A professor at Waterloo Engineering is part of an ambitious, $24-million research project that received the green light from the federal government this week.
Dr. Yimin Wu, a professor of mechanical and mechatronics engineering, is a co-applicant on CANSTOREnergy: Seasonal storage of renewable energy, a six-year initiative involving dozens of participants.
Yimin Wu is a professor of mechanical and mechatronics engineering who researches CO2 conversion.
Contributions from Wu will advance his work on an artificial leaf to convert carbon dioxide (CO2) into alternative fuels and chemicals, climate-change research that attracted worldwide attention when it was published in a leading journal in 2019.
He expects to receive about $1 million of the New Frontiers in Research Fund (NFRF) support for the overall project, which is led by Dr. David Sinton of the University of Toronto.
“This funding will be a huge boost to my group as we continue our work in the CO2 reduction field and move the technology closer to industrial adoption,” Wu said.
'Critical to Canada achieving net-zero emissions'
“With a team effort, we will hopefully have large-scale adoption of this technology by the end of the project, which will be critical to Canada achieving net-zero emissions by 2050.”
CANSTOREnergy was one of six large-scale, interdisciplinary research projects approved through the NFRF Transformation initiative to address major challenges facing Canada, including overcoming cardiovascular diseases and developing non-invasive cancer therapy.
Its primary focus is on the development of a renewable energy storage solution – essentially storing excess summer-generated renewable energy for use in the winter – that considers local concerns and displaces fossil fuels.