thermo-ionic process. “It’s a fluke,

really, we never anticipated this,” says Sparrow, adding that

the company’s process can also assist in taking salts out of

oil sands tailing ponds as part of remediation efforts. “Folks

in the oil and gas community like our process, because they

have tremendous amounts of waste heat they can use to

drive our process.”

It’s part of the reason why Calgary-based oil company

Cenovus Energy invested $2.5 million in Saltworks back in

June. Mining giant Teck Resources, recognizing the value of

Saltworks’ process in the mining sector, is also an investor.

Meanwhile, Saltworks is building a pilot plant for use in

the oil sands as part of a project partly funded by SDTC.

It will be tested when complete and then shipped from

Vancouver to Fort McMurray, becoming operational by next

summer. The oil sands developer that will use the plant has

not yet been disclosed.

Sparrow still has his eye on the market for drinking water,

and in time the company’s thermo-ionic technology could

prove a formidable competitor to reverse-osmosis. But in the

near term, working with — rather than against — reverse

osmosis is proving the path of least resistance. “It just turns

out that industry moves much faster,” he says.

[Left] Saltworks Technologies co-founders Joshua Zoshi and ben Sparrow beside a demonstration unit of their desalination machine.

Saltworks Technologies’ desalting device with the ion- exchange membrane stack.


SoCIeTy NewS

John c. Polanyi to deliver the mail

Canada Post unveiled a limited-edition stamp honouring world-renowned chemist and Nobel Laureate John C. Polanyi, HFCIC, on Oct. 1 at the University of Toronto’s Chemistry Nuit Blanche celebrating the International Year of Chemistry. The stamp features a photograph of Polanyi and a design that represents his laboratory’s ongoing work in Scanning Tunneling Microscopy.

Polanyi, a faculty member at U of T’s Department of Chemistry since 1956, is one of three winners of the 1986 Nobel Prize in chemistry in recognition of the development of the new field of reaction dynamics. He was cited for his pioneering work in developing the method of infrared chemiluminescence.

Polanyi’s list of awards and honours includes the Royal Medal of the Royal Society of London, Fellowship of the Royal Societies of Canada, London and Edinburgh as well as the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, the Pontifical Academy of Rome and the Russian Academy of Sciences. He is a member of the Queen’s Privacy Council for Canada, a companion of the Order of Canada and has 30 honorary degrees from universities around the world. Polanyi has also made significant contributions in the areas of peacekeeping and science policy, such as serving as co-editor of The Dangers of Nuclear War and as co-chair of the Department of Foreign Affairs International Consultative Committee on a Rapid Response Capability for the United Nations.

testing the waters in new brunswick In celebration of the International Year of Chemistry, the 100th anniversary of Parks Canada and the induction of the Bay of Fundy as a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve, students from Riverview, N.B. undertook an innovative environmental analysis project called “The Riverview High School Water Project.” Under the guidance of chemistry teacher Ian Fogarty, five students: Robyn O’Dell, Marlise O’Brien, Rebecca Laffoley, Shandelle Murray and Ha-Gyoung Yoon mapped out water quality throughout the Fundy Biosphere Reserve. The students employed Pasco probeware to test for pH, temperature, dissolved oxygen, phosphate and nitrates. They are investigating how these properties change throughout the day as well as collecting base line data for the reserve for a citizen science legacy project. The students’ research earned them an invitation to the Chemistry World Youth Congress this month in Lima, Peru.

InTernATIonAl yeAr oF CHemISTry

Scholarships for chemical engineering students This year’s winners of the CSChE Chemical Engineering Local Section Scholarships, sponsored by the Sarnia CIC, Edmonton CSChE and London CIC Local Sections, are Jervis Pereira of McMaster University and Joseph Paul Lagasca of the University of Calgary. The awards were presented at the CSChE Conference in London, Ont. last month. Scholarships are given to those students who make significant contributions to the CSChE, such as participation in Student Chapters, and who demonstrate outstanding leadership qualities and high academic achievement.

november 14‒16, 2011 Interamerican Congress of Chemical engineeringSantiago, Chilewww.ciiq2011.cl

March 11‒15, 2012pittcon Conference & expoorlando, Florida. www.pittcon.org

May 26‒30, 2012 95th Canadian Chemistry Conference and exhibitionCalgary, Alta.www.csc2012.ca

october 14‒17, 201262nd Canadian Chemical engineering Conferencevancouver, b.C.www.csch2012.ca

May 21‒25, 2013 4th Georgian bay International Conference on bioinorganic Chemistryparry Sound, ont. www.canbic.ca

STuDenTS

uPComIng evenTS

LUk

e A

ND

eRSS

oN

30 canadian cheMical newS NoveMbeR • DeCeMbeR 2011

Wieners unfairly banished to the doghouse

Perusing the scientific literature reveals studies that link the frequent consumption of cured meats with stomach and colon

cancer, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, leukemia, diabetes and heart disease. While there may be valid criti-cisms of many of these studies — eating processed meats may be a marker for an unhealthy lifestyle — it is hard to escape the conclusion that curbing our intake of these foods has no downside, except perhaps disappointing the taste buds.

Some organizations, however, have gone overboard with their interpretation of the data. The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM) recently unveiled a billboard near the Indianapolis Motor Speedway in Indiana that features hot dogs in a cigarette pack inscribed with skull and crossbones and the message, “Warning: Hot dogs can wreck your health.” Really? Where’s the evidence? Nevertheless, PCRM wants hot dogs to sport a warning label, “Consuming hot dogs and other processed meats increases the risk of cancer.”

Nitrates and nitrites define the traditional meat curing process. Their discovery can be traced to the use of salt that was contaminated with potassium or sodium nitrate, also known as saltpeter. Meat treated with these chemicals retains a red colour, acquires a charac-teristic taste and, most importantly, is less amenable to contamination with disease-causing bacteria, particularly the dangerous Botulinum clostridium.

By the 1980s, it became apparent that certain bacteria were capable of converting nitrates into nitrites and that nitrites were the active species preventing contamination. Consequently, nitrites

are now added directly to processed meat instead of relying on bacteria to produce them from nitrates. This allows for better control of nitrite concentrations, a crit-ical aspect of processed meat production. Why critical? Because it is well known that nitrites can react with amines, naturally occurring compounds present in meat, as well as in human tissues, to form nitrosamines. And that is the fly in the hot dog — nitrosamines can trigger cancer! Of course, demonstrating that nitrosamines can produce mutations in a Petri dish or that animals treated with high doses develop cancer does not mean that these compounds are responsible for cancers in humans. In any case, changes in manufacturing methods and a reduc-tion in the amount of added nitrite have essentially solved the problem of nitrosa-mine formation in cured meat.

In spite of the weak epidemiological evidence linking nitrites to cancer and the fact that 95 per cent of all the nitrite we ingest comes from bacterial conversion of nitrates naturally found in vegetables, many consumers have a lingering concern about eating nitrite-cured processed meats. But one person’s concern is another’s business opportunity. In this case, producers have responded with an array of “natural” and “organic” processed meats sporting such catchy phrases as: “no synthetic preservatives” or “no nitrites added.” But given the crucial role nitrites play in processed meats, how do you replace them? You don’t. You just replace the source of the nitrite.

Celery has a very high concentration of natural nitrate, and treating celery juice with a bacterial culture produces nitrite. The concentrated juice can then

be used to produce “no nitrite added” processed meat. Curiously, regulations stipulate that the traditional curing process requires the addition of nitrite and thus “organic” processed meats that are treated with celery juice have to be labeled as “uncured.”

Such terminology is confusing because most consumers look to “organic” processed meats in order to avoid nitrites, but the fact is that these do contain nitrites, sometimes in lesser, sometimes in greater amounts than found in conven-tional products. That’s because the amount of nitrite that forms from nitrate in celery juice is hard to monitor. In conventionally cured processed meats, the addition of nitrite is strictly controlled by regulations designed to minimize nitrosa-mine formation and maximize protection against botulism. This means any risk due to nitrosamine formation or bacterial contamination in the “organic” version is more challenging to evaluate.

So what does this mean? Buying “organic” hot dogs or bacon with a view towards living longer by avoiding nitrites makes no sense. Limiting such foods because of their high fat and salt content, whether organic or conven-tional, makes very good sense. Cutting them out totally, as the PCRM would have us do? No thanks. It is unreal-istic to evaluate every bite of food as being healthy or unhealthy. It is the overall diet that matters. Emphasize a mostly plant-based diet? By all means. But dogmatic tirades against hot dogs? That’s ideology, not science.

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

Read his blog at chemicallyspeaking.com.

CheMfuSion

by Joe Schwarcz

Documents

ACCN, the Canadian Chemical News: Nov | Dec 2011