On May 31, the Government of Canada announced recipients of its New Frontiers in Research Funding (NFRF) 2020 Exploration competition. The NFRF program, a federal research funding initiative, mobilizes cutting-edge interdisciplinary, international, and transformative research that strengthens Canadian innovation. The fund’s Exploration stream specifically targets interdisciplinary, high-risk, high-reward research that defies current models, bridges disciplines in novel ways, or tackles fundamental problems from new perspectives. The stream’s design recognizes that interdisciplinary research is often risky, but worthwhile given the potential for significant groundbreaking impact.
Congratulations to the following recipients of NFRF 2020 Exploration funding featuring Water Institute members.
Principal Investigator: Nandita Basu, Civil and Environmental Engineering and Earth and Environmental Sciences
Co- Principal Investigators: Juan Moreno-Cruz, Environment, Enterprise and Development;
Rebecca Saari and Bryan Tolson; Civil and Environmental Engineering
Project: Recoupling the Livestock Nutrient Economy: Developing sustainable and integrative solutions to food-water-energy challenges
Amount awarded: $250,000
Objectives: To evaluate the feasibility of widespread use of bioreactors to improve water quality and reduce greenhouse gas emissions from a technological, economic, and policy perspective. Specifically, the project will ask: (1) what are the environmental and economic trade-offs associated with transporting manure for spreading on cropland, (2) what are the optimal sizes and locations of bioreactors to process excess manure, and (3) what are the policies that would encourage the use of biogas reactors and their full integration into the energy system? The project will use a spatial optimization approach to evaluate the economic and environmental feasibility of manure transportation and biogas reactors in Ontario. Using this model as an input, we will analyze the socio-economic implications of such integrative solutions to food-water-energy challenges.
Principal Investigator: Boxin Zhao, Chemical Engineering
Co- Principal Investigators: Trevor Charles, Biology; William Anderson, Chemical Engineering; Komal Habib and Steven Young, Environment, Enterprise and Development
Project: Synergistic photocatalytic and biocatalytic degradation for controlling microplastic
Amount awarded: $250,000
Objectives: To investigate and develop innovative ways to resolve the problem of microplastics pollution to help enable a sustainable and circular economy. The project will apply a combination of membrane, photo- and bio-catalytic treatments as a promising approach for accelerating the degradation process for microplastic particles that can be recovered from wastewater or natural environments. The novelties of this project include the utilization of (a) recent advances of nanotechnology and photochemistry to fabricate active membranes for effective collection and degradation and (b) advanced microbial technology to generate suitable bacterial strains to further degrade the microplastics and to produce other useful materials such as fully biodegradable bioplastics.