Category: Canadian Light Source (CLS)

New glass-ceramic composite shows promise for safer storage of nuclear waste

New glass-ceramic composite shows promise for safer storage of nuclear waste

USask researchers find composite resists corrosion as well as current industry standard and holds more waste

“Simply put, we want to find the best candidate for containing nuclear waste,” explains Mehrnaz Mikhchian, University of Saskatchewan PhD student who has published findings following a year-long study.

Nuclear power holds a lot of potential as a cleaner alternative to fossil fuels; however, two main challenges have been deterrents to widespread adoption – preventing leaching into the environment and safely disposing of large volumes of waste.

USask scientists have made progress in both areas. Using the Canadian Light Source at the University of Saskatchewan, Mikhchian and Professor of Chemistry, Andrew Grosvenor, studied the corrosion resistance and capacity of a new, glass-ceramic composite material with positive results.

The effect of corrosion over a long period of time was unknown. Until now.

“It’s important to ensure the waste product does not leach into the environment,” explained Mikhchian. The team studied the extent to which the material corroded after being exposed to water for a full year and reported that it performed well. Using the VLS-PGM beamline at CLS along with a beamline at the Advanced Photon Source, they examined results from several different corrosion studies and found the composite material resisted corrosion as well as glass, which is the material most commonly used.

Read more and watch CLS’s video on this research here

Using pulp and paper waste to scrub carbon from emissions

Using pulp and paper waste to scrub carbon from emissions

Researchers at McGill University have come up with an innovative approach to improve the energy efficiency of carbon conversion, using waste material from pulp and paper production. The technique they’ve pioneered using the Canadian Light Source at the University of Saskatchewan not only reduces the energy required to convert carbon into useful products, but also reduces overall waste in the environment.

“This is a new field,” says Roger Lin, a graduate student in chemical engineering “We are one of the first groups to combine biomass recycling or utilization with CO2 capture.” The research team, from McGill’s Electrocatalysis Lab, published their findings in the journal RSC Sustainability.

Capturing carbon emissions is one of the most exciting emerging tools to fight climate change. The biggest challenge is figuring out what to do with the carbon once the emissions have been removed, especially since capturing CO2 can be expensive. The next hurdle is that transforming CO2 into useful products takes energy. Researchers want to make the conversion process as efficient and profitable as possible.

“For these reactions, it really matters that we target energy efficiency,” says Amirhossein Farzi, a PhD student in chemical engineering at McGill. “The highest burden on the profitability of these reactions and these processes is usually how energy efficient they are.”

Read more on CLS website

From cannabis harvest to flexible solar panels

From cannabis harvest to flexible solar panels

University of Ottawa researchers using CLS to develop next-gen electronic devices

Organic electronics – electronics where the active material is carbon-based – are making possible diverse new technologies ranging from sensors for monitoring cannabinoid levels in cannabis plants to lightweight, bendable solar panels. Real world applications would mean solar panels you roll up and take with you on your next camping trip, or cannabis producers knowing the optimal time to harvest plants.

Key to these advances is a class of substances called conductive polymers, which have good optical and mechanical properties but are cheaper to manufacture than conventional electronics, thanks to low energy requirements; they can be printed in long, thin sheets – like a newspaper – but don’t require the same high temperatures (> 1000° Celsius). Researchers from the University of Ottawa recently used the Canadian Light Source at the University of Saskatchewan to study how different manufacturing processes can affect the performance of the resulting electronic devices.

“While these applications all sound really different, the reality they all have similar structures and need to be manufactured in similar ways,” explained Benoit Lessard, University of Ottawa professor and Canada Research Chair in the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering.

Using the Brockhouse beamline at the CLS, Lessard and his team have been able to examine – at a microscopic level – how the carbon molecules behave during manufacturing. What they’re learning will have huge implications on how cutting-edge devices are manufactured, their size, flexibility, and electronic functionality. Their results are published in the journal ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces.

Read more on Canadian Light Source website

Credit:  Mobile Solar Power, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

Fighting food waste: Reducing grain spoilage in storage could help feed growing global population

Fighting food waste: Reducing grain spoilage in storage could help feed growing global population

Dr. Digvir Jayas is on a mission to stop grain spoilage. The researcher has been helping farmers and grain managers reduce spoilage losses for 40 years. He recently published a new study that used the Canadian Light Source at the University Saskatchewan to peer inside grains themselves, looking for the signs of spoilage and resistance.

Spoiled grain represents a huge pool of potential food that could help feed a growing global population. Spoilage rates vary greatly between grains and storage conditions, from as low as 1% of stored grain lost up to 50%.

“So, if you took an average of 20% loss, that would mean 640 million tonnes of grain is being lost globally on an annual basis,” says Jayas, who conducted the research while he was in the Department of Biosystems Engineering (Price Faculty of Engineering) at the University of Manitoba. “We could feed 1.5 billion people by preventing that loss through spoilage.”

To understand how the grain itself can be bred, and specific varieties selected to maximize storage potential, his team focused on hard durum wheat, which spoils less easily than soft wheats.

“The CLS has such a unique capability to look at the composition of materials at a nano or micro level. When grain spoils, there are unique changes occurring in the grain, and we were able to look at those changes.”

Read more on Canadian Light Source website

Protecting communities from toxic mine waste

Protecting communities from toxic mine waste

Imagine an abandoned mine site, surrounded by dead trees and dotted with dark, red ponds with no signs of aquatic life. This is the result of mine waste left in the environment that gets weathered by water and air. With exposure to the elements over time, the waste produces toxic substances such as arsenic and lead.

“It is a major environmental problem facing the mining industry in Canada and worldwide,” said Aria Zhang, who studied a method for covering mine tailings as part of her Master’s degree at the University of Waterloo. “Once these toxins are released, it’s difficult to control. It pollutes the soil and seeps into lakes and groundwater. It can threaten people’s drinking water supply, agricultural production, and the ecosystem.”

Under the supervision of professors David Blowes and Carol Ptacek, and hydrogeochemist Jeff Bain, Zhang assessed the effectiveness of a cover of layers of soil, sand, and gravel placed over mine waste near Timmins, Ontario in 2008.

The cover was intended to inhibit the chemical reaction that produces toxins and prevent them from leaching into the environment. However, there were concerns within the remediation industry about how effective covers would be in containing toxins from the waste — which was deposited on this site between 1968 and 1972.

At old mine sites, metals like lead, arsenic, and copper have precipitated into unstable solids,” said Zhang. “It’s similar to limescale buildup in a kettle if there is hard water. They are sensitive to chemical changes, which means they could dissolve again under a cover and potentially get released into the environment.”

Using experimental techniques at the Canadian Light Source at the University of Saskatchewan and the Advanced Photon Source at Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois, Zhang and colleagues determined the remediation approach had been successful. They found that the cover did not destabilize toxic minerals at the site and was preventing more toxins from developing. Their findings were recently published in Applied Geochemistry.

Read more on Canadian Light Source website

New hope for fighting malaria: Decoding human antibodies

New hope for fighting malaria: Decoding human antibodies

Using CMCF beamline, researchers from Hospital for Sick Children decode how human antibodies protect us against malaria

Researchers from The Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids) recently decoded how human antibodies protect us from the malaria parasite, which kills more than 600,000 people worldwide annually. The CMCF facility at the Canadian Light Source at the University of Saskatchewan helped them identify the precise structures involved in identifying and fighting off the disease.

“The key question that we hoped to address was what made a protective antibody protect? What makes it tick, what makes it better than some that might not be so protective and might not be so potent?” says SickKids researcher Elaine Thai.

They were able to see that protective antibodies lock on to a vulnerable point on the malaria parasite in a specific form, making it easier to neutralize the infection.

The results, published in Cell Reports, point to a way forward to better treatments and vaccines.

While there are two vaccines approved today, they can only be used on the very young, have limited protective power, and the effects fade over time. Researchers can take the maps created by projects like this to engineer better tools for healthcare.

Read more on Canadian Light Source website

Adding calcium to soils can help increase organic matter, trap more carbon

Adding calcium to soils can help increase organic matter, trap more carbon

armers add calcium to their soil for many reasons related to increasing crop yields — including regulating pH and improving soil structure.

Using the Canadian Light Source (CLS) at the University of Saskatchewan, scientists from Cornell University and Purdue University have identified a previously undiscovered mechanism triggered by calcium when it’s added to soil. Their finding could lead to more strategic use of the mineral in agriculture.

Researchers already knew that calcium impacts the way organic matter is stabilized in soil. What wasn’t known was whether calcium had an effect on which microbes were involved and how they acted. Microbes are microscopic organisms that live in the air, soil, and water; in soil, they process soil organic matter and help promote plant growth.

“We showed that by adding calcium to soil, we changed the community of microbes in the soil and the way they process organic matter,” says lead researcher Itamar Shabtai, an assistant scientist with the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station. “They processed it in a more efficient manner – more carbon was retained in the soil and less was lost to the atmosphere as CO2.”

Carbon, which makes up about half of the organic matter in soil, is incredibly important to almost all soil properties, says Shabtai, who carried out the research as part of his postdoctoral fellowship at Cornell. “Soils that contain more carbon are generally healthier. They are better able to hold on to water in drought conditions. Soils with higher amounts of organic carbon are also are able to deliver nutrients more efficiently to plants and promote plant growth, and they’re more resistant to erosion.”

Read more on Canadian Light Source website

Developing batteries with 10 times the energy storage

Developing batteries with 10 times the energy storage

Researchers from Western University gain deeper understanding of all-solid-state lithium-sulfur batteries, which could lead to EVs that cost less to purchase, travel further on a single charge, and are safer to drive.

To meet the rising global demand for electric vehicles, we need new and improved batteries. One promising candidate are all-solid-state lithium sulfur batteries. They can store nearly 10 times the amount of energy as traditional lithium-ion batteries, according to researcher Justin Kim.

This type of rechargeable battery uses sulfur, a material that is affordable, readily available, and more environmentally friendly, and it is also significantly safer, according to Kim. This means that your electric vehicle could cost less to purchase, drive longer distances on a single charge, and be a safer ride for your family.

“The fundamental understanding of this type of battery is very limited right now because it’s an emerging technology,” said Kim, who studied lithium sulfur batteries during his Master’s degree at Western University and is now working on his PhD at the University of California in Los Angeles in the same field. “So, not much is known about their operational mechanism and their failure modes, and this information is really important for designing longer-lasting, high-energy density batteries.”

Kim and colleagues at Western University used the Canadian Light Source (CLS) at the University of Saskatchewan to analyze what happens inside these batteries when they are in use. They identified which species of sulfur are formed in the battery during its operation and how this could reduce performance or cause the batteries to fail. Their findings were published in Nature Communications.

Read more on CLS website

A new approach to longer-lasting, faster-charging batteries

A new approach to longer-lasting, faster-charging batteries

Researchers from McGill University and Université du Québec à Montreal (UQAM) have found a new approach to making inexpensive batteries that can not only hold large amounts of charge but also recharge quickly.

Their work focuses on improving lithium ion batteries, rechargeable cells that are used in electric vehicles, power tools, phones and more.

“The work that we’ve done at the CLS is going to open up the door to be able to make batteries that can be charged faster, which will be one of the ways that we can start implementing them in real use cases as soon as possible,” says McGill researcher Jeremy Dawkins, the lead author of a recent paper on the work published in the journal ChemElectroChem.

To understand how a battery performs, researchers need to see what’s going on inside while it is being used. This is challenging to do in most labs, but the Canadian Light Source (CLS) synchrotron at the University of Saskatchewan (USask) offers the bright, intense x-ray light required to peer into a working battery.

Lithium ion batteries can be made of a combination of different materials, which researchers tweak to get the performance they want.

Read more on CLS website

Turning mine waste into healthy soil

Turning mine waste into healthy soil

Tailings, the waste left after extracting precious and critical minerals, often contain harmful chemicals and heavy metals that can pollute soil, water, and even crops. There are over 1800 tailings storage facilities around the world, and in 2019, a tailings dam in Brazil collapsed; close to 300 people drowned in the waste, which also polluted local land and waterways.

Now a team led by researchers at the University of Queensland has developed an innovative method to turn harmful tailings into healthy soil. The scientists used the Canadian Light Source (CLS) at the University of Saskatchewan to determine the underlying mechanism of their process.

Longbin Huang, a professor with the University of Queensland, said it’s costly and environmentally risky to store tailings over the long term and that other processes for remediating mine waste are slow and extremely expensive. “We have basically taken engineering solutions into the context of natural soil formation from rocks, because tailings have some useful minerals common to natural rocks.” Their solution, he said, could save billions of dollars around the world and carry a host of environmental benefits.

“Tailings have no biologically friendly properties for growing plants. Roots and water cannot penetrate them, and soluble salts and metals in tailings can kill plants and soil microbes,” said Huang. “If you wait for nature to slowly weather the tailings and turn them into soil, it could take a couple thousand years.”

Huang and colleagues found a way to accelerate natural soil formation processes to convert tailings into healthy soil. They recently published their findings in the journal Environmental Science & Technology.

“We can convert these colossal volumes of biologically hostile tailings into growth media similar to natural soil by developing soil structure that will enable biological activity of microbes and plants, basically establishing a natural ecosystem,” he explained.

The process involves encouraging specific microbes to grow in tailings that have been amended with plant mulch from agricultural waste and urban green waste. These microbes “eat” the organics and minerals in tailings, transforming them into functional aggregates (or soil crumbs), the building blocks of healthy soil.  

Read more on CLS website

Battling antibiotic-resistant pathogens one door knob at a time

Battling antibiotic-resistant pathogens one door knob at a time

New antimicrobial coating could revolutionize cleaning methods

We’ve gained a new weapon in the fight against harmful and often antibiotic-resistant pathogens with the development of a unique material engineered to limit disease spread and replace current cumbersome cleaning protocols on high-touch surfaces like door knobs and hand rails.

Using the Canadian Light Source (CLS) at the University of Saskatchewan (USask), researchers from the University of Windsor (UWindsor) have developed and tested a compound of ionic (salt-based) fluids and copper nanoparticles that can coat surfaces and provide germ-free protection that lasts far longer than conventional bleach-based cleaning. For Dr. Abhinandan (Ronnie) Banerjee, the composite material is far superior to “somebody with bleach and a rag trying to keep surfaces sanitized.”

Early in the Covid-19 pandemic, Banerjee and colleagues on the UWindsor’s Trant Team — a research group focused on synthetic bioorganic materials — set their sights on improving sanitizing protocols, which at the time often involved frequent application of compounds like bleach. “The problem with conventional sanitization techniques is it’s not a one-and-done kind of thing,” they said. “It requires a dedicated employee or automation” to keep surfaces germ free. Additionally, frequent wiping of a surface can etch the underlying material, creating even more opportunities for pathogens to gather.

Read more on the CLS website

Image: BioXAS Beamline

Credit: Canadian Light Source (CLS)

Understanding sensitive soils to improve quality of surrounding water

Understanding sensitive soils to improve quality of surrounding water

Researchers from the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences in Uppsala are investigating the impact of phosphorous – both that which exists naturally in soil and that which has been added as manure or fertilizer – on sensitive soils and local aquatic systems.

Phosphorus is an essential nutrient for crops and a component of many fertilizers, including animal manure. While it’s critical for plant growth, too much can damage the quality of water bodies near farms. Phosphorus runoff increases the nutrients within aquatic systems that feed algal blooms, which can lead to a decrease in oxygenated water and a reduction of biological diversity in lakes. Algal blooms can impact human health and wildlife as well as the economies of affected communities reliant on fishing and tourism.

“The transfer of phosphorus from land to aquatic recipients is not equally distributed, meaning some parts of the landscape are more vulnerable,” says Faruk Djodjic, Associate Professor at the Department of Aquatic Sciences and Assessment. “By identifying those vulnerable soil profiles and targeting them with mitigation measures, we can improve water and soil quality.”

With the help of the Canadian Light Source (CLS) at the University of Saskatchewan (USask), Djodjic and his colleagues were able to analyze samples to better understand the composition of sensitive soils.

The beamline data from SXRMB helped the researchers identify important compounds that govern phosphorus absorption or release.

Read more on CLS website

Improved treatment for patients with kidney failure

Improved treatment for patients with kidney failure

USask researchers have developed a better membrane for dialysis machines that could lead to safer treatment, improved quality of life for patients with kidney failure.

Over two million people worldwide depend on dialysis or a kidney transplant, according to the National Kidney Foundation. In Canada, the number of individuals facing kidney failure has climbed 35 per cent since 2009 and nearly half (46 per cent) of new kidney disease patients are under age 65, according to The Kidney Foundation of Canada.

Using the Canadian Light Source (CLS) at the University of Saskatchewan (USask), researchers have developed a better membrane for dialysis machines that could lead to safer treatment and improved quality of life for patients with kidney failure.

A dialysis machine is used to filter toxins, waste products, salts, and excess fluid from a patient’s blood when their kidneys can no longer perform this function well. However, negative reactions between dialysis membranes and the patient’s blood can lead to serious complications like blood clots, heart conditions, anemia, blood poisoning, infections, and more.

Dr. Amira Abdelrasoul, an associate professor with USask’s College of Engineering, is an expert on membranes and is determined to help patients on dialysis. “I lost a close family member due to dialysis,” she said. “I saw all the complications he experienced and how he suffered. So, I put all my efforts, knowledge, and background into this research area because I would like to support patients and avoid anyone having to lose a loved one from this treatment.”

The new dialysis membrane developed by her team is a significant improvement over those used in hospitals today, according to Abdelrasoul. Some of the commercial membranes currently in use contain heparin, a medicine that reduces blood clots; however, they also have an intense negative charge on their surface that causes serious side effects.

Read more on the CLS website

Newly identified protein could help fight cancer

Newly identified protein could help fight cancer

Researchers from the University of British Columbia (UBC) have identified a new protein that helps an oral bacterium thrive in other locations around the body. The discovery could eventually lead to the development of new drugs that specifically target the protein.

“This bacterium is common in the mouths of humans and generally doesn’t cause disease in that location. However, it can travel through the bloodstream to other areas of the body, which leads to some pretty big health concerns,” says Dr. Kirsten Wolthers, Associate Professor of Biochemistry and Microbiology at UBC’s Okanagan Campus.

Most notably, this bacteria is prevalent in the tumors of colorectal cancer patients. The presence of the bacteria can contribute to tumor growth, spread of cancer to other sites in the body, and resistance to chemotherapy.

With the help of the CMCF beamline at the Canadian Light Source (CLS), located at the University of Saskatchewan, Wolthers and her colleagues determined that the new protein they identified enables the bacteria to take essential nutrients, such as iron, from our blood cells.

Read more on the CLS website

Image: Alexis Gauvin, inspecting a protein sample for particulate matter, using the glove box. Gauvin is a biochemistry student and a member of Dr. Kirsten Wolthers’s research group in the Department of Chemistry, University of British Columbia (Okanagan Campus).

Building a better carbon capture system

Building a better carbon capture system

Carbon capture has been hailed as a ground-breaking technology for cleaning the air. And it is, but there are some drawbacks – it’s expensive, and most technology requires the generation and application of heat, which creates emissions.

There had to be a better way, thought Dr. Haotian Wang, associate professor in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at Rice University at Houston, Texas.

Wang and his team found it in a process of electrolysis they studied at Rice and collaborated on with the Canadian Light Source (CLS) at the University of Saskatchewan. They have devised a modular solid electrolyte reactor that, in time, will be usable everywhere, in industry but also for “household use, small business use, space station, submarine, any enclosed environment,” he said. Their study was published in the journal Nature.

“Our new approach is integrated capture and regeneration, which means that you can continuously concentrate the carbon dioxide from dilute sources into almost 100 percent purity.”

The reactor is divided into three chambers. Electrolysis, a process by which electric current is passed through a substance to effect a chemical change, occurs on two sides — one performing oxygen reduction and the other oxygen evolution. The oxygen reduction reaction creates an alkaline environment, which captures carbon and then releases it in the central chamber.

The carbon can either be stored underground or converted to valuable products such as alcohols, “which is also an important direction we are working on,” Wang said.

Crucially, no chemical inputs other than water are required and no side products are generated.

Wang has estimated that the cost of capturing carbon will be $83 per ton, but with improvements, that could drop to $58 or even $33 per ton, a big saving from today’s costs, which range from $125 to $600 USD.

“It’s not only the cost but also the energy source that we can use, which is electricity,” he said. “Ideally, we want to transform this into an electrifying process because in the future we can get a lot (of clean electricity) from solar farms, wind farms and nuclear power plants.”

The CLS played an important role in this work.

Read more on the CLS website

Transforming chicken manure into nutrient-rich fertilizer for crops

Transforming chicken manure into nutrient-rich fertilizer for crops

An international collaboration between researchers from Brazil and the United States has identified a process for turning poultry waste into a soil additive for agriculture.

“Several countries have large poultry production, especially United States and Brazil, where agriculture is also concentrated,” says Aline Leite, a Post Doctoral researcher from the Federal University of Lavras in Brazil. “So, reusing a global residue generated in large amounts is an interesting way of promoting a circular economy.”

The researchers harvested poultry manure from an experimental site in the United States, which they heated to turn into biochar, a carbon-rich substance that is used as a soil additive to replenish critical nutrients like phosphorus.

“We are focused on understanding mechanisms that are responsible for increasing phosphorus availability in materials like manure,” says Leite.

Poultry manure is full of calcium and requires higher temperature treatments to turn the waste into biochar, however, these higher temperatures can have an effect on the amount of phosphorus available.

In order to ensure that the biochar contained sufficient available phosphorus, the researchers enriched it with another mineral, magnesium, which protected the phosphorus from the heat and enabled it to form more soluble forms of phosphorus.

Using the IDEAS and VLS-PGM beamlines at the Canadian Light Source (CLS) at the University of Saskatchewan (USask), the researchers were able to visualize the connection between phosphorus and magnesium and confirm the success of their technique.

Their findings were recently published in the scientific journal, Chemosphere.

While phosphorus reserves are found across the globe, the nutrient is a finite resource. Finding ways to recycle the mineral is an important issue for scientists.

“There’s no excuse for not using the phosphorus that is already in the food chain, for example, by reusing the waste that is already generated,” says Leite.

Leite says that synchrotron technology is essential for research into agricultural applications.

Read more on the Canadian Light Source website