February 20, 2015
Toronto
Natural Resources Canada and SDTC
The Honourable Greg Rickford, Canada’s Minister of Natural Resources and Minister for the Federal Economic Development Initiative for Northern Ontario, today announced funding of $26.8 million to support jobs and the development of clean technologies in Ontario. The funding was provided though Sustainable Development Technology Canada (SDTC)’s SD Tech Fund™.
Projects:
Grafoid Inc. — Low-Cost, High-Quality Graphene from Graphite
Environmental Benefits: Climate Change (primary)/Clean Air (co-benefit)
Economic Sector: Energy Utilization
SDTC Investment: $8,121,000
Total Project Value: $24.7 million
At one-atom thin, lighter and stronger than steel and more electrically conductive than copper or silver, graphene is much sought after for its unique ability to store hydrogen and electrons; in fact, its discovery in 2004 led to a 2010 Nobel Prize in physics. In short, this is an impressive natural material derived from crystalline graphite with applications in medicine, electronics and energy storage, power generation (such as fuel cells and solar cells), aerospace, computer chips, next-generation transportation, construction materials — and more. So why is this nanomaterial not where it needs to be? Simply because it is expensive to produce, largely owing to the high temperatures needed. Grafoid has developed a novel, low-cost, environmentally sustainable method that produces high-quality MesoGraf™ graphene at room temperature, enabling a 90-percent reduction in the amount of energy used as compared with the market-dominant method. Furthermore, the process optimizes the reuse of reagents with a net reduction in wastewater production.
Consortium Members:
Grafoid Inc.
Focus Graphite Inc.
Graphite Zero Pte Ltd.
National University of Singapore
OTI Lumionics Inc. — OLED Lighting Pilot Production Line
Economic Sector: Energy Utilization
Environmental Benefits: Climate Change (primary), Clean Air (co-benefit)
SDTC Investment: $5,700,000
Total Project Value: $17 million
Organic LED lighting — OLED lighting — is a market in its infancy, but the potential is staggering. In fact, most industry analysts project the market to grow to a more than US$1 billion in sales by 2020. OLEDs are thin, lightweight and flexible light sources that illuminate an area more efficiently than other sources, including LEDs. However, the current cost to produce OLEDs is too high. OTI will lead a project to engineer and install an operational OLED pilot production line capable of producing high volumes of OLED lighting panels. The line will demonstrate the economic and technical viability of OTI’s production technologies.
Consortium Members:
OTI Lumionics
3M
Dr. Reddy’s Laboratories
NSG-Pilkington
TE Connectivity
Teknion
Lumentra
Ranovus Inc. — Energy-Efficient Data Centre Interconnect
Economic Sector: Energy Utilization
SDTC Investment: $4,250,000
Total Project Value: $14.3 million
When users post photos or update statuses on major social networks, or when they use the cloud to back up their data, they create digital traffic within data centres around the world. The energy required for data centres is huge — accounting for two percent of the world’s electricity consumption and 1.5 percent of the global carbon footprint — and it continues to grow at a rapid rate. Today, there are no power-efficient, cost-effective and scalable solutions to support impending future bandwidth requirements. Ranovus brings together technologies, including a state-of-the-art quantum dot laser and silicon photonics, to streamline the way data flows through a data centre. The resulting 100 Gb/s transceiver module can be integrated in a data centre, reducing its cost of doing business eight-fold and its power consumption four-fold.
Consortium Members:
Ranovus Inc.
National Research Council of Canada
Kelvin Storage Inc. — TMES SDTC Project
Economic Sector: Power Generation
SDTC Investment: $2,800,000
Total Project Value: $8.6 million
Industries and power generators worldwide, including and notably Alberta’s bitumen producers, are under considerable pressure to reduce greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) caused by burning fossil fuels. Their challenge is how to do that economically with minimal technical risk. To accomplish this, Kelvin Storage has developed the Thermal Matrix Energy Storage (TMES) system, which uses electricity to heat an insulated graphite core where this energy is stored in the form of thermal energy. This technology can store gigawatt-hours of off-peak electrical energy that can then be delivered in the form of high-quality thermal energy (“CleanHeat”) to industry in a safe, efficient and cost-effective manner. TMES will provide large fossil-fueled generation and industrial facilities worldwide — including power generation plants, oil and gas production facilities (especially oil sands operators), industrial thermal facilities (in a multitude of industries), district heating plants and numerous other applications — with a simple, cost-effective, safe, and efficient way to dramatically reduce their use of fossil fuels such as coal, natural gas and oil while allowing them to operate more efficiently, reducing their emissions accordingly. Additionally, TMES provides new markets for off-peak renewable generation, allowing the amount of renewable energy from wind, run-of-river hydro, solar and biomass to increase and the grid to operate more efficiently. This project will see a pilot 10 MWh unit used at a central heating plant in the GTA.
Consortium Members :
Kelvin Storage Inc.
Greater Toronto Airports Authority (GTAA)
Kinectrics
SNC-Lavalin
Polar Sapphire Ltd. — High-Purity Alumina
Economic Sector: Energy Utilization
SDTC Investment: $2,650,000
Total Project Value: $8 million
Sapphire — harder than any other natural material with the exception of diamond — is already used to make high-strength glass for windows in pressure vessels and scientific instruments. The cost of sapphire glass, however, has prevented its wider use in applications such as consumer electronics. This cost constraint could change with the development of a new process to make high-purity alumina that is then used in the production of synthetic sapphire. The Polar Sapphire process significantly reduces the energy required to produce the high-purity alumina. The environmental impact of using this alumina for conversion into sapphire could significantly reduce GHG and air pollution particulates in Canada and around the world.
Consortium Members:
Polar Sapphire Ltd.
McMaster University
Jaco Corporation Ltd
GaN Systems — Low-Cost Gallium Nitride Power Devices for High-Efficiency Industrial Battery Chargers
Environmental Benefits: Climate Change (primary)/Clean Air (co-benefit)
Economic Sector: Transportation
SDTC Investment: $2,188,000
Total Project Value: $6.6 million
Every electric vehicle comes with a charger to connect its battery to a power grid. This project demonstrates a new technology that maximizes the efficiency of the charger and reduces the vehicle’s weight (if installed on-board), which is essential to maximizing the range of the vehicle and to lowering vehicle operating costs. GaN Systems and Delta-Q Technologies are working on a battery charger for industrial electric vehicles that uses a breakthrough material, gallium nitride, for the power conversion step. Compared with silicon, gallium nitride operates at a higher frequency and with much greater efficiency. These attributes lead to significant reduction in the generation of wasted heat during the power conversion process. This technology can cut power losses incurred today during the charging of a battery in half with a corresponding reduction in greenhouse gases.
Consortium Members:
GaN Systems Inc.
Delta-Q Technologies
Ionada Incorporated — Marine Clean Air Membrane Scrubber
Environmental Benefits: Climate Change (co-benefit)/ Clean Air (primary)
Economic Sector: Transportation
SDTC Investment: $1,100,000
Total Project Value: $3.5 million
The International Maritime Organization (IMO) has imposed global emissions regulations upon the shipping industry, necessitating reduced emissions of sulphur oxides by 2015. Ship operators face a choice: switch to expensive lower-sulphur fuel alternatives or use currently available heavy fuel oil and install a scrubber on their vessel to clean the exhaust and remove the sulphur oxides. Scrubbing is the most cost-effective means for the industry, but some scrubbers have proven very difficult and expensive to install or retrofit into existing vessels. Enter Ionada’s Ionic Capture Technology (ICT), a marine scrubber that removes sulphur oxides through the use of dry membrane gas separation and salt water or ionic liquids. The technology has the added benefit of being 30 percent more energy-efficient than widely available devices and 50 percent smaller, avoiding onboard chemical, waste or water storage requirements, and it has a less complex configuration, which makes it easier and more cost-effective to retrofit shipping vessels.
Consortium Members:
Ionada Incorporated
Ryerson University
SummitRG Business Development Services
Canadian Steamship Lines
