Research Spotlight
Archives for February 2012 « Recent Articles
Treating sewage protects human health and the health of our environment, but it comes with a hefty price tag. Operating costs for a mid-sized municipal wastewater plant typically run to millions of dollars a year. Making the process more efficient could therefore yield big financial savings. Adding a little electricity to the process could boost efficiency, says UW's Hyung-Sool Lee. Lee and his colleagues have found a way to pre-treat sewage sludge with pulsed…
Scientists and engineers understand how air behaves when it flows over airplane wings and wind turbine blades at high Reynolds numbers - a ratio that involves wind speed, airfoil dimensions and the viscosity of the surrounding air.
However, we know much less about its behaviour at low Reynolds numbers - numbers often encountered by small-scale wind turbines.
That's where UW researcher Serhiy Yarusevych comes in. In a series of wind tunnel experiments, Yarusevych and his group used flow…
On the Road to Renewable Energy: Creating Electric Highways
Across Ontario, highways stretch for thousands of kilometres. They're the foundation of our transportation system, facilitating the flow of people and goods. But what if they could do even more - like generate electricity, for instance?
Waterloo engineers believe it's possible to harvest energy from the sunlight beating down on the province's roads. Photovoltaic panes embedded in the asphalt could be either hooked into the electricity grid or used to directly power streetlights and signs.…
Rethinking the Science of Ozone Loss and Global Warming
UW's Qing-Bin Lu isn't afraid to challenge accepted thinking on two of the biggest environmental issues facing our planet: ozone loss and global warming. In recent years, the physics and astronomy professor has developed some intriguing theories on the cause of these crises.
When it comes to ozone loss, Lu doesn't dispute the role of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs). As these manmade substances break down in the Earth's stratosphere, they release ozone-depleting chlorine. The question is what…
Waterloo researchers Michael Collins and John Straube are changing the face of home heating and cooling in Canada, thanks to new, inexpensive heat pump technology.
Heat pumps operate on the same basic principle as a refrigerator. They move thermal energy from one area to another by using a refrigerant that absorbs heat as it vaporises and release it when it condenses. This allows you to extract energy from outside air - even when that air is quite cold - to warm a house in winter, or reverse…
In the Loop: Improving Ground Loop Heat Exchangers
There is enormous untapped potential in the fact the soil stays roughly the same temperature year round. Horizontal ground loop heat exchangers (GLHEs) have been taking advantage of this for decades to heat and cool homes. In winter, pipes that run in a horizontal loop through the ground absorb heat and transfer it to a heat pump inside the house. In the summer, the system works in reverse. The challenge is to make them both cost effective and space-efficient.
Because we currently don't know…
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