ACCN, the Canadian Chemical News_May2011

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

May | mai 2011 • Vol.63, No./no 5

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PM40021620

Suzanne Fortier’s chemistry rootsMake way for micropharma

Rebuilding the LandscapeAfter the Oil Sands Tailings Ponds

MAy 2011 CAnAdiAn ChemiCAl newS 3

Will Suncor’s reclaimed tailings pond stand the test of time?

By Gordon Jaremko

COnTenTS

Features

Big pharma makes way for small, agile biotech companies

By Tyler IrvingPour obtenir la version française de cet article, écrivez-nous à [email protected]

Canadian science’s most spirited advocate

By Peter Calamai

Special Report for the international Year of Chemistry

1612

From the editor

Guest Column By Don Wiles

Chemical newsCanada’s top headlines in the chemical sciences and engineering Reported and written by Tyler Irving

Society news

ChemfusionBy Joe Schwarcz

Departments

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May | mai 2011 Vol.63, no./no 5

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on the Cover: About 65, 000 truckloads of dirt were used to cover the surface of Suncor’s tailings Pond 1 in a 50 centimetre-thick layer of soil during reconstruction.

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If you’ve ever attended an event where Suzanne Fortier is presenting, you’re

familiar with the affable enthusiasm she exudes from behind the podium;

Or if you’ve come across a news release or photo from an NSERC funding

function in the last few years, you certainly know her name and face.

What’s not as well known about this prominent figure in Canadian science

is that before she was NSERC president, she was an established chemist. In

this issue, Peter Calamai gives us a window into Suzanne Fortier’s less public

life in the third profile in our series on women in the chemical sciences and

engineering that celebrates the International Year of Chemistry. In our Q and

A, we talk to Donald Weaver of Dalhousie University about the rise of micro-

pharma: How small biotech firms are picking up where big pharma is leaving

off. Also in this issue, we visit a former oil sands tailings pond that has been

drained and returned to a solid surface, and which the industry is heralding as a

reclamation success.

I hope you enjoy the read!

Write to the editor at [email protected] or visit us at www.accn.ca

• Canadian Green Chemistry and Engineering Network Award (Individual)SponsoredbyGreenCentreCanada

• Ontario Green Chemistry and Engineering Network Award (Individual) SponsoredbytheOntarioMinistryoftheEnvironment

• Ontario Green Chemistry and Engineering Network Award (Organizational)SponsoredbytheOntarioMinistryoftheEnvironment

Nominations for these awards are being accepted now.Deadline: July 4, 2011 for the 2012 selection.

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June 7-8, 2011Montréal, Quebecfor → Chemists and chemical technologists whose responsibilities include managing, conducting safety audits or improving the operational safety of chemical laboratories, chemical plants and research facilities.

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

For more information, visit www.cheminst.ca/profdev


gUeSt CoLUMN

With all the exciting and disturbing news

stories about the Japanese nuclear

problems in recent weeks, several

aspects vital to human health seem

to have missed everyone’s attention. They are: the

difference between external and internal radiation

sources, the physical chemistry of the radionuclides

involved and the physiology of the human body.

First and simplest, if the radiation source is

external to the human body one can, in principle,

erect a protective barrier or merely walk away. In

most cases this is done successfully. On the other

hand, if the radiation source is inside the body, it’s

a different matter. It is difficult to walk away from

your own bones! (Even then, internal sources of

radiation need not always be serious. I have had a

detectable dose of radium in my bones for 60 years

since working in Port Hope as a radium chemist.)

Now, a more subtle chemical fact: The products

of nuclear fission are generated inside the uranium

fuel rods. Most of them are quite similar in ionic

radius and ionic charge to U+4 and, according to

Goldschmidt’s Rule, will likely remain locked in the

crystalline UO2. Notable exceptions to this include

isotopes of iodine, bromine, cesium, rubidium and a

few others that are known to migrate to the cooler

outer surface of the fuel, from which they can perhaps

evaporate. The only isotope of major concern here is 131I, which is volatile, and has a high fission yield and

a short half life of just eight days.

Toss in a bit of physiology here and we come

closer to the point. While many elements pass

quickly through the blood stream to the urine and

out, others go directly to certain organs. Strontium

one Reason Why fukushima is not Chernobyl: Seafood By don wiles

and barium go directly to the bones and stay there.

Cesium-137 is widely distributed throughout the

body and ultimately leaves. But iodine goes directly

to the thyroid gland, where it can do its damage,

causing thyroid tumours and cancers.

There is one more critical aspect to this story: If

one’s thyroid is in need of more iodine, it will take

all it can get from what’s available. If it doesn’t

need any more, it won’t take much. This is a very

important difference between the Chernobyl

accident of 25 years ago and the present Japanese

situation. The residents in the area of Chernobyl

were very low in iodine (and the government gave

them none) so their thyroids took in whatever they

could get. The result was, of course, many hundreds

of thyroid cancers. On the other hand, the Japanese

eat a lot of seafood including the seaweed nori,

which gives them all the iodine they need, and the

government is giving them potassium iodide pills.

So their thyroids don’t need to scrounge any more

iodine from the surroundings, and the likelihood of

thyroid cancers is minimized.

While this analysis is not intended to suggest

that the present situation is good, a more reasoned

approach to such an emotional issue will allow us to

concentrate more on the real problems and not waste

our efforts worrying about less important things.

Don Wiles, Professor Emeritus at Carleton University, is the author of two relevant books: The Chemistry of Nuclear Fuel

Waste Disposal and Radioactivity. Both are published by Polytechnic Presses in Montreal

Want to share your thoughts on this article? Write to us at [email protected] or visit us at www.accn.ca

8 l’ACTuAliTé Chimique CAnAdienne MAI 2011

WATER

mATERIAlS

phoSphoRUS tRoUBLeS RetURN to the gReAt LAkeSBeaches of rotting algae, low-oxygen conditions, and loss of aquatic life: These were some of the problems that plagued the Great Lakes during the 1960s and 1970s because of high levels of phosphorus in the water. According to the latest report of the International Joint Commission (IJC), which monitors the lakes, the troubles are back.

Phosphorus gets into the lakes mainly through sewage and agricultural runoff. “The prob-lem almost went away after the phosphorus content of [laundry] detergents was restricted back in the 1970s, and a lot of sewage treatment plants were also upgraded,” says Bill Tay-lor, professor of biology at the University of Waterloo, and a member of the IJC’s Great Lakes Science Advisory Board. “But it’s back big-time and seriously fouling the shoreline.” Blooms of Cladophora, a kind of freshwater algae, are not only unsightly, they can actually block water intake pipes near the shore.

Nobody is sure where the increased phosphorus is coming from, in part because many phosphorus monitoring programs were terminated years ago. Nevertheless, increasing numbers of algae blooms indicate that there is a problem.

Theories include increased population and land-use changes, as well as increased pre-cipitation due to climate change, which can wash more fertilizers into the lakes from farms and golf courses. “We know that a lot of phosphorus comes into the lakes from these diffuse sources,” says Taylor. “In other jurisdictions in North America, they’re going toward regu-lating how much phosphorus farmers can apply to their fields.”

There’s also talk of regulating the phosphorus content of dishwasher detergent. In its report, the IJC recommends that “all levels of government implement actions to reduce nonpoint sources” as well as increased monitoring and restoration of wetlands, which act as buffer zones for the lakes.

BIoChEmISTRy

the test results are in, and the news may be shocking: your blood contains measurable levels of at least 4,229 different naturally occurring chemical entities.

An international group of researchers, headed up since 2005 by David Wishart at the University of Alberta, is driven by a monu-mentally ambitious goal: to characterize and measure every last molecule that can be found in the human body. the field — called metabolomics — uses a multitude of analyti-cal techniques, from nuclear magnetic reso-nance (NMR) spectroscopy to gas chroma-tography/mass spectroscopy. the analysis of human blood, the results of which were pub-lished in late february, is the most recently completed phase of the project. Like the rest of the team, Wishart was surprised at the to-tal number of compounds found.

“our survey had originally said there were going to be 800,” he says. “We knew there were going to be some lipids, but we didn’t really know how many.” Lipids make up about half of the new total, but Wishart, who is a professor in the departments of biological sciences and computing science, thinks this might be just the tip of the ice-berg. “Looking at chemicals, you’re limited by technology. If we had instruments that could detect things down to pico- or femto-molar concentrations, this list of 4,200 would be maybe 42,000.”

the list is now kept in the open-access human Metabolome Database, which Wis-hart curates. It’s the equivalent of genBank for gene researchers, or Uniprot for proteins. Wishart hopes that it will be a useful tool as scientists begin the long process of unravel-ling the functions of these compounds. “for the last century we’ve been looking inside our bodies through a keyhole. Now that the technologies exist, we should be able to see through a picture window.”

Over 4000 ChemiCals DisCOvereD in human

BlOOD

New PermaNeNt CoatiNg Clears Foggy leNsesIf you wear glasses, safety goggles, or scuba masks, you know how annoying (and occasionally dangerous) foggy lenses can be. So it’s good news that researchers at Université Laval have created the world’s first permanent anti-fog coating.

gaetan Laroche and his team started by etching a glass surface with acid to produce hydroxyl functional groups. these were then converted to amino groups by exposing the surface to nitrogen and hydrogen in a plasma reactor. finally, alter-nating layers of poly(ethylene-maleic anhydride) (peMA) and poly(vinyl alcohol) (pVA) were deposited by spin-coating. the peMA acts as an interface, while the pVA provides a strongly hydrophilic surface. this causes moisture to spread out in a thin, transparent layer, instead of forming the droplets that cause fog.

the team tested their coating using an apparatus that measured transmission of light through the sample as the fog formed. “our best sample had 60 per cent of light transmission after 30 seconds , which I think is not too bad,” says Laroche. the team also tested a commercial spray-on coating using the same method. Although the spray-on coating performed better initially, it was completely washed off by immersion in water. By contrast, the permanent coating continued to work at the same level, even after immersion.

Laroche says the coating can be applied to any clear surface, including poly-carbonate or plexiglass, and he has already received calls from a major eyeglass manufacturer. “ours is the standard to beat,” he says.

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CheMICAL NeWS Canada's top headlines in the chemical sciences and engineering

hyDRoCARBonS

Colorless crystals of XeF4 (45 mg), react with water (crushed ice) forming bright yellow to yellow-orange polymeric Xeo2, which has a half life of approximately two minutes, at zero degrees Celsius. The newly-observed compound could help explain the depletion of xenon from Earth’s atmosphere.

FunDAmEnTAlS

XenOn diOXide mAY helP TO SOlVe One OF eARTh’S mYSTeRieSChemists at McMaster University have become the first in the world to synthe-size and characterize xeo2, an unusual compound that could be the solution to a decades-old mystery.

In the early 1960s it was discovered that, contrary to their reputation, the heavier noble gases can form compounds under certain conditions. xenon oxides like xe04 and xe03 have been known for years, but xeo2 and xeo were predicted to have marginal stabilities. David S. Brock

and his supervisor gary J. Schrobilgen wanted to test this prediction.

“When you react xef4 with water, the final product is xe03 and xe gas,” says Brock, “however, if you cool it down and you do it around zero degrees Celsius, you can actually obtain a bright canary-yellow, transient solid.” Because this solid decomposes after a few minutes, it had never been characterized before. By cooling it to minus 78 degrees Celsius, Brock was able to get it to last long enough to run Raman spectra that proved it was xeo2.

the compound may explain an enduring mystery. It has been known for decades that the abundance of xenon in our atmosphere is quite low compared with that in the solar system generally, as measured from meteorites. Various theories have been pro-posed, but none could account for the full amount of xe that was missing. In 2005, a team led by Chrys-tele Sanloup of Université pierre et Marie Curie in paris proposed that, under certain conditions, xe can substitute for Si in the quartz (Sio2) that forms most of earth’s crust. Brock believes that his spectroscopic measurements of xeo2 lend further weight to that hypothesis. “Being able to synthesize and character-ize such a species that’s on the border of stability, and how it may have implications for the missing xenon . . . that was really fascinating.”

Quebec Puts the brakes on shale GasAny new shale gas wells in the province of Quebec will be for en-vironmental study purposes only. That was the decision taken in early march by provincial environment minister Pierre Arcand, in the wake of a highly anticipated report on the subject by the Bureau d’audiences publiques sur l’environnement (BAPE).

Quebec sits on top of over a billion cubic metres of natu-ral gas, trapped in the utica shale formation, underneath the St. lawrence Valley. unfortunately, the only way to get at the gas is by hydraulic fracturing. Also known as “fracking,” it in-volves blasting high-pressure liquids into the shale rock to cre-ate fissures through which the gas can be extracted. Residents of American states in which fracking has been carried out have com-plained of everything from contaminated water supplies to small

earthquakes . The day before the BAPE report was released, flash fire broke out during a fracking oper-ation at a natural gas well near the hamlet of Robb, Alta. Somehow, the liquid propane being injected into the well caught fire, injuring 13 workers, some of them critically. All have now recovered, but the cause of the fire has not been determined.

The BAPE report concluded that “for certain fun-damental questions, the answers are still incomplete or non-existent.” It recommended the creation of a “strategic environmental evaluation,” for which a panel of experts is now being chosen. The study could last up to 36 months; during that time all new commercial wells will be prohibited.

Former Quebec Premier lucien Bouchard, now chair of the Quebec oil and Gas Associa-tion, responded on behalf of the industry, saying “the government has our support to quickly put in place the measures required to conduct a thorough study and promote an informed debate regarding the collective decisions to be made.” Brenda Kenny, president of the Canadian Energy Pipeline Associa-tion, put it more bluntly: “We are confident, based on experience in other jurisdictions, that shale gas can be developed safely in Quebec.”

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ClImATE ChAnGE

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COLDER STRATOSPHERE LEADS TO THINNING ARCTIC OzONERemember that “hole” in the ozone layer? It never entirely went away; each spring the Arctic experiences a certain amount of ozone loss, usually in the range of 10 to 20 per cent. this spring however, cold stratospheric temperatures have led to more depletion than usual: in some areas, losses were as high as 40 per cent.

Although they were controlled by the 1987 Montreal protocol, chlorofluorocarbons (CfCs) and their chlorine-bearing derivatives (like ClNo3 and hCl) won’t completely degrade for decades to come. During the Arctic winter, cool temperatures in the stratosphere form polar stratospheric clouds. Ice crystals in these clouds catalyze reac-tions that convert the non-reactive forms of chlorine into reactive ones. “the reactive chlorine isn't released until sunlight returns to the polar region,” says David tarasick, a researcher with environment Canada’s experimental Studies Unit (ARQx.) “that’s why ozone depletion over the poles is a springtime phenomenon.”

this year, colder-than-usual temperatures in the stratosphere have led to more polar stratospheric clouds, which in turn contributed to the record loss of ozone. these cold years may happen more often in the future: as greenhouse gases trap more heat in the lower atmo-sphere, less of it radiates back to the stratosphere. “on average, that means that, barring changes in stratospheric circulation, there may be a tendency to have years where it’s colder in the stratosphere, and one of the results of a cold year is more of these clouds forming,” says

The amount of ozone in the atmosphere is shown here as a percentage of the level before 1980, when CFCs began to come into wide use. The thinning of the ozone layer over the Arctic can be clearly seen; in some areas the depletion is as much as 50 per cent.

kaley Walker, assistant professor with the University of toronto’s Department of physics.

Despite the loss of ozone in the north, the danger of increased UV radiation should be minimal. the suns rays don’t strike as directly in the Arctic, and the ozone-depleted regions disperse each spring as winds mix in ozone-rich air from the south. “further south, we’ll probably see somewhat lower ozone in spring and early summer,” says tarasick. “But I wouldn't expect the effect to be very large; likely a few percent.”

MAgNetIC MICRoCARRIeRS CAN SteeR DRUgS toWARD A tARgetCancer treatments are notor-iously imprecise in that they often damage healthy cells along with the unhealthy ones. But what if it were possible to steer drug particles through blood vessels to reach the target tissues? Researchers from École Polytechnique de Montréal recently used magnetic particles to do just that.

Sylvain Martel and his team started with small particles (approx-imately 50 µm in diameter) made

of a biodegradable polymer (poly(D,L-lactic-co-glycolic acid), or PLGA). Into these they embedded the cancer drug doxorubicin and nanoparticles made of iron and cobalt. Unlike previous research, which has used local-ized magnetic fields, Martel’s team mobilizes their particles using an MRI machine. “If you put [the particles] in the homogeneous field of the MRI scanner, then it becomes independent of distance; you can be just as effec-tive in the middle of the body, or close to the skin,” says Martel. “Plus you can track them with the MRI, so you have much better control.” The MRI can be programmed to provide a magnetic gradient, in this case a maximum of 400 milli-teslas per metre, along which the particles move.

The team has already demonstrated that they can steer particles through the hepatic arteries of rabbits. However, as the particles get smaller and as the MRI chamber gets bigger, the power required to mobilize the particles goes up

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CheMICAL NeWS Canada's top headlines in the chemical sciences and engineering

the scramble for iron ore deposits in eastern Canada continues.

India’s Tata Steel recently made a deal with Montreal-based

new millennium Capital Corp. to advance two potential

mines along the Quebec-Labrador border. the mines could

cost up to $4.9 billion and produce up to 22 million tonnes

of ore per year. Similar deals were recently signed by China’s

wuhan Steel with several Canadian companies with holdings

in the same area, including Century iron mines Corp. and

Adriana Resources inc.

troubles at Japan’s fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant have im-

pacted the uranium mining industry here in Canada. Shares in

Cameco Corp. dropped by 22 per cent in the week following

the disaster, while those of uranium One inc. lost nearly half

their value. Cameco Ceo Jerry grandey said the reaction was

“largely driven by emotion,” and that he did not expect any sig-

nificant direct effects in the short or long term.

GreenCentre Canada, which specializes in commercializing

early-stage discoveries that make chemical processes more

sustainable, has announced the creation of its first spin-off

MAgNetIC MICRoCARRIeRS CAN SteeR DRUgS toWARD A tARget

Small particles (approximately 50 um) (above) made of a biodegradable polymer embedded with magnetic nanoparticles (approximately 200 nm) and the cancer drug doxorubicin can be steered through arteries by means of a magnetic gradient created in an mRI chamber. using this approach, the drug-loaded particles are steered through the bifurcation of a rabbit’s hepatic artery (left).

company, Switchable Solutions inc. the company is based

on a switchable hydrophilicity solvent (ShS) which can switch

from a two-phase to a one-phase system on the addition of

Co2. the first applications are expected to be in systems for

recycling post-consumer plastics, particularly polystyrene,

which is hard to recycle using conventional solvents.

encana Corp. has bought a 30 per cent stake in Kitimat lnG, a

proposed west-coast natural gas exporting facility. the project

is also supported by the Canadian subsidiaries of Apache Corp.

and eOG Resources inc., and is expected to cost $4.7 billion in

total. the facility would provide access to Asian markets, some-

thing currently lacking in the natural gas production industry.

the oilsands off-gas business recently got a boost with a

deal between williams Canada and nOVA Chemicals.

Williams has been a pioneer in extracting off-gas, which is

normally burned, and using it to produce feedstocks for the

petrochemical industry. Under the deal, Williams will supply

17,000 barrels a day of ethane and ethylene to NoVA. the new

production will require a $311 million upgrade to Williams off-

gas extraction plant near fort McMurray; the work is expected

to be completed by 2013.

The Chemical News is reported and written by Tyler Irving.Want to share your thoughts on our news stories? Write to us at [email protected] or visit us at www.accn.ca

exponentially. “We can get pretty close, but now we’re working on being able to deliver the drugs directly to the tumour,” says Martel. “We’ll need to complement with a completely different technology to be able to do that.”

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Third in a five part series profiling Canadian

women in the chemical sciences and engineering

in celebration of the International Year

of Chemistry.

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how Suzanne fortier’s unmistakable enthusiasm for Canadian science began with a passion for solving the “beautiful puzzles” of the structure of matter.

RDEnT dministRatoRA

By Peter Calamai Photo by Tony Fouhse

When Suzanne Fortier was about 10 years

old, she told her parents she wanted a

chemistry set for Christmas.

“They asked, where have you heard of

this thing? They had no idea where to get one,” she recalls.

A rudimentary chemistry set was eventually tracked down

but Fortier still needed somewhere to carry out experiments.

Her convent school in the village of Saint-Timothée west of

Montreal had nothing as grand as a science lab; however, her

mother and father owned and operated a small local hotel. On

the hotel’s ground floor a large room was devoted to eating,

drinking and dancing — and usually deserted in the afternoons.

This explains how an illustrious career in science for the

current president of the Natural Sciences and Engineering

Research Council came to life on the beer-stained tables

of a village bar, with a precocious young girl trying to make

perfumes from local flowers.


ChemiSTRY | ADMINIStRAtIoN


Suzanne Fortier grew up in a world

far removed from that of most of her

female scientist counterparts in Canada

and her journey to prominence is as

fascinating as the outcome. For the

first 20 years of her life she spoke only

French. Her elementary school had just

one bookcase of books. She was in the

first group of girls admitted to the local

CEGEP, previously a seminary. And

no one in her extended family had ever

gone to university.

Yet intense curiosity, infectious

enthusiasm, recurring serendipity

and lots of hard work saw Fortier earn

a B.Sc. and PhD in just eight years,

engage in frontier crystallography

research, branch out into computing,

win praise as an imaginative and

committed university administrator

and, in January, renew for a second five-

year term as NSERC president.

Along the way the 61-year-old has

also become proficient in English and

Italian (with a smattering of Greek

as well), raised a son together with

husband Doug Babington, survived a

bout of breast cancer, honed an appre-

ciation for Italian wine and cuisine

and racked up more than 80 scientific

publications and a string of honours.

“Science was Suzanne’s passion and

what she pursued,” says astronaut Julie

Payette, a Fortier friend. “She shows

that if you have an objective and a

dream in life there is no reason you

can’t accomplish it.”

Like nearly everyone interviewed for

this profile, Payette cites Fortier’s sharp

intellect and easy-going demeanour

as key to her success. “There’s no wall

around Suzanne. She doesn’t carry any

of the stereotypes you associate with

such a person. She’s very welcoming,”

says Payette.

The astronaut also notes that the

NSERC president isn’t “especially tall”

and therefore not imposing in a tradi-

tional physical sense. Yet in person

Fortier radiates electricity like a Van

der Graaf generator (one blessed with

innate fashion sense) while her darting

eyes constantly absorb information

from all around.

Such curiosity and enthusiasm

undoubtedly played a crucial part in

Fortier’s first life-shaping lucky break.

She and a fellow female CEGEP student

entered a project on the diffraction

of sound waves in the 1968 Quebec

provincial science fair.

A crystallographer from McGill

University (likely Professor A. J. Freuh,

she thinks) stopped at their exhibit and

invited the two girls to visit his lab if they

wanted to learn more about diffraction.

Fortier went, and was hooked.

“I discovered then that crystallography

presented you with beautiful puzzles to

solve. There are incredible pictures that

you get of the structure of matter.”

When the unilingual francophone

entered anglophone McGill in 1969,

she declared she wanted to pursue a

bachelor’s degree in crystallography,

not realizing no one had ever done that

there. Fortier also didn’t realize that she

had been placed directly into second

year, as part of the first CEGEP gradu-

ating class in Quebec. Nor did she know

there was such a thing as graduate work.

Along came another instance

of serendipity in the form of a

famous husband-and-wife team of

crystallographers, J.D.H and Gabrielle

Donnay, whom McGill had just


Crossing the country to present grants and awards is part of the job for nSERC presi-dent Suzanne Fortier. From the top, Fortier talks with Azzedine Boukerche of the uni-versity of ottawa at a grants announcement at the British Columbia Institute of Technology in February; Presents an award for innovation at The university of British Columbia last november; And cel-ebrates with Governor General David Johnston and Tom Brzustowski from the university of ottawa at an awards reception at Rideau hall last February. A young Fortier (bottom) poses for the camera in Ade-laide, Australia in 1987 with fellow crystallogra-phers Frank Allen (left) and Chris Gilmore.

recruited from the U.S. Gabrielle advised Fortier to apply for

an NSERC scholarship and jump directly from a B.Sc. to a

PhD, which she did with Gabrielle as her supervisor.

As Fortier was winding up her thesis, she experienced some-

thing akin to a scientific epiphany at a conference talk by

U.S. mathematician Herbert Hauptman, a pioneer in direct

methods for determining crystal structures.

“His talk was all formula. I thought it was the best thing I had

ever heard in my life. We could crack the big puzzles by using

mathematics — probabilistic theory,” Fortier says, simultaneously

searching her office shelves for a book by Hauptman, who shared

the 1985 Nobel Prize in chemistry with Jerome Karle.

For six years Fortier worked with Hauptman in molecular

biophysics at a private research institute in Buffalo, first as a

post-doc and later as a research scientist. In between came

a two year break during which she married, lived briefly in

Greece while her husband taught and was a research associate

at the National Research Council in Ottawa.

In 1982 she launched the Queen’s University phase of

her career, which would last until 2005 and culminate in

back-to-back appointments as vice-principal research and

vice-principal academic following a decade as a professor of

chemistry and also as a professor of computing.

Fortier added computing to her resume by sitting in on

classes on artificial intelligence, logic and machine learning.

“It was pretty much serendipity. I had friends who were in this

area. Your mind is always open to get new ideas.”

Sometimes serendipity has had a helping hand, as Fortier

acknowledges happened with her appointment as a member of

the now-defunct Ontario Council on University Affairs.

“I was young, a woman in science, and French. When

you’re trying to fill various subgroups and all of it is in one

place, you grab it.”

The council experience was followed with increasingly

responsible posts in Queen’s administration until Bill Leggett,

the newly arrived principal, tapped Fortier in 1995 to become

vice-principal for research after a wide search.

“Suzanne has an infectious enthusiasm for research and

what it means to the country,” Leggett says. “She gets as much

pleasure from the research of others as from her own research.”

Anyone who has seen Fortier beaming with enthusiasm as

she hands out NSERC’s annual research awards can vouch for

this vicarious enjoyment.

No amount of enthusiasm, however,

could have steeled Fortier for what

she calls her breast cancer “triathlon”

of surgery, chemotherapy and radia-

tion soon after being appointed to her

“dream job” as NSERC president in

2006. Heading for Thompson Rivers

University in B.C. to accept an honou-

rary degree, she bumped into TRU

chancellor Nancy Greene in an airport

and confessed her concerns.

“I told her I was worried that the

NSERC staff was going to say they had

been given a lemon. She’s just arrived,

and she’s broken.

“Nancy said there is always someone

injured on a ski team, and the team

rallies round them. ‘Trust your team,’ she

said. ‘They will get stronger rather than

weaker.’ It was just what I needed to hear.”

Suzanne Fortier also became stronger.

She handles a gruelling travel schedule

(92 days away from Ottawa on NSERC

business last year) and manages a

$1 billion-a-year operation that’s

adjusting to a world-wide demand from

government for more immediate pay-offs

from science and engineering research.

Her former Queen’s colleague, Bill

Leggett, is confident Fortier will defend

the core values of independent inquiry.

“She is a very principled woman …

very principled. She is prepared

to stand and fall on certain basic

principles that she believes are

fundamental to human behaviour.”

Peter Calamai is a freelance writer and editor based in Ottawa who began reporting on science

for Canadian newspapers in 1969. He shares Suzanne Fortier’s passion for Italian wine and

food but unfortunately not her prowess in Italian.

Want to share your thoughts on this article? Write to us at [email protected]

or visit us at www.accn.ca

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this November the world’s highest-selling drug —

the anti-cholesterol treatment Lipitor — will go

off-patent. Pfizer, the drug’s manufacturer, has

already announced massive layoffs and cutbacks

to its R&D budget. It’s part of a pattern that’s reaching

across the entire industry; as the old cash cows bite the

dust, there are fewer new ones taking their place. So who

will discover the drugs of the future? Donald Weaver,

Canada Research Chair and Professor of Chemistry at

Dalhousie University, believes that small, academia-based

companies can play a role, and he’s got the track record to

prove it. ACCN spoke with him to find out more about

the rise of micropharma.

ACCn: What’s wrong with the current “big pharma” model of drug development?

dw: The current model has issues [such as] a lack of inno-

vation and a lack of creativity. They have a long arduous

process in going from research to development, and because

most of the companies currently have financial issues with

lots of layoffs, there is a motivation to take a conserva-

tive approach. But conservative approaches are usually not

supportive of innovation. Because of this, the pipelines of the

major pharmaceutical companies are really quite depleted;

through 2006, 43 per cent fewer new chemical entities

became drugs in the 21st century than did so in the last years

of the 20th century.

ACCn: What is micropharma?

dw: Micropharma are academia-originated, biotech startup

companies that are efficient, flexible, innovative, product-

focused and small, having usually less than 25 and frequently

aQ& Big pharma’s heyday for discovering new

drugs is waning, but small, agile, biotech startups could fill the breach.

less than 10 employees. They arise from universities, hospi-

tals or research institutes. They tend to be created by about

two or three academic researchers, who then join forces to

design, discover, and develop new therapeutics or diagnostics

for human health disorders. The advantage is that this model

permits high-risk approaches, and demonstrates a capacity to

absorb both success and failure, and therefore is really built for

the notion of creativity and innovation.

My colleague Christopher Barden and I published a paper

called “The rise of micropharma” [in 2009] so we coined

the word, but this is a process that has been evolving for a

while. It’s been recognized that translational research has

to increase within the academic sector, and micropharma is

one way of endeavouring to achieve that.

ACCn: In that paper, you talk about the “five golden goals” of micropharma. What are they?

dw: The first one is to actually achieve a product that has

efficacy in a recognized model of a relevant human disease.

That is important because if you have a new drug that works

in a new model of the disease, you have a few too many

“news” in there.

The second thing is that you want to have insights into

its mechanism of action. If you try to partner, the partnering

groups are going to want to know about that because that is

important in being able to further optimize your discovery.

Rules three and four really relate to something that people

in academia seldom think about, especially organic chemists,

and that’s the pharmacokinetics and toxicology. Every drug

is a molecule, but every molecule isn’t a drug, so you want it

so that it can withstand the long arduous trip from gums to

wherever the target is in the body. It has to have the right

pharmacokinetics and it has to be safe.

By Tyler irving

Canoe Versus oceanliner; Bigger Isn’t Always Better


BuSineSS | phARMACeUtICALS

The final goal, which is one that I

find is the most [misunderstood] within

the academic sector, is that you have

to protect your intellectual property

through a patent strategy that opti-

mally includes composition of matter,

means of production and use of your

product. I must say, I always do find

it surprising how many people in the

academic community don’t under-

stand what patents really are, don’t

understand the implications of public

disclosure to patentability, and this

really is an extremely important issue

if you want to take your product and

ultimately make it.

ACCn: you’ve had some first-hand experience with micropharma , haven’t you?

dw: My first experience was with a company called

Neurochem, a spin-off company out of Queen’s University.

Neurochem had a molecule called Tramiprosate, which was

therapeutic for Alzheimer’s disease. Tramiprosate did make

it all the way to a phase three human clinical trial, which is

an impressive feat for a molecule developed at a Canadian

university. Regrettably it was not successful in that phase

three trial, and has progressed no further. But that was

certainly an immense learning experience for me.

Since that time we’ve done a number of other micro-

pharmas, right here in Nova Scotia having spun out of

Dalhousie. One is called Treventis corporation, and it also

works on molecules which are meant to treat and prevent

Alzheimers disease, hence the word “trevent,” a combi-

nation of treatment and prevention. Another one of the

spin-off micropharma that we have out of Halifax is called

DeNovaMed, and it’s endeavouring to devise new chemical

entities as therapeutics for infectious disease.

So yes, we’ve got a number of irons in the fire, which I

suppose fits with the definition of micropharma that I put

forward, that you can have several of these going ahead in

parallel, which demonstrates their capacity to be flexible and

to absorb both success and failure.

ACCn: how did you become convinced that you needed to move into the business world?

dw: I started off as a physician with an interest in neurology.

Frequently neurologists are represented as the “diagnose and

adios” specialty. We see patients, and we say this is what you

have, and by the way there’s nothing we can do. So because

of this, I migrated over to medicinal chemistry, and actually

did my PhD in medicinal chemistry after my medical training.

And then as part of this, trying to translate products to actu-

ally help patients, commercialization became an obvious next

step. If you really want to develop a compound that makes a

difference in the lives of people, whether you like it or not,

the commercial sector is the sector that achieves that goal. So

you have to set up your research in such a way that you can

ultimately partner with big pharma to facilitate and enable

that ultimate objective.

ACCn: how does the world of chemistry compare to the world of medicine when talking about drug development?

dw : The notion of creating new chemical entities, of

patenting them and protecting them is an idea which is

less foreign to a chemistry environment, and chemists are

more willing to embrace that and move it ahead. I also

think that the pharmaceutical sector is better regarded by

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chemists. When you’re a clinical physician, you always have

to be aware of conflicts of interest with the pharmaceutical

sector because they’re trying to sell products, whereas I

think chemists look at the pharmaceutical sector as a group

of highly talented chemists who do really interesting work

and make really interesting molecules. When a chemist

from academia talks to a chemist from industry, it’s all about

molecules, whereas physicians are the ultimate users of the

end product, so there’s a bit of a different relationship there.

ACCn: What lessons have you learned from your adventures in micropharma?

dw: Number one, this is an extremely worthwhile under-

taking. Actually going through the steps of taking a molecule

and trying to move it ahead so that it really becomes a drug is

fun, it’s interesting, and ultimately, it’s a lot more rewarding

than simply putting a sentence at the front of your grant saying

“and these molecules may be relevant to Disease X.”

The second thing is that it certainly facilitates multi-

disciplinary work. I think that universities are too much built

with a silo mentality. You have a chemistry department, you

have a biology department, half the time they’re on opposite

sides of the campus, most of the time, faculties don’t really

interact with each other. You make your molecules, you

publish it, they do their biology and publish it, and those

two Venn diagrams never overlap. If you’re actually trying

to do micropharma, where you have to prove mechanisms of

action, you have to get involved with pharmacokinetics and

whatnot, you really do have to have meaningful interactions

with biology colleagues, and once again that just enriches the

overall program, and enables it to be diversified.

The third major advantage out of this is that it does

open the door to new funding opportunities. In the typical

academic world, you’re looking at NSERC grants, whereas

if you get into micropharma, it gives you the opportunity

to interact with angel investors, with venture capitalists,

and with members of the industrial sector as an alternative

means of raising funds for pursuing research, which in the

modern competitive environment, certainly is an advantage

and quite important.

The warning that I always give with this, though, is that most

angel investors are not angelic, and some venture capitalists are

vulture capitalists; these are people who are focused on making

money. And so you have to convince them that doing good

science is a way of making money.

ACCn: Many micropharmas will fail. how do you deal with that?

dw: I always say, this is why it’s called research, and not just

search. You have to repeat and redo until you get it right. Drug

discovery is loaded with failure. There are so many hurdles that

have to be traversed in going from an academic concept to a

potentially commercializeable molecule, and there are so many

different roads that one can go down that could ultimately

culminate in failure, that you can’t be put off by failure. You

have to look at failure as steps in the ultimate route to success.

If you’re not failing, you’re not working hard enough.

ACCn: Do micropharmas handle failure well?

dw: Yes, most definitely, I think that’s one of the virtues of

micropharma; it’s a small group, you can do high-risk stuff, and

if it fails you haven’t committed millions of dollars of resources

to it. I always say: Compare micropharma to a canoe versus

an ocean liner which is big pharma. If you’re trying to change

directions, you can do it very quickly in a canoe, you can’t do it

in an ocean liner. So the capacity to absorb failure, to deal with

it and move on is easier in a micropharma/canoe environment.

ACCn: Why do you believe that micropharma will succeed where big pharma has failed?

dw: I think that recent evidence in big pharma with multiple

companies letting go a lot of their medicinal chemists suggests

that the big pharma model of R&D is making R progressively

smaller and relying on the D. They’re going to have to find

sources of innovative and original research, and that is going

to have to come either from smaller biotechs, or from univer-

sity labs or micropharmas. So, I see that the evolution of the

pharmaceutical system is one in which micropharma will play

a prominent role, and I’m optimistic that this represents a

viable approach.

Want to share your thoughts on this article? Write to us at [email protected] or visit us at www.accn.ca


Dead trees, some upside down, were deliberately placed on Suncor’s tailings Pond 1 to create perches and nesting sites for birds.

SUN

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ChemiCAl enGineeRinG | oIL SANDS

K

arl Clark, revered as the

father of Alberta oil sands

production, foresaw the envi-

ronmental drawback of taking

his hot water separation process past the

trial stage in his Edmonton laboratory

and out into commercial use. In 1956

— 11 years before Great Canadian Oil

Sands (GCOS) inaugurated the industry

by starting up the ancestor of Suncor

Energy Inc.’s Fort McMurray plant —

the inventor predicted that lakes of wet

waste were inevitable.

By the reserved standards of science,

Clark used dramatic words in giving

advice to GCOS engineers about

tailings ponds. His daughter Mary

Clark Sheppard preserves his warn-

ings for the public record in her book

Tailings TaleSuncor claims to have completely reclaimed an oil sands tailings pond, a first for the 44-year-old industry. But is it enough to coax nature back to normal?

By Gordon Jaremko

Athabasca Oil Sands: From Laboratory

to Production — the Letters of Karl A.

Clark, 1950-66.

“For an operation of 20,000 cubic

yards [15,200 cubic metres] of oil sand

per day, the size of pond required is rather

staggering and for still bigger operations

it gets to be terrific,” he wrote. As a rule

of thumb, Clark and federal govern-

ment peers in an ancestor of Natural

Resources Canada calculated that every

cubic yard (0.76 cubic metre) of oil sands

ore that a plant put through his process

would leave behind 1.4 tons (1.3 metric

tonnes) of the yogurt-like tailings blend

of water and solid waste particles.

In a single year the forecast showed

that a minimal-sized commercial

plant, digging up 15,200 cubic metres

of ore a day to produce 10,000 barrels

of oil, would cast off nearly a square

kilometre of liquid waste eight metres

deep. A more economic project, using

76,000 cubic metres of ore every day to

pump out 50,000 barrels of oil, would

discharge a 1.6-square-kilometre tail-

ings pool 21 metres deep. Today’s

biggest mega-mines dig up and process

about five times more ore than the

largest operations foreseen by the early

tailings studies.

In the 1950s and ’60s, only a few

specialists understood the titanic scale

of oil sands projects, and until the late

’90s they remained an obscure industry

branch regarded as experimental by

most mainstream investment managers.

From an environmental and public

point of view, development was a case

of out of sight, out of mind.

The bitumen mining district was far

beyond paved highways in the begin-

ning. Travel was by brutally rough

gravel roads, bush plane or a famously

slow railway branch line, which

tacked dilapidated passenger cars onto

freight trains as a Muskeg Express that

was renowned for stopping at every

hamlet and cabin along its 500-kilo-

metre route between Edmonton and

Fort McMurray.

Clark told GCOS, “I do not believe

that the government has any policy at the

present about tailings disposal. I believe

that the first plants can handle the matter

in whatever way is judged best.”

He saw no threats to tourism or

farming. “There is no scenery to spoil

along the Athabasca River. And

certainly there is no arable land that

must be protected.” But as an avid

naturalist and hunter, Clark urged

industry to behave responsibly: “The

one thing that must not be done is

to put, or allow the sand to get into,

the river. And of course the same

A


restriction applies to oil that will be

associated with the tailings.”

GCOS responded by adding liquid

waste tailings ponds to its project,

as engineered structures intended to

provide at least durable leak-proof

storage for as long as solid particles took

to congeal and settle to the bottom

naturally. Clark hoped for more. He

suggested numerous potential lines of

research into ways of doing cleanups

simultaneously with mining and

bitumen separation — yet without

putting beyond range elusive speed

Dealing with mature fine tail-ings (Mft) - the troublesome layer in oil sands tailings ponds where clay particles remain suspended in water - has been a major obstacle to reducing the oil sands’ footprint. the conven-tional method of adding gypsum and coarse sand to Mft meant it took decades to firm up the mate-rial enough to begin reclamation. In 2007, Suncor started searching for chemical additives to speed the dewatering process and landed on a customized anionic poly-acrylamide, similar to the polymer flocculants used to settle out solids in municipal waste water treatment facilities. the floccu-lant adheres to the clay particles, causing them to bundle together creating a porridge-like consis-tency that, when dried can support the weight of vehicles. finding the right chemical additive “was key,” according to Suncor’s tRo director, Bradley Wamboldt, but just the beginning. “Now that you can make this material, how do you make it consistently, at large scales, how do you get it out on the beaches … there’s a surprising amount of chemical engineering.”

J.D.

targets that had to be hit by the produc-

tion line to make the plant economic.

His thoughts turned to a method resem-

bling the workings of his household

washing machine, which he borrowed

for bitumen extraction experiments.

He had ideas about using a thickening

agent or chemical and a centrifuge, to

congeal solid waste particles and spin

them apart from water.

He had too many duties to concen-

trate full time on tailings issues. But

before he died, just prior to the startup of

oil sands production in 1967, he wrote,

“Tailings disposal problems … are going

to have to be faced sooner or later.”

The environmental thorn in the

fledgling industry’s side never stopped

bothering Clark professionally and

personally. As the first plant entered

its construction stage he wrote, “I am

not too happy in my own mind that the

disposal of tailings, and the implica-

tions of this, has been thought through

as carefully as it should be.”

Fast forward 44 years. Suncor presi-

dent Rick George startles visitors and

environmental critics during a ceremony

making it work

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Tailings Pond 1 (above, in 2002) was in operation from 1967 to 1997. The pond grew to make way for more tailings as production increased, with dykes built to deepen and widen the basin. Eventu-ally the pond was lifted about 100 metres above the Athabasca River and had a circumference of about three kilometres. By June, 2010, after reclamation efforts, the surface was solid enough to grow vegetation (left). Suncor’s oil sands operations, like this mine located east of the Athabasca River in 2007 (right), currently produces upwards of 300,000 barrels per day.

that celebrates draining, refilling and

reclaiming an oil sands mine tailings

pond for the first time. George calls the

occasion a historic turning point for the

petroleum industry’s technology frontier.

The site is the original GCOS “Pond 1.”

The event, held last September, is broad-

cast over the Internet and the digital

record is stored for repeated reuse.

The restored landscape is 2.2 square

kilometres of grass and tree seedlings.

That’s seven per cent of the 31.5 square

kilometres of liquid waste storage ponds

that the mega-mine has filled with 200

million cubic metres of tailings since

production began in 1967. But George’s

choice of words draws no quarrels from

industry and government veterans who

know the full panorama of gradual

technology evolution, titanic scale

and engineering complications in the

oil sands.

The accomplishment goes beyond

just turning a fragment of oil sands

eyesores into a lone green spot that

an environmental critic immediately

dismisses derisively as the world’s most

expensive garden. Suncor’s ceremony

draws a bevy of high officials led by

Alberta Premier Ed Stelmach because

it marks a new departure of incorpo-

rating liquid waste cleanup and land

restoration into the economic routine

of bitumen mining.

Insults hurled by eco-warriors bounce

off George. “Actions speak a lot louder

than words,” the Suncor president says.

He and Stelmach pick up shovels to

plant a couple of the 600,000 trees and

shrubs that will eventually cover the

Pond 1 site in greenery. The premier

says, “When we have people coming to

this province, this is what they have to

see. We’ll show them real progress.”

Patented and trademarked TRO,

short for tailings reduction operations,

the method is the innovation that Clark

wanted — a reclaim-as-you-mine addi-

tion that blends into the production

system without disruptions. The cost is

estimated at about $1.2 billion. But the

investment works out to less than $1 a

barrel when spread over time and high

production volumes, and it will pay

priceless dividends of public good will,

George assures Suncor shareholders.

Some of the cost will eventually be

recovered as savings off expenses for

engineering and constructing tailings

pond dykes, adds TRO director Bradley

Wamboldt. The mega-mine is going

through an environmental retrofit.

New tailings ponds are no longer being

made. The eight waste storage lagoons

on the Suncor site are being cut down

to a single pool that will be about 20

per cent of their combined size after

the new system disposes of the tailings

legacy, Wamboldt says.

Suncor is also offering to rent out its

green technology addition to recover

some of its $250 million in develop-

ment costs since 2003. TRO employs

a synthetic polymer flocculant, which

is a long-chain molecule that acts

like household or carwash cleaning

cloths by absorbing dirt and releasing

water. The chemical chamois for the

oil sands operates on a colossal scale,

producing fields of grey cobblestone-

like congealed tailings lumps.

The tailings clods dry out into a

“competent” material that supports

equipment, and can be transported

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Suncor upgrader

operations along the

Athabasca River.

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when we start,” says company mining

vice-president Anne Marie Toutant. In

future, restoration specialists may start

refilling and reconstructing the pit on

the heels of the shovels and trucks as

soon as they dig out deposits.

Although the environmental addi-

tion is still too new to establish a

reliable track record, Suncor has an

informal “tree-to-tree” target of 10

years. The goal is to go from breaking

virgin ground through mining and

reclamation in a decade, or more than

four times faster than the old pace.

“Where we’re standing right now,

18 months ago dredges were operating,”

Suncor research engineering manager

Sean Wells says during a tour of the

showpiece reclamation site. “No one has

ever reclaimed a tailings pond before.

Now we know it can be done. We’ve

demonstrated we know how to do it.”

While environmentalists steadfastly

refuse to credit oil sands operations with

any improvements, there are signs of

acceptance in other quarters. As guest

buses pull away, deer munch on the

reclaimed Pond 1 vegetation. Workers

report sightings of small mammals,

amphibians and birds of prey. A bear is

spotted sniffing around before the offi-

cial ceremony, possibly staking an early

claim on freshly restored territory of its

ursine ancestors.

This article originally appeared in the December 2010 issue of Alberta Oil magazine.



for an industry saddled with a lousy public image, trumpeting an environmental coup to wring the most out of the story is an obvious strategy, but one that environmental watchdogs for the oil sands aim to keep in check. Although even some of the harshest critics of the industry give Suncor credit for their success at pond 1, they argue that it’s a matter of perspective . the pembina Institute reported that part of the effort to convert the tailings pond to a solid surface involved simply transferring 12.5 million cubic metres of mature fine tailings to other ponds and pointed out in a press release that “After more than 40 years of oil sands operations less than 0.2 per cent of disturbed lands are certified as reclaimed.” pembina also noted “the complete recla-mation of toxic tailings waste has not been fully demonstrated …tailings reclamation is in its infancy and needs to stand the test of time before it can be deemed successful.”

J.D.

Keeping Perspective

then sculpted into solid landscapes by

earthmoving contractors. Dried tailings

are sterile. But reclamation covers the

solidified plant waste with fertile “over-

burden,” or natural soil that is scraped

off the top of oil sands deposits and piled

beside the mega-mine for future replace-

ment and replanting as an Alberta

conservation requirement.

In its beginning states, the reclama-

tion system made 200,000 tonnes of

dried tailings in 2009. The pace acceler-

ated more than 12-fold to about 225,000

tonnes per month in 2010. To work on

the oil sands scale, astronomical totals

have to be reached. Bitumen mine tail-

ings lagoons are built on the scale of

upside-down, hollow Egyptian pyramids.

A hole bigger than a golf course and

more than 40 metres deep had to be filled

up to create the solid surface of Suncor

Pond 1 for reclamation.

The TRO system is being fitted into

the entire oil sands mega-mine, from

the moment overburden stripping

begins. “We’ve got a reclamation plan

Call for papersOpens March 15, 2011 - closes May 31, 2011

Innovation, Industry and Internationalization61st Canadian Chemical Engineering Conference

LOndOn, OntariO, Canada

OCtObEr 23–26, 2011

demande de communicationsdébute le 15 mars 2011 – Se termine le 31 mai 2011

Innovation, industrie et internationalisation61e 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

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Rio tinto Alcan Award Alfred Bader Award Strem Chemicals Award for pure or Applied Inorganic ChemistryBoehringer Ingelheim (Canada) Doctoral Research AwardClara Benson AwardMaxxam Award R. U. Lemieux AwardBoehringer Ingelheim (Canada) Research excellence AwardBernard Belleau AwardJohn C. polanyi Award fred Beamish Awardkeith Laidler Award W. A. e. McBryde Medale.W.R. Steacie AwardCCUCC Chemistry Doctoral Award

DeadlineThedeadlineforallCSC awardsisJuly 4, 2011forthe2012selection.

Nomination procedure Submityournominationselectronicallyto:[email protected]

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Canadian Society for Chemistry


SoCIety NeWS

The successful event was just one more way in which IYC 2011 is inspiring current and future chemists across Canada. Volunteers also organized a trivia quiz for a radio station in Sydney, N.S. One chemistry question was broad-cast each day for a week and listeners were invited to call in with answers. In Toronto, Joe Schwarcz continued his lecture tour for the international year with a talk he called “Are cows more trustworthy than chemists?” The audi-ence of over 200 was captivated by Schwarcz’s talent for myth busting; This time he focused on familiar products that aim to fool consumers with misleading science. And exactly what is the connection between cows and chemists? Schwarcz drew his inspiration from a nutrition professor at Columbia University in New York City, who, when asked if butter is better than margarine, responded that she’d trust a cow more than she’d trust a chemist, a fallacy that Schwarcz aims to correct.

Check out video footage of Université Laval’s IYC events at www.iyc2011.ca/worldrecord

InTERnATIonAl yEAR oF ChEmISTRy

CoRRECTIon

Students Aglow with excitement for iYCUniversité Laval recently got into the International Year of Chemistry in a big way: by setting a Guinness World Record for the largest ever glowstick figure.

The event was organized by the Department of Chemistry at Université Laval, in collaboration with the organizers of the Québec and Chaudière-Appalaches Regional Final of the Hydro-Québec Science Fair. Over 100 teenaged participants in the Science Fair got to experience “CSI Québec,” a series of challenging lab-based activities devised and hosted by the department. They were then joined by hundreds more participants for the glowstick event, which was supervised and verified by an official from Guinness World Records. In all, 308 people created a giant glowing figure of H2O, the world’s best-known molecule and the one responsible for life. This smashed the previous record of 181 participants, set by students from California State University in 2003. Glowsticks represent sophisticated chemistry, as they are powered by a chemical reaction between a fluorescent dye, hydrogen peroxide, and diphenyl oxalate (also called Cyalume).

Mitchell Winnik of the University of Toronto delivered an animated keynote address after winning the LeSueur Award at this year’s SCI/CIC Awards Dinner and Banquet. The annual event, held March 24, 2011 at the Hyatt Regency in Toronto, honoured five major award winners for excellence in research, service to industry, and environmental stewardship. It also recognized new talent in the form of over a dozen student merit award winners.

This year, for the first time, dinner was preceded by an after-noon seminar series, the theme of which was “Green, Clean, and Sustainable Chemistry.” Attendees heard from a variety of speakers representing both industry-wide associations and individual

On page 8 of the April 2011 issue, a news article referred to a shipment of “steam turbines” from the Bruce Nuclear Generating station. The stainless steel objects are in fact steam generators, not turbines.

RECoGnITIon

Keeping it Greencompanies, such as Lanxess Inc., Woodbridge Foam Corp., GreenCore Composites Inc., and EcoSynthetix Inc. Following the talks, two lively round-table discussions explored ways in which government, industry, and academia can work together to drive sustainable chemistry forward.

As the dinner hour approached, the crowd swelled. Executives from companies both big and small mingled with distinguished professors and fresh-faced students just beginning their journeys in chemistry and chemical engineering. Over a delicious three-course meal (roast beef or filo-wrapped ratatouille) the winners were recog-nized with speeches, plaques, and warm applause. The success of this year’s event will no doubt carry forward to March of 2012, when the next set of winners will be announced. A list of the award winners can be found on www.cheminst.ca; click on “Awards” and follow the links.

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CheMFuSiOn

By Joe Schwarcz

Sniffing out a Landmark Compound

I had never heard of “storax” until the

word caught my ear while watching

“Perfume: The Story of a Murderer.”

Based on Patrick Suskind's 1985

novel, it’s a fascinating film, especially

for anyone interested in chemistry.

Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, a man who

has no body odour himself, becomes

obsessed with smells and dreams of

creating the “perfect” perfume. Believing

the ideal ingredient to be the scent of

young virgins, Grenouille embarks on

a murderous spree to collect the prized

ingredient. Using a perfumer’s technique

commonly applied to botanical matter

known as “cold enfleurage,” he wraps

the murdered women in linen soaked

in animal fat. Their fragrance diffuses

into the fat, from which he proceeds to

extract it with alcohol.

The wretched man learned the art

of perfumery from master Giuseppe

Baldini. Baldini had been trying to

reproduce “Amor and Psyche,” a rival

perfumer’s popular product when

Grenouille happened to wander into

his shop. After sniffing the original,

Grenouille immediately concluded that

it contained cloves, roses and storax.

I knew that roses and cloves were

common ingredients in perfumes,

but what was storax? The search for

an answer took me on a journey from

ancient tropical trees to modern

computer housings. Storax, it turns

out, is a resin produced by a number of

tropical trees of the family Styracaceae

when their bark is injured. It has a long

history of use in perfumes because of

its lingering fragrance and its ability

to slow the evaporation of other

compounds that contribute to the

overall scent. This “fixative” effect

allows a perfume to keep the original

fragrance for a longer time.

Storax is a complex mixture of

compounds. Cinnamic acid, alpha-

pinene, ethyl cinnamate and vanillin

are just some that have been isolated.

But in terms of historical impact,

perhaps the most interesting compound

found in storax is styrene.

In 1839, Eduard Simon, a German

apothecary was attempting to separate

the components of storax obtained from

the Liquiambar orientalis tree by distilla-

tion. One of the fractions he collected

was an oily substance that seemed to

be a single compound. Simon named it

“styrol” and stored it in a bottle. Within

a few days and much to his surprise, his

styrol had changed from an oil into a

hard translucent mass. Since he hadn’t

added anything to the sample, Simon

figured that it must have reacted with

oxygen, and dubbed the new material

“styrol oxide.”

As it turned out, he was wrong.

August Wilhelm Hofmann, one of the

leading lights of German chemistry,

showed that the styrol transformation

also occurred in the absence of oxygen.

A solution to the mystery was proposed

in 1866 by the brilliant French chemist,

Marcelin Berthelot. The molecules

of styrol, Berthelot suggested, must

have joined together to form a long

chain. Just three years earlier, he had

delivered a landmark lecture to the

Chemical Society of Paris in which

he introduced the novel idea of small

molecules linking together to form giant

molecules, or polymers.

But Berthelot did more than theorize.

He carried out experiments to show

that ethylene molecules could be joined

together to form a new substance he

dubbed “polyethylene,” surely the

first time that term was ever used. The

history of polymer chemistry can be

said to have begun with Berthelot’s

pioneering work.

Simon’s “styrol” was eventually iden-

tified as the compound we now know

as styrene, and his “styrol oxide” was

actually polystyrene. Neither Simon

nor Berthelot found a practical use for

polystyrene, but by the 1930s German

chemists did. They discovered that it

could be cast into virtually any shape

by pouring the molten substance into

moulds. It could also be extruded into

sheets or films. Today, polystyrene is used

to make a myriad items ranging from

clear plastic glasses, laboratory equip-

ment and “jewel” cases for compact discs,

to smoke detectors and disposable razors.

The most common use for polystyrene,

however, is to produce “expanded

polystyrene.” That’s the foamy stuff of

coffee cups, insulation materials and

those packing peanuts used to cushion

electronic equipment.

And what happened to the murderous

Jean-Baptiste Grenouille? In a desperate

effort to be loved, he sprinkled his

“perfect” perfume on himself. A crowd

quickly gathered. Overcome by the

seductive scent, people just could not

get enough of Grenouille and ended up

devouring him.

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

Read his blog at chemicallyspeaking.com.



Documents

ACCN, the Canadian Chemical News_May2011