William Anderson

William A. Anderson is a Professor in the Chemical Engineering department and the Director of Admissions for the Faculty of Engineering at the University of Waterloo.

With his expertise in photochemical (UV) and biological air and water pollution control and biochemical engineering of fermentation and pharmaceutical processes, Professor Anderson maintains industry research collaborations in the areas of hospital air emissions control, clinical water testing, residential air UV disinfection and agricultural resource recovery.

His recent projects include automated UV disinfection in hospitals, rapid detection of microbial contamination of water, removal of ammonia and selenium from water, and antimicrobial materials for use in engineered infection control.

A major emphasis of Professor Anderson’s work in pollution control technology for air treatment is reactor engineering for photocatalysis and photolysis, using an ultraviolet light irradiated catalyst to degrade organic contaminants at ambient temperatures.

In addition to his research work, Professor Anderson has written over 100 journal articles, referred conference proceedings and technical reports. He also has a blog that is widely read by current and prospective Waterloo Engineering undergraduates.

William Anderson is a member of the Waterloo Centre for Microbial Research (https://uwaterloo.ca/waterloo-centre-microbial-research/).

• Photocatalysis
• Photoreaction Engineering
• Antimicrobial Materials
• Disinfection
• Air Pollution Control
• Biochemical Engineering
• Nanoparticle Synthesis
• Advanced Oxidation Processes For Wastewater And Air Treatment
• Photochemical Reactor Engineering
• Biofiltration
• Biochemical
• Environmental Engineering
• Infection And Pathogen Control

• 1991, Doctorate, Chemical Engineering, University of Waterloo
• 1986, Master's, Chemical Engineering, University of Waterloo
• 1981, Bachelor's, Chemical Engineering, University of Waterloo

• CHE 572 - Air Pollution Control
• CHE 672 - Air Pollution Control
• CHE 480 - Process Analysis and Design
• CHE 482 - Chemical Engineering Design Workshop

• F. Al-Sheikh, A. Elkamel, W.A. Anderson, Comparison between post- and oxy-combustion systems in a petroleum refinery unit using modeling and optimization, Int J Chem Molec Eng, 11(12), 2017, 747 - 753
• Zhou, Qiong and Wen, John Z and Zhao, Pei and Anderson, William A, Synthesis of Vertically-Aligned Zinc Oxide Nanowires and Their Application as a Photocatalyst, Nanomaterials, 7(1), 2017
• J Li, K Cheng, E Croiset, WA Anderson, Q Li, Z Tan, Effects of SO2 on CO2 capture using chilled ammonia solvent, International Journal of Greenhouse Gas Control, 63, 2017, 442 - 448
• Schmidt, Thomas and Anderson, William A, Biotrickling Filtration of Air Contaminated with 1-Butanol, Environments, 4(3), 2017
• Bustami, Yazmin and Moo-Young, Murray and Anderson, William A, Manipulation of Fe/Au Peroxidase-Like Activity for Development of a Nanocatalytic-Based Assay, Journal of Engineering Science, 13, 2017, 29 - 52