Water

PhD student seeks to make drinking water treatment more sustainable

rahul.kalvapalle — Fri, 03 May 2024 18:46:49 +0000

PhD student seeks to make drinking water treatment more sustainable

rahul.kalvapalle Fri, 05/03/2024 - 14:46

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PhD student Maeva Che works with filtration systems research at the Drinking Water Lab in U of T’s department of cvil and mineral engineering (photo by Galina Nikitina)

Tina Adamopoulos

Topic

Our Community

Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering

Graduate Students

Sustainability

Water

Subheadline

“My goal is to continue researching and developing sustainable solutions for drinking water treatment that benefit communities in need”

Growing up in a small neighbourhood in Cameroon, Maeva Che was well aware of the challenges of accessing clean drinking water.

“Experiencing that exposure to water issues and challenges with sustainable access to safe drinking water ignited my interest in water treatment,” says Che, who is now a PhD student in the ��߲ݴ�ý’s Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering. 

Her drive to improve water quality around the globe brought her to the faculty’s Drinking Water Research Group (DWRG), where she is researching innovative solutions to address local water issues. 

(supplied image)

Working under the supervision of DWRG member Ron Hofmann, a professor in the department of civil and mineral engineering, Che’s research focuses on removing unpleasant taste and odour compounds in Ontario’s drinking water by promoting the biodegradation of these compounds through granular activated carbon (GAC) filtration.

The project is supported by a five-year Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) Alliance grant called “Advanced and Emerging Issues in Drinking Water Treatment.”

GAC filtration is a water treatment process that uses granular activated carbon, which is made from organic materials that are high in carbon, such as wood, coal or coconut shells. These materials are heated in the absence of oxygen through a process known as pyrolysis and prompted chemically or physically to produce the activated carbon. The activation enhances the material’s adsorption properties, improving its ability to remove contaminants from water. 

GAC filtration is an effective treatment process, but its limited adsorptive capacity is exhausted after about three years in service, requiring replacement. For drinking water facilities, that’s both inconvenient and costly. 

Che is working on alternative ways to remove contaminants using GAC filtration – specifically through biodegradation. When the filtration has been in service for a while, there is the growth of micro-organisms on the GAC that can be useful for removing contaminants.  

“Think of biodegradation as the useful bacteria on the GAC feeding on the contaminants in the water, thereby removing them,” Che says.

“If the GAC has enough good bacteria that is biodegrading the compounds, the GAC may not need to be replaced when its adsorptive capacity becomes exhausted. This can extend the filter’s lifetime, resulting in cost benefits for treatment utilities.”

In other words, biodegradation can potentially enhance the performance of GAC filters.

Che and the DWRG are planning to collaborate with water treatment plants to determine methods that can enhance the biodegradation of taste and odour compounds within their GAC filters. 

Currently in its initial phase, the project is taking place alongside the Peterborough Utilities Group’s drinking water treatment plant, where Che is conducting pilot-scale filtration studies with support from the Peterborough Utilities Commission. They plan to extend this research to other partner treatment plants in the future.

Working with other water treatment plants across Ontario, Che will also assess the effectiveness of GAC filters in removing non-traditional taste and odour compounds that are not commonly monitored.

To do this, she plans to evaluate filter performance for two common taste and odour compounds  (2-methylisoborneal and geosmin) and eight additional non-traditional compounds that can cause taste and odour. This involves collecting GAC and water samples from the plants and conducting lab-scale filtration tests known as mini-column tests. This test, developed by the DWRG, allows researchers to differentiate between adsorption and biodegradation in GAC filters, providing crucial insights into their performance.

“Many plants are unaware of their filters’ performance for other compounds, aside from the two common ones, that also contribute to taste and odour events in water. Our project, therefore, plays a crucial role in expanding the understanding of this,” Che says.

Project partners include the Ajax Water Supply Plant and the Barrie Surface Water Treatment Plant. 

The DWRG comprises about 30 graduate students, postdoctoral researchers, research managers and associates who collaborate with local, national and international industry and government organizations to address a wide range of projects related to municipal drinking water.

Che credits her experience as a master’s student with the research group as a major factor in her decision to pursue a PhD at the university. 

“During my master’s degree with the DWRG, I worked on projects that improved drinking water quality, gaining hands-on experience at treatment plants. Seeing the results of my research reinforced my decision to pursue my PhD here,” Che says.

Ultimately, Che hopes to make a significant impact in the field with the help of a supportive DWRG researchers and supervisors. 

“My goal is to continue researching and developing sustainable solutions for drinking water treatment that benefit communities in need.”

'Too comfortable in our own comfort': U of T expert on why we shouldn’t waste water

Christopher.Sorensen — Wed, 29 Mar 2023 14:58:21 +0000

'Too comfortable in our own comfort': U of T expert on why we shouldn’t waste water

Christopher.Sorensen Wed, 03/29/2023 - 10:58

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(photo by Andrei310/iStock/Getty Images)

Topic

It’s common knowledge that reducing our carbon footprint is important, but what about our water footprint?

Showering, cooking, doing dishes and flushing toilets adds up fast, and Canadians use more than 215 litres each day.

Mandy Meriano

“We need to ask more questions about our water, where that water comes from and how it gets to us,” says Mandy Meriano, associate professor, teaching stream, in the department of physical and environmental sciences at the ��߲ݴ�ý Scarborough.

“Sometimes I think we're a bit too comfortable in our own comfort.”

In Ontario, much of our water comes from the Great Lakes, which contain about 20 per cent of the world’s supply of fresh water found above ground.

Meriano says one important reason to conserve is the unnecessary wear it puts on the vast filtration and delivery systems that get potable water to your tap. It’s a labour-intensive process relying on infrastructure that will eventually need replacing and may include fossil fuel use for transportation. Just like tossing food in the trash, wasting water adds to the demand we place on the environment, Meriano says.

It’s not just end users that are the issue. Meriano conducted a study in Pickering, Ont., that found when treated water was sent into distribution systems, as much as 14 per cent leaked out of water mains and into the ground, contributing to local flood risks and the formation of sink holes.

“We all have an individual responsibility, but I think at a greater level, too, the government has to start paying attention,” she says. “We need to be engaged with how people that we put in government are actually managing, or mismanaging, our resources.”

Meriano says those looking to reduce their water footprint should start at home and share their knowledge.

“Once you learn something, pass it on. If you tell another person and you motivate them to make a change and be positive and upbeat about it, it's important,” she says. “I deeply believe in that snowball effect. You can gain that momentum.”

For example, she says she’s picked up some water-saving habits from her students – including one from Australia who took extremely quick showers due to routine water shortages and another who reused water from washing vegetables to water plants. She also notes that some of her students come from countries where water is frequently contaminated, reminding her of her water privilege.

Steps to reduce your water footprint

Meriano offers the following tips for saving water inside and outside the home:

Fix leakages or dripping immediately from toilets, hot water heaters or other pipes and make sure to turn taps off all the way.
Showers use less water than baths but if you need to take a soak, don’t fill the tub all the way.
When opportunity arises, choose a new washing machine, toilet, showerhead or dishwasher that uses less water.
Rainwater that flows down gutters can be collected and used to water plants and gardens.
Water lawns when it’s not hot so water doesn’t evaporate, and don’t water them on windy days.
Keeping blades of grass longer can also shelter the roots and cause lawns to need less water.

Those looking to take it a step further can look at donating to charities dedicated to conservation, Meriano says, and remember “you can also give yourself.” Volunteering can include offering an organization your time, knowledge or skillset.

In Meriano’s case, she used her background as an educator and funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to put together a master’s program training graduates in water resources management at universities in sub-Saharan Africa.

“All health is reliant and dependent on clean water,” she says. “You can't have healthy populations without having access to clean water.”

U of T researcher seeks to improve clean water access in Africa

Christopher.Sorensen — Mon, 16 May 2022 15:57:19 +0000

U of T researcher seeks to improve clean water access in Africa

Christopher.Sorensen Mon, 05/16/2022 - 11:57

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Thelma Abu, a post-doctoral researcher at U of T Mississauga, is focused on improving water access, sanitation and hygiene in the Horn of Africa. She is also studying how COVID-19 affected Black communities in the GTA (photo courtesy of Thelma Abu)

Tina Adamopoulos

Topic

Global Lens

Black Research Network

Africa

Global

Research & Innovation

U of T Mississauga

Water

Thelma Abu wants her research to make a difference. For her, this starts with ensuring everyone has access to a human right and necessity: water.

The global health researcher – one of nine recipients of the Black Research Network’s inaugural IGNITE grant – is driven by her lived experiences in her home country of Ghana to improve water access, sanitation and hygiene, also known as WaSH, in the Horn of Africa.

“We know that our health and well-being are determined by the conditions in which we are born, raised, work and play, as well as age,” says Abu, a post-doctoral researcher in the department of geography, mathematics and environment at the ��߲ݴ�ý Mississauga.

“Global health equity is about how everyone, everywhere, can attain their full potential.”

Abu co-authored a research article that was published last year in the Journal of Water, Sanitation & Hygiene for Development. It highlights the experiences of health-care professionals in Kenya and the management of WaSH in health facilities. The work responded to a global call by the United Nations in 2018 to ensure that WaSH is implemented in universal health coverage, which was piloted in the country.

Abu conducted research alongside Community Health Support (COHESU) – a local NGO – in Kisumu County, which is located in western Kenya and is one of four counties to launch a universal health-care pilot. The research was conducted in three health-care dispensaries that provide preventative curative, maternal and childcare services, but are only open during typical working hours. This means that many community members need to visit local private health facilities or government hospitals during nights and weekends – places where malaria, respiratory diseases and eye and ear infections are highly reported.

The group found that water quality, economic resources and ecological factors were the top barriers to local health promotion efforts.

“These are challenges in households and health-care facilities where infection prevention and safety is supposed to be optimum,” Abu says.

“We cannot talk about water insecurity without acknowledging the intersection of climate change, health, gender, development and how they link to policy, which is shaped by social and ecological factors and processes within places.”

The Kisumu Water and Sewerage Company (KIWASCO) has been responsible for the Kisumu County’s piped water system since 2001, but it is the responsibility of the health ministry to provide plumbing works to health facilities. Health-care workers often construct tippy taps – equipment to ensure running water, due to limited plumbing – with the help of non-governmental and philanthropic organizations.

Health facility managers control water availability to avoid high water costs by locking pipes. Only one person was responsible for all cleaning per facility amid funding shortages that lead to staffing issues. All were factors that caused concern among the study participants’ when it came to poor water quality and availability.

Abu notes that systemic and governmental change is crucial to ensure communities receive access to clean water. To secure access and availability of safe water, she says health-care facilities need to be adequately funded by the government. This also means the government needs to prioritize access to safe water in households and health-care facilities by providing sustainable water infrastructural options and investment in expanding the piped water system.

At the same time, Abu is using her research to highlight injustice, push for policy change and garner support for NGOs like COHESU who work to support communities.

“My goal is to have evidence to advocate for the necessary resources that facilities need to provide safe services to patients,” Abu says.

Closer to home, Abu is also exploring how Black communities in the GTA navigated the COVID-19 pandemic. Currently in its data-collection phase, her project – which received $7,000 in support through the BRN’s IGNITE grant – will fuel pathways to build resilient health-care systems. After talking to community members, the team plans to connect with local grassroots organizations that were instrumental during the pandemic. The researchers have partnered with Peel Public Health and Trillium Health Partners, a hospital system that serves Mississauga and western Toronto.

“The pandemic exposed structural inequalities in various places and we know that Black and racialized communities were disproportionately impacted,” Abu says.

“We’re interested in learning from the community about their experiences and how to best shape and strengthen community resilience and inform future public health messages and care to address their needs.”

Her advice for aspiring post-doctoral scholars? Find a unique spot in research and seek opportunities to build a supportive network.

“As graduate students, we should be able to incorporate research questions into our mentors’ programs that are of interest to us. And in that, we create a niche for ourselves as emerging scholars,” Abu says.

“It’s important to build that supportive environment as we grow in our field to fall back on when we need support during our career trajectory.”

'Like an arms race': U of T researchers study impact of household water pumps on Delhi's water system

Christopher.Sorensen — Tue, 20 Jul 2021 23:23:18 +0000

'Like an arms race': U of T researchers study impact of household water pumps on Delhi's water system

Christopher.Sorensen Tue, 07/20/2021 - 19:23

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With utilities in countries such as India running water infrastructure intermittently to minimize water lost to leaky pipes, many residents use pumps to draw as much water as they can when it is available (photo by Noah Seelam/AFP via Getty Images)

Tyler Irving

Topic

Global Lens

Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering

Global

Research & Innovation

Water

Utility operators generally frown on household water pumps – in many places they have been made illegal – but their use remains a quirky fixture of many urban water systems around the world.

With utilities in countries such as India running infrastructure intermittently to minimize water lost to leaky pipes, many residents have turned to household pumps to draw as much water as they can when it is available – wreaking havoc on the system and leaving less water for residents who don’t pump.

Now, a new study authored by the ��߲ݴ�ý’s David Meyer, an assistant professor of civil and mineral engineering in the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering, looks at how these pumps affect water quality amid concerns that they can draw in impurities.

In many areas of Delhi, India, households use water pumps like these to pull water out of the pipes faster than it would otherwise flow from their local utility (photo by David Meyer)

“Because the use of these pumps is often illegal, they haven’t been well studied,” says Meyer. “But this is not a problem that’s going away. I estimate that there are probably 250 million people around the world that drink water that is pulled out of water pipe systems by these pumps.”

“It’s a bit like an arms race. If the water delivered to you is at low pressure and comes out slowly, a pump connected directly to the city’s system will pull the water out faster. But that lowers the pressure for everyone else around you, which drives them to buy pumps too.”

The study, recently published in the journal Water Research X, was carried out in Delhi, India. Meyer says that in parts of that city, it’s possible to tell when the water system is about to be activated simply by listening for the humming sound produced by hundreds of household water pumps switching on.

All these pumps pulling on the pipes creates negative pressure in the system, which in turn leads to other issues. One is that people who don’t have pumps often can’t get any water even when the system is turned on. Another is that the negative pressure can suck dirt, sewage or other pollutants into the water system, contaminating the supply.

“When I started this project, officials at the local water utility told me that these pumps were their number one problem – full stop,” says Meyer. “The public utility has claimed that 90 per cent of contamination issues can be traced to the use of these devices.”

This simple plastic valve can be used to neutralize the effect of household water pumps (image courtesy David Meyer)

To test this, Meyer and his collaborators came up with a simple solution: a small, low-cost (less than $20) pressure control valve that can be fitted onto any pipe to neutralize the effect of downstream pumps.

“As the pump operates, the valve automatically collapses itself to restrict the flow and keep the overall pressure the same,” he says. “Once we had this intervention, it enabled us to do a controlled experiment to find out how exactly the pumps were affecting water quality, which was something that hadn’t been done before.”

Meyer and his team took more than 500 water quality measurements from two neighbourhoods over the course of about six weeks to get a baseline. After that, one of the two neighbourhoods was fitted with these new pressure control valves and the team collected another set of more than 500 measurements, covering another six weeks.

Having a pump more than doubled the chances of finding a water sample with high turbidity, a measure of the water’s cloudiness that is sometimes associated with water quality concerns.

Yet, on average, the water quality varied ten times more from day to day and week to week than it did between the two neighbourhoods – likely due to what was happening in the rest of the system, according to Meyer.

“We expected dramatic effects, but pumps actually made very little difference to average water quality,” he says.

A more substantial effect was found by studying the water pressure, which also affects water safety. The neighbourhood with pumps had an average water pressure that was between 20 per cent and 40 per cent lower, meaning a big loss for people without pumps.

The findings come with some caveats: the study involved only two neighbourhoods with a combined total of about 500 water connections. It also took place during the dry season – in the wet season there would have been more groundwater moving near the pipes that could potentially have carried contaminants.

Still, Meyer says that the overall results point in two interesting directions.

“Increasing water pressure by neutralizing pumps is a good thing because it reduces the chance that contaminants can force their way into the pipes,” he says.

“On the other hand, we now know that, at least for this area and this time of year, pumps are not the main factor driving water quality issues. Rather than focusing on pumps, we can focus on other things, such as improving the overall system integrity through leak detection and increasing the hours per day of water supply.”

Meyer hopes that more studies like his will be done in the future.

“Given that 250 million people get their water using these devices, it’s astonishing to me that, until now, nobody had measured what they actually do,” he says. “I can’t say we’ve answered all the questions, but it’s an exciting first start. Now that we’re looking into this dramatically understudied feature of many water systems around the world, I hope others will start to pay more attention to it.”

U of T Trash Team and PortsToronto battle plastic pollution in Lake Ontario

Christopher.Sorensen — Thu, 18 Feb 2021 13:57:53 +0000

U of T Trash Team and PortsToronto battle plastic pollution in Lake Ontario

Christopher.Sorensen Thu, 02/18/2021 - 08:57

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U of T Assistant Professor Chelsea Rochman and Chris Sawicki, PortsToronto's vice-president of infrastructure, planning and environment, at the launch of the Seabins pilot in the Toronto Harbour in 2019 (all photos courtesy of Chelsea Rochman)

Sarah MacFarlane

Topic

Our Community

Cities

Faculty of Arts & Science

It’s a collaboration founded on a shared vision: a cleaner future for Toronto’s waterways.

Chelsea Rochman’s lab at the ��߲ݴ�ý is committed to reducing aquatic waste in Toronto by exploring innovative litter-capturing technologies and engaging the public on the issue of plastic pollution.

In her search for partners who shared her vision of a cleaner future for Toronto’s waterways, it wasn’t long before Rochman encountered PortsToronto – a government-business enterprise that owns and operates Billy Bishop Airport, the Port of Toronto and the Outer Harbour Marina.

Key collaborators from PortsToronto with the U of T Trash Team at the Urban Litter Challenge community cleanup in 2019.

With its goal of protecting and preserving Toronto’s waterfront by supporting sustainable transportation infrastructure, marine safety, environmental protection and community programming, PortsToronto has been an active supporter of the U of T Trash Team, a group of students and volunteers who focus on engaging the public and decreasing plastic pollution through a variety of programs, including litter cleanups and sustainability workshops.

PortsToronto even made a $150,000 donation to the Rochman lab last year.

“We've gotten closer every year and started working together in more capacities,” says Rochman, who joined the department of ecology and evolutionary biology in the Faculty of Arts & Science as assistant professor in 2017.

“PortsToronto staff come to our cleanups every year. Now, we're talking about further things we can do together down the road to continue to get litter out of the water and also communicate with the public.”

The U of T Trash Team was founded by Rochman, who serves as head of operations and program lead of scientific programming and application; Susan Debreceni, program lead of volunteer engagement and community programs; and Rafaela Gutierrez, program lead of social science and educational programs.

Cassy Sherlock quantifying and characterizing microplastics trapped in macrophytes captured in the Seabins at the Outer Harbour Marina in summer 2020.

“The year 2021 marks the 110th anniversary of our organization and more than a century of PortsToronto’s stewardship of our city’s great waterfront,” says Geoffrey Wilson, CEO of PortsToronto. “In tandem with our own sustainability efforts, collaborating with the U of T Trash Team was a natural step for us in our ongoing mission to preserve and protect the waters of the Toronto Harbour for future generations.

“Lending our partnership, support and infrastructure to this dedicated team of researchers has, and will continue to, lead to innovative, evidence-based solutions to tackle the serious issue of plastic pollution in waterways here at home and throughout the Great Lakes.”

One strategy for reducing aquatic pollution is the use of floating trash bins called Seabins, which can collect more than four kilograms of waste per day – as much as 1.4 metric tonnes per year – including debris and microplastics as tiny as two millimetres in size. Seabins are a crucial aspect of the partnership between the U of T Trash Team and PortsToronto.

“PortsToronto owns and operates the Seabins,” says Rochman. “The U of T Trash Team does research in Lake Ontario to inform where in the Toronto Harbour would be useful to have Seabins, and then we quantify and characterize the impact – how much debris we're capturing and what type of debris it is, which can be used to inform policy.”

Small microplastic pieces entrained in macrophytes captured by the Seabins in the Outer Harbour Marina in summer 2020.

In the summer of 2019, PortsToronto launched two of their Seabins in Toronto’s Outer Harbour Marina and the U of T Trash Team studied the results. In just 19 hours, the bins collected nearly 2,000 pieces of plastic, many of which were less than five millimetres in size.

While the COVID-19 pandemic delayed the full-scale launch of the Seabins last year, the U of T Trash Team and PortsToronto persevered and ultimately piloted three Seabins at the Outer Harbour Marina.

“Within the three bins we captured hundreds to thousands of pieces of small debris every week,” Rochman says. “We also did visual audits where we had people from our team walking along the harbour and looking at where there were hotspots of litter accumulation within the slips. And that informs where the Seabins can go next year.

“We also standardized our protocols for how we quantify the debris. We spent a lot of time trying to figure out the best method that can be shared with other people who are also tracking litter so that we can all have standardized data. Those methods are being used by people as far away as California and Vancouver.”

Small microplastic pieces entrained in macrophytes captured by the Seabins in the Outer Harbour Marina in summer 2020.

The team even created an app called Data Trapper, which allows users to test methods and share their data.

Rochman says PortsToronto’s recent gift has helped the U of T Trash Team build a foundation by allowing them to transition volunteers to full-time paid positions – and that the support of PortsToronto has had a profound impact on the U of T Trash Team since they first began working together in 2017.

“They believed in us,” Rochman says. “They gave us that confidence to build who we are.”

It’s just the beginning. Rochman says she’s looking forward to what PortsToronto and the U of T Trash Team will be able to accomplish together in the future.

“We hope to increase our impact in the harbour, increase awareness and try to spread the litter diversion beyond the Toronto Harbour,” she says. “We plan to have four Seabins along the waterfront that are actively trapping and diverting litter out of Lake Ontario. We also plan to do a design competition with PortsToronto to think about the type of technology that could be placed near the mouth of the Don River to divert the litter that's coming in from upstream. And then raising awareness and increasing waste literacy among the public is one of our main goals to share lessons learned more broadly.”

Sustainable concrete: U of T alumni recognized for innovation to use waste of one industry to benefit another

noreen.rasbach — Thu, 10 Jan 2019 20:02:23 +0000

Sustainable concrete: U of T alumni recognized for innovation to use waste of one industry to benefit another

noreen.rasbach Thu, 01/10/2019 - 15:02

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Kimberly Asemota (far right), Blandine Barthod (right) and David Aceituno-Caicedo (left) receive the SDSN Youth Special Prize in Geneva from Nane Annan, a lawyer and wife of former UN secretary general Kofi Annan (photo courtesy of Kimberly Asemota)

Alexa Battler

Topic

Global Lens

Alumni

Environmental Science

Global

Graduate Students

International Development

Research & Innovation

Sustainability

U of T Scarborough

Water

Subheadline

A group of alumni from the ��߲ݴ�ý has been internationally recognized for its proposal to create more environmentally friendly concrete that would help nations fight climate change, build sustainably and save valuable drinking water in the process.

Concrete is an important material for developing nations, but it has downsides, including using clean water as one of its three ingredients.

“Climate change isn’t just a scientific problem, it’s a problem in almost every discipline that exists – it affects everything directly or indirectly,” says David Aceituno-Caicedo, a recent graduate of U of T Scarborough's Master of Environmental Science program.

While finishing the program, Aceituno-Caicedo and fellow alumna Kimberly Asemota were inspired by two class topics.

In one week, they learned about bioconcrete, an emerging technology for “self-healing” concrete. It’s a mixture that becomes limestone when bacteria and nutrients are exposed to water. In another week, they were introduced to the sustainable use of brine – the highly concentrated salt mixture left over from making saltwater drinkable.

“We thought, ‘Why not just take the brine that has to be managed from the water desalination process and use that to mix bioconcrete?’” says Aceituno-Caicedo. “It’s mixing the two industries together, bridging this sustainability gap and taking the waste of one and using it to benefit the other.”

Through Maria Dittrich, an associate professor in the department of physical and environmental sciences, the students were connected to Blandine Barthod, a Master of Environmental Science student doing a one-year exchange program from the University of Geneva.

Dittrich, who supervised Barthod's master thesis, felt their fields of expertise would complement each other. Aceituno-Caicedo’s background is in microbiology, while Asemota’s is in chemistry and Barthod’s is in international development.

“It’s even better when people work together, when they start mixing the backgrounds for interdisciplinary solutions to an interdisciplinary problem,” says Aceituno-Caicedo.

Dittrich also encouraged them to enter the Geneva Challenge, an annual competition for master students to showcase ideas to solve an international development issue. Their proposal was one of the top 15 global semi-finalists. They were awarded the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN) Youth Special Prize.

The trio were invited to Geneva for the award ceremony and to network with other global leaders. Their work will also be published on the Youth Solutions Report platform.

“It was a good learning opportunity with like-minded individuals who have similar goals,” says Asemota.

Their proposal used Cape Town, South Africa as a case study. The city is suffering from drought and is expecting “Day Zero” this year, when its taps will run dry and people have to use communal water stations.

“We are dealing with issues of water scarcity and we are also tackling the issues of sustainable development for infrastructure,” says Asemota. “Our major goal was having more water available to the public in areas that are water-stressed.”

For the proposal, Asemota focused on the possibility of using the new concrete in Cape Town, while Barthod concentrated on broader international development concerns. Aceituno-Caicedo looked at the feasibility of using brine to mix bioconcrete.

Their next steps: Find the best ways to mix the concrete and start working on a pilot project.

“It’s like a domino effect,” says Aceituno-Caicedo. “If you give people the basic necessities for life, like water, that leaves room for them to start developing in other areas."

#EveryDropMatters: Five ways U of T engineering research is enhancing water sustainability

rasbachn — Wed, 16 Aug 2017 15:15:09 +0000

#EveryDropMatters: Five ways U of T engineering research is enhancing water sustainability

rasbachn Wed, 08/16/2017 - 11:15

Cutline

Amy Bilton, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering, and graduate student Ahmed Mahmoud examine a model of a passive aerator for fish farms that they are designing (photo by Roberta Baker)

Tyler Irving

Author legacy

Tyler Irving

Topic

City & Culture

Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering

Water

Subheadline

New exhibit brings water research and innovation to Canadian National Exhibition

Fresh water, salt water, wastewater, industrial water, drinking water: all water on Earth is part of the same cycle – and every drop matters. Yet around the world, water supply and quality is under increasing pressure from growing populations, industrial development and climate change.

Researchers at U of T's Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering are leading the way in addressing these pressing global challenges. Professors and students are working together to use UV light to destroy chemical contaminants, develop low-cost solutions for sanitation and effectively control and mitigate pollution by studying and deploying ancient organisms.

During the 2017 Canadian National Exhibition, U of T engineering students will showcase the innovative and multidisciplinary solutions being developed in the faculty. At this interactive exhibit, CNE attendees can test their awareness of water consumption and conservation topics with a short quiz, share on social media and win a reusable water bottle.

Here are five ways that U of T engineering researchers are addressing pressing water challenges, across Canada and around the world:

Purifying drinking water

Zhjie Nie takes a sample at a Toronto-area drinking water treatment plant for her project on using activated carbon to remove contaminants (photo by Ron Hofmann)

From caffeine to birth control pills, most of the drugs we take pass through our bodies into wastewater and eventually into lakes and rivers. To keep our drinking water clean, we need new strategies to remove these pollutants.

In partnership with a number of municipalities, Robert Andrews, a professor of civil engineering, and Ron Hofmann, an associate professor of civil engineering, are testing a set of new approaches known as advanced oxidation. They blast water with everything from ultraviolet light to ozone, breaking down chemical compounds and leading to safer and cleaner drinking water.

Learn more about Andrews' and Hofmann’s research

Restoring contaminated groundwater

Brent Sleep oversees the establishment of the Remediation Education Network, which researches new technologies to decontaminate soil and groundwater (photo by Roberta Baker)

Across North America, thousands of sites have been contaminated with industrial compounds. These contaminants can be degraded by bacteria, but the process is slow.

Brent Sleep, a professor of civil engineering, and his team are tackling the challenge through a project called Innovative Technologies for Groundwater Remediation (INTEGRATE). The INTEGRATE team is accelerating the process by pre-treating soil and inserting custom communities of more efficient bacteria that break down contaminants more quickly.

Elizabeth Edwards, a professor of chemical engineering, also pursues this approach and has developed a commercial product that is particularly good at degrading chlorinated compounds, formerly used in dry cleaning facilities: a community of microbes called KB-1. More recently, she’s developed a new microbial community that can degrade benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene and xylenes – collectively known as BTEX – in soil and groundwater.

Learn more about Sleep’s research

Learn more about Edwards’ research

Sustainable sanitation

A team of U of T engineers has been hard at work building a better toilet for the 2.5 billion people who lack access to safe sanitation (photo by Centre for Global Engineering)

Worldwide, about 2.5 billion people – a third of the global population – have no access to safe sanitation. This lack of hygiene is linked to the spread of many preventable diseases, such as diarrheal diseases that kill more than 500,000 children under the age of five every year.

A team led by chemical engineering professor and director of the Centre for Global Engineering, Yu-Ling Cheng, is developing a waterless toilet that can disinfect human waste without connections to water, sewer or grid power. With a total cost of less than five U.S. cents per person per day, it is designed for users in the developing world.

Learn more about Cheng’s research

Designing for stormwater

Jennifer Drake and her students research ways to design our urban infrastructure to be resilient to storm surges, including this catchbasin shield that can capture sediments from stormwater runoff (photo by Pavneet Brar)

Buildings and roadways are designed to get rid of water as quickly as possible – but that can be a disaster during heavy rains, when it often leads to urban flooding.

Jennifer Drake, a professor of civil engineering, is using technologies such as water-permeable pavement to restore natural flow systems, which allow groundwater deposits to recharge more slowly and encourage river-like flows of runoff. She is also optimizing the design and cost-effectiveness of green roofs, which can reduce peak stormwater flows.

Learn more about Drake’s research

Rethinking resource extraction remediation

Lesley Warren (standing, at right) and her colleagues are mining the genomes of microbes that thrive in wastewater generated by the resource extraction industry (photo courtesy of Lesley Warren)

The mining and resource extraction industries generate millions of litres of contaminated wastewater annually, the chemistry of which is controlled by ancient microorganisms that breathe minerals in order to survive. An academic-industrial collaboration led by Lesley Warren, a professor of civil engineering and director of the Lassonde Institute of Mining, is studying the genomes of these organisms, gaining insight that could help both clean up contaminated water and prevent pollutants from forming in the first place.

Learn more about Warren’s research

U of T undergrad tests out solar-powered irrigation system in his native South Sudan

ullahnor — Mon, 01 May 2017 16:11:10 +0000

U of T undergrad tests out solar-powered irrigation system in his native South Sudan

ullahnor Mon, 05/01/2017 - 12:11

Cutline

James Thuch Madhier, a third-year peace, conflict and justice student at the Munk School of Global Affairs, has launched Rainmaker Enterprise with U of T colleagues (photo by Bibi Veth)

Elaine Smith

Author legacy

Elaine Smith

Topic

Global Lens

Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy

Social Entrepreneurship

Undergraduate Students

Subheadline

James Thuch Madhier came to U of T through the Student Refugee Program

James Thuch Madhier fled South Sudan as a teenager, escaping the ravages of civil war and famine.

Next fall, the U of T undergrad and his social entrepreneurship team will be testing out their solar-powered crop irrigation system on 20 acres of land they've acquired in South Sudan.

“I see it as a model that we can scale up across the country and region,” Madhier said. “I believe in a ground-up approach. It’s a way for local farmers to increase production and efficiency so that they are not simply doing subsistence farming.”

Madhier came from South Sudan via Kakuma refugee camp in Kenya through U of T's Student Refugee Program (SRP), which sponsors refugees in collaboration with the World University Service of Canada.

Now a third-year peace, conflict and justice student at U of T's Munk School of Global Affairs, Madhier has worked with his classmates, Mike Hongryul Park, a math and physics student with a passion for sustainable development, and Katie Fettes, a fellow peace, conflict and justice student at Munk, to create a basic, solar-powered crop irrigation system that provides clean drinking water to countries in the developing world.

The team's system, which includes a pump, a holding tank for the seasonal flood waters, solar panels to generate power and drip irrigation, is easy to install and use in South Sudan, where 80 per cent of residents are farmers or raise cattle, only 30 per cent have access to clean drinking water and 5.1 per cent of the population has electricity.

“We’ve adapted the system in a way that will not only irrigate food crops and provide grazing grass for cattle, but will also offer employment to women and youth and address issues of food insecurity,” Madhier said.

In 2016, Madhier, who has long been active with social development programs, was invited by the One Young World organization to attend a global summit for young social changemakers. The summit included a social venture competition, and Madhier and Park decided this was the perfect opportunity to seek assistance with the irrigation project.

Madhier pitched the idea at the summit and won a fellowship award as well as some seed capital and access to professionals who can mentor him.

This past March, the team formally launched Rainmaker Enterprise in partnership with Emmanuel Jal, a former child soldier-turned-musician from South Sudan, and they purchased land in South Sudan to test out the irrigation system during the November dry season.

For the project, the land will be divided so that cows can graze in one area while crops can be grown in another area. It will allow for crop rotation so the land remains productive for both food and grazing. Madhier has a local field manager who will hire a local team to assist him, creating a self-sustaining enterprise.

Madhier says that as a teenager he saw some horrific things during the famine.

“Thiet, my hometown, attracted people from all over the countryside who were suffering,” he said. “In the mornings, you’d see the collection of people who had died of hunger overnight. Sights like these are toxic to the brain.”

After a trip to the Ivory Coast last year to research issues surrounding cocoa farming, Madhier realized that the problems of drought and food insecurity were much more widespread in Africa than he’d realized and decided to do something about it – not a quick fix solution, but something that would effect systemic change.

“Today, I know there has been technological advancement that could be used to lift people out of extreme hunger and food insecurity,” he said.

India's water crisis: what Canada and India can learn from each other

ullahnor — Thu, 29 Sep 2016 17:18:58 +0000

India's water crisis: what Canada and India can learn from each other

ullahnor Thu, 09/29/2016 - 13:18

Cutline

Mumbai after a monsoon in 2008 (photo by McKay Savage via Flickr)

Larysa Woloszansky

Author legacy

Larysa Woloszansky

Topic

Global Lens

Water

India

Global Cities Institute

With a diverse population of 1.2 billion, India has the second highest population in the world, roughly 35 times higher then that of Canada. Yet, India is only one-third the physical size of our country. With such a large population, water has become a highly contested resource in the country.

In urban areas, drinking water supply and sanitation continue to be inadequate despite ongoing efforts by various levels of government to improve access to water. Furthermore, there are currently huge disparities of water access between cities and peri-urban areas, which are defined as quickly urbanizing rural areas on the outskirts of cities. These factors combined with a severe drought after two years of sparse monsoon rains have left many parts of western and northern India in the midst of a serious water crisis.

Bharat Punjabi, a research fellow at U of T's Global Cities Institute spent the summer researching water politics in India with Craig Johnson, a professor of political science and international development at the University of Guelph. U of T News writer Larysa Woloszansky asked Punjabi about the lessons he learned in India and how they can be applied here in Canada.

What were you researching in India this summer?

Our research, which is funded by the Shastri Indo-Canadian Institute, started in response to acute water scarcity in many parts of India in the last two years. We thought we would start with researching water governance at the metropolitan level with a focus on peri-urban areas. The objective was to find out how regions in India are coping with increased water demand and scarcity, and what kind of institutions at the metropolitan level have been formed to deal with the new challenges. We were especially interested in finding out whether municipalities in large metropolitan regions have the autonomy and freedom to sign agreements with each other to provide water to their citizens, or whether state governments, parastatal (owned or controlled by the government) corporations or metropolitan-level authorities (under state governments) continue to play a more important role in water provision in peri-urban areas.

What did you learn about how cities are coping across India?

We found there were diverse governance arrangements between municipalities at the metropolitan level. While some municipalities did have written agreements with each other, and there were some novel experiments in the Mumbai and Bangalore regions, the trend in Chennai (in the south) is to bring water provision under an all-encompassing organization. For example, Chennai Metro Water, which is an excellent organization working under state government. It is doing very good work in rainwater harvesting. This is in contrast to Mumbai where there are too many actors trying to coordinate water management.

In contrast, Chennai and Bangalore are trying to craft regional solutions with Chennai being more successful. Thus, Chennai has expanded its boundaries by amalgamating surrounding municipalities. Its success has been acknowledged by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who has encouraged other city governments to replicate Chennai's work. My research findings in Chennai turned out to be the highlight of my trip.

What's causing these water issues? is it urbanization or global warming?

Water scarcity in Indian cities has a lot to do with the chaotic development in urban areas. In the large metropolitan cities, it also had a lot to do with the sprawling development of townships over groundwater aquifers. The problem was most acute in Chennai where the government has sought to tackle it by implementing a compulsory rooftop rainwater harvesting program within the city. Water scarcity is also serious in peri-urban Mumbai. Bangalore has seen similar problems with city sprawl, and this has also occurred with disastrous consequences in the Delhi region. The city witnessed flooding during the 2016 monsoon as some rivers and streams that had been built on were seriously flooded. The solution lies in building a greater social awareness of the negative effects of building cities over water aquifers and streams, but it also lies in developing better policies at the metropolitan level.

Are there any lessons to draw for Canada?

I think there is great potential for a two-way traffic of ideas between India and Canada on the subject of metropolitan governance of water. Recently, the Indian water policy expert and economist Mihir Shah submitted a significant report on urban water systems to the Indian Council of International Economic Relations (ICRIER), an economic policy think tank. The report advocates a two-pronged approach. The first is to regulate or even reverse urban sprawl over water aquifers and secondly, it advocates developing mechanisms that ensure qualitatively better and coordinated metropolitan governance around water. Like the Ontario source water protection policy, this report by Shah lays similar emphasis on crafting local solutions to anticipating and preventing threats to water quality and quantity. It advocates the creation of institutions that depend on co-operation between the municipalities and the local water department.

The irony is that we have already done this in Ontario and have also fully implemented source water legislation with the setting up of local source water protection authorities. This experience could be utilized in India. For instance Chennai, which depends on groundwater and water harvesting, could learn better urban water governance from Ontario because utilizing harvested rainwater in a built up urban area can create potential health risks.

Canada can also learn from India’s recent attempts to craft a new National Water Policy framework around groundwater. The bill has been already drafted at the federal level. For a long time, a number of Canadian water experts have been advocating a similar national water policy framework for this country.