ACCN, the Canadian Chemical News: October 2012

October 2012

Canadian Chemical News | L’Actualité chimique canadienne

FAKING PHOTOSYNTHESIS Safety, Canada style Electroplating baseball bats with nanotech

Chemical Institute of Canada www.accn.ca

TABLE OF CONTENTS

October 2012 Vol.64, No.9

Features BUSINESS

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INTEGRAN TECHNOLOGIES INC.

CHEMISTRY

Turning over a new leaf

Turning sunlight into fuel by faking photosynthesis.

By Nicola Jones

UNITED STEELWORKERS

CHEMICAL ENGINEERING

24

Safety haven

When it comes to curbing incidents in the chemical industry, is Canada leading­or lagging?

By Jodi Di Menna

Going with the grain

Nanoscale grains improve metal coatings­, from baseball bats to nuclear­ reactors.

By Tyler Irving

Departments 5

From the Editor

7

Guest Column

By Richard Piette

8

hemical News C

By Tyler Irving

29

Society News

30

ChemFusion

By Joe Schwarcz

OCTOBER 2012 CANADIAN CHEMICAL NEWS 3

www.melochemonnex.com/cic

FROM THE EDITOR

EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

Roland Andersson, MCIC

EDITOR

Jodi Di Menna

NEWS EDITOR

Tyler Irving, MCIC

ART DIRECTION & GRAPHIC DESIGN

Krista Leroux Kelly Turner

CONTRIBUTING EDITORS

Peter Calamai Tyler Hamilton Tim Lougheed

SOCIETY NEWS

Bobbijo Sawchyn, MCIC Gale Thirlwall

MARKETING MANAGER

Bernadette Dacey, MCIC

MARKETING COORDINATOR

Luke Andersson, MCIC

CIRCULATION

Michelle Moulton

FINANCE AND ADMINISTRATION DIRECTOR

Joan Kingston

MEMBERSHIP SERVICES COORDINATOR

Angie Moulton

EDITORIAL BOARD

Joe Schwarcz, MCIC, chair Milena Sejnoha, MCIC Bernard West, MCIC

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I

very often feel privileged in my job when I am afforded the opportunity to speak with someone who is both passionate about his area of expertise and willing to share his extraordinary depth of knowledge: rarely more so than during the interviews I conducted for this issue’s report on process safety management. PSM — a subject regrettably cloaked in that dauntingly abstruse label — is, as I have come to see it, the ultimate intersection between the chemical industry and the general public; it exists to protect not only a company’s productivity and its workers, but also to safeguard people from potential dangers that arise from the industries that support our way of life.

What’s more, in Canada it seems to have grown in a spirit, not of obligation, but of respect and responsibility. It’s a fascinating subject, belied by its name, and one I hope you’ll enjoy reading about in this issue.

For our cover story, science writer Nicola Jones delves into one of chemistry’s most puzzling challenges: how to mimic Mother Nature’s elegant trick of turning sunshine into fuel through photosynthesis.

We also spoke with a company in Mississauga that has put a new spin on everything from helicopter blades to golf clubs and baseball bats with their unique method of using nanoscale grains to electroplate metals.

Hope you enjoy the read!

ACCN (Canadian Chemical News/ L’Actualité chimique canadienne) is published 10 times a year by the ­Chemical Institute of Canada, www.cheminst.ca.

Recommended by the Chemical Institute of Canada (CIC), the Canadian Society for Chemistry (CSC), the Canadian Society for Chemical Engineering (CSChE), and the Canadian Society for Chemical Technology (CSCT).

Views expressed do not necessarily represent the official position of the Institute or of the Societies that recommend the magazine.

CHANGE OF ADDRESS

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GUEST COLUMN

Culture club: process safety management experts bring Canada up to snuff

I

am fortunate to have been involved in process safety management (PSM) for the past seven years. But my participation in this critical system — defined as the application of management principles and systems to the identification, understanding and control of process hazards to prevent process-related injuries and accidents — began for all the wrong reasons.

On March 23, 2005, 15 people were killed and more than 170 others injured in a fire and explosion at BP’s Texas City, Texas oil refinery. In the wake of that terrible incident, my employer took me into our downstream technical office and made me a process safety advisor servicing all of our plants. My role description, put simply, was to find out “What is PSM and what do we have to do about it?”

It felt like I was back in school: reading many books, understanding current issues and starting to set plans for the future. But I knew this was not enough and started looking for industry contacts that could help me set the right direction. This was my first foray into the Process Safety Management Division (PSMD) of the CSChE, and I haven’t looked back. The things I have learned from the experience and diversity of this group have been instrumental to my personal development and the application of PSM within my organization.

But does all this expertise really matter?

No one can claim that applying PSM to achieve the goal of preventing injuries does not add value. The challenge lies in the commitment and continuous improvement cycles required to keep PSM alive within your organization.

Ultimately, the successful application of PSM relies on achieving a culture change that accepts, promotes and embeds PSM practices and principles within the very fabric of the organization. The payoff is that an effective PSM program has been proven to lower the frequency of incidents and increase employee morale and confidence within the workplace.

Before getting involved in PSM, I specialized in the development and implementation of advanced process control systems, the main objective of which was to improve product quality and production. Safety was an important consideration in the design but was typically seen as a constraint in achieving the main objective. I know now that the design would have been different if a PSM approach had been applied. I would now approach the task with safety top-of-mind and then push the design to achieve the other objectives. This may seem like a small deviation, but it’s an example of how people can behave differently when safety is seen as a value

By Richard Piette

within an organization, particularly when it is not subject to changes in priorities or management styles. The ability to lead an organization in safety is key to a good PSM program.

Today, Canada is challenged by the absence of clear expectations on PSM. When you dig deep, you can find references that infer good management practices and hint at effective PSM. You are left with the concepts, practices and legislation from other countries to model your own organization’s PSM. The PSMD has recognized this gap and has been working hard over the last decade to provide guidance and tools to better the application of PSM within organizations. The culmination of this work is found in the new PSM Standard that is being released this fall. This Standard helps to set a common foundation for success across all industries within Canada. This Standard is the model that industry needs to help prevent future process-related incidents.

View the new PSM Standard at cheminst.ca/ PSM. Richard Piette is the 2010-2012 Chair of the PSM Division of the CSChE and leads PSM implementation for Suncor Energy.

OCTOBER 2012 CANADIAN CHEMICAL NEWS 7

CHEMICAL NEWS POLICY AND LAW

Flame retardant ­impacts bird behaviour A new study has provided the first evidence that hexabromocyclododecane (HBCD) has an impact on the reproductive behaviours of predatory birds.

HBCD is one of several brominated flame retardants used in products such as automobile upholstery. It is environmentally persistent and bioaccumulative, and concerns have been raised about its potential to disrupt the reproductive biology of predatory birds. In order to test this, a study was designed by scientists from Environment Canada (EC) and McGill University. Captive American kestrels — birds closely related to peregrine falcons — were exposed to HBCD through food at the same levels observed in wild bird populations.

Previously published work from the study showed that HBCDexposed birds laid more eggs and laid their eggs earlier in the season than non-exposed birds. Yet despite this head start, the exposed group did not show any improvement in reproductive success over the control group. The answer may lie in the behavioural changes documented by the latest paper, which was published in Chemosphere. Exposed pairs were less active during courtship, performing fewer mating calls and bonding displays. “During brood rearing, the HBCD males performed fewer parental behaviours such as entering the nest box or bringing back food for their mates,” says Kim Fernie, the principal EC investigator on the project. “Females performed those key parental behaviours more frequently, possibly because the males were not.”

A new study from Environment Canada has shown changes in the reproductive behaviour of American kestrels (Falco sparverius) exposed to the flame retardant hexabromo‑ cyclododecane (HBCD). The chemical is on track to be banned from products sold in Canada.

Data from the study has already begun to shape public policy, including a Screening Assessment on HBCD released

by Environment Canada last fall. The federal government has proposed to add HBCD to its Toxic Substances List, paving the way for its virtual elimination from products sold in Canada. Canada is also working with other countries to ban HBCD under international treaties like the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants. Fernie says that further investigations are still required for other flame retardants, including those that will now be used as replacements for HBCD.

ENVIRONMENT

Microcystins correlate with low N:P ratios

8 CANADIAN CHEMICAL NEWS

OCTOBER 2012

The first Canada-wide survey of microcystins — a class of potent liver toxins produced by cyanobacteria — in freshwater lakes has shown that their presence is associated with low ratios of nitrogen to phosophorus. The finding could point the way toward strategies to reduce toxin levels in managed lakes.

Algae blooms caused by eutrophication in freshwater bodies can occasionally produce toxins like microcystin, posing a risk to both recreational and drinking water use. However, it’s only in the last decade that the availability of an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) has made it possible to rapidly and cheaply detect microcystin,“There is no national cyanotoxin monitoring program in Canada, so we consolidated available data from universities, government agencies and consulting companies,” says Diane Orihel, a PhD candidate in biological

Canada's top stories in the chemical sciences and engineering

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POLYMERS

Asymmetric micelle growth could ­improve ­computer circuits

B

C

A

Imagine being able to ‘grow’ ultra-tiny computer circuits from electrically-conductive, self-assembling polymers. That dream is one step closer to reality after a Canadian-British collaboration created polymer micelles that grow in a single direction.

PAUL RUPAR

In the early 1990s Ian Manners, then a professor of chemistry at

E

D

the University of Toronto, invented polyferrocenyldimethylsilane­ (PFS), a polymer with a number of unique properties. Now at the University of Bristol, Manners collaborates with another U of T chemistry professor, Mitch Winnik, on block copolymers that combine PFS with various other polymers. In the right solvent, a block copolymer of PFS and polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) forms cylindrical micelles with a core composed of crystalline PFS and a corona made of PDMS; Winnik calls them ‘hairy rods.’ When a new block copolymer - this time a combination of PFS and polyisoprene (PI) - is added, it spontaneously assembles to both ends of the existing rods, forming a triblock co-micelle. The PI corona

A Canadian-British team has developed block copolymers that self assemble into rod-shaped micelles with a crystalline core and 'hairy' corona. Adding a different block copolymer will cause the micelle to grow from either end, creating a dumbbell shaped co-micelle (A). By cross-linking the end blocks and selectively­dissolving the middle block, the researchers created daughter micelles (B) that grow from one end only (C). The process can be used to create asymmetrical diblock or triblock co-micelles (D) which themselves can assemble into ‘supermicelles’ (E). This type of hierarchical self-assembly could be used in computer circuits or other nanostructures.

chains can be cross-linked by adding an appropriate chemical agent, thus ‘capping’ the ends of the co-micelle.

In their most recent paper, published in Science, the group was

can assemble­ into even larger ‘super-micelles.’ This kind of

able to dissolve only the middle block, leaving the two capped

hierarchical­ self-assembly mimics natural processes like the for-

ends. “I would never have believed that would be possible,” says

mation of plant and animal tissues.

Winnik, “but our post-doc Paul Rupar found a solvent combina-

If used with conductive polymers, the technique could one day

tion that was just right.” The capped ends become seed micelles

allow the creation of complex structures like integrated circuits or

to which new block copolymers can be added, but only to one

organic photovoltaics. “From a chemistry perspective, we’re still

end. The group went on to create directionally-grown co-mi-

taking baby steps,” cautions Winnik. “But in terms of learning how

celles containing multiple block copolymers, which themselves­

to control hierarchical assembly, I think this shows a path forward.”

sciences at the University of Alberta and lead author of the paper published in the Canadian Journal of Fish and Aquatic Sciences.

The survey found lakes contaminated with microcystins in every Canadian province, anywhere where nutrient concentrations were high. Microcystins were especially prevalent in lakes with nitrogen to phosphorus mass ratios below 23. That’s likely because cyanobacteria can fix atmospheric nitrogen, and thus out-compete other photosynthesizers like algae and plants when dissolved nitrogen is low. Orihel admits the study cannot distinguish naturally high lake nutrient concentrations from those caused by human activity such as agricultural runoff, erosion or climate change. Still, the results could be useful for lake managers trying to predict where toxic blooms are likely to form and perhaps prevent them. “We hope to inspire large-scale experiments that would provide evidence about the effects of altering the N:P ratio on algal toxin levels,” says Orihel. She adds that the only facility capable of doing such experiments, Canada’s federally-funded Experimental Lakes Area, is slated to close in 2013.

OCTOBER 2012 CANADIAN CHEMICAL NEWS 9

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WATER

UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO | DEPARTMENT OF CHEMICAL ENGINEERING

Canadian ­waterless ­toilet places in international competition

A new toilet design developed at the ­University of Toronto works without ­access to power or plumbing grids and costs less than five cents per person per day. The design mimics squat toilets ­commonly used in the developing world.

Over 2.5 billion people — 40 per cent of the world’s population — lack access to effective­or affordable sanitation. A team of chemical engineers from the University of Toronto may offer a solution, having recently won third place in the first round of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s ‘Reinvent the Toilet’ challenge.

The challenge was issued last year with the goal of designing a toilet that would work without access to plumbing or electricity and would cost less than five cents per person per day to build and operate. “We also wanted something that people would be able to maintain using the skills and materials that are locally available,” says chemical engineering professor Yu-Ling Cheng, who led the team.

The design features separate systems for liquids (including urine, diarrhea and wash water) and solids. Solids are flattened and dried using a drying belt and a simple system of rollers. Dried solids are dumped into a smouldering chamber, not unlike a charcoal barbecue. The slow combustion process breaks down organics and kills pathogens, leaving only an ash that can be used as fertilizer. Meanwhile, liquids with solid contaminants are filtered through a sand filter that removes particles greater than 10 microns in diameter, such as parasitic eggs. The filtered liquids are disinfected with a simple 15 watt ultraviolet lamp, powered by a small solar panel. Fresh sand is added from the bottom up by an auger, and contaminated sand goes into the smouldering chamber.

At a Gates Foundation showcase over the summer, Cheng’s team demonstrated the feasibility of each component and won third prize, worth $40,000. But Cheng says that’s “just bonus money;” it will take funding from a second-round grant to integrate everything into a cohesive and easy-to-use prototype. “We’ve applied for that, and we’re optimistic” says Cheng. “Going forward, the key is: simplify, simplify, simplify.”

TECHNIQUES

Improved technique may resolve nitrogen fixation paradox A set of seemingly simple observations, and the improved technique they spawned, appear poised to explain a decades-old paradox in the study of nitrogen fixation.

Despite nitrogen’s importance to all life, only a relatively small number of bacteria - the diazotrophs - are capable of converting inert atmospheric nitrogen (N2) into bioavailable ammonia (NH3). A lot of this nitrogen fixation happens in the ocean, but it is not yet clear exactly which species are responsible. Julie LaRoche, a Canadian marine microbiologist now at Dalhousie University, studies these species, as well as the overall fixation rates in various areas of the ocean.

A few years ago Wiebke Mohr, one of LaRoche’s graduate students at the Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research in

Kiel, Germany, encountered a problem: an experimental flask grew more bacteria than could be accounted for by the amount of nitrogen they were fed. After re-checking the calculations, suspicion fell on the method by which isotopically labelled nitrogen (15N) was added to the sample. “The assumption was that there’s a very fast equilibration of the 15N in the gas bubble and the water,” says LaRoche. “It turns out that’s not true; it takes up to 12 hours.”

The group developed a new bubble-less technique, adding water that had already reached equilibrium with labelled nitrogen to the sample. Another graduate student, Tobias Grosskopf, then applied the technique on a research cruise, measuring rates of nitrogen fixation all over the Atlantic Ocean. In a paper published in Nature, the new technique consistently gave higher nitrogen fixation rates than previous work. “It can be less than doubled, or it can be up to ten times more,” says LaRoche, adding that such measurements depend heavily on the composition of the diazotroph community and provide only a snapshot of rates in a particular location and time.

Previous measurements of oceanic nitrogen loss have been consistently higher than those for nitrogen fixation. This imbalance would eventually deplete the ocean of nitrogen, but measurements from sediments show that nitrogen levels have been constant for 3,000 years. The new measurements not only help resolve this paradox, but also provide a critical baseline against which to measure future changes, including those wrought by global warming.

OCTOBER 2012 CANADIAN CHEMICAL NEWS 11

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FREDERICK WEST

BIOCHEMISTRY

Molecules show promising anti-prion activity A new set of molecules developed at the University of Alberta has been shown to affect prions, the misfolded proteins that cause neurodegenerative conditions such as mad cow disease and scrapie.

The finding raises hope that it may one day be possible to stop the progression­of such diseases in living organisms.

The incorrectly folded, pathological form of the prion protein is called PrPSc. It has the ability to corrupt and misfold the healthy form, PrPC, which is present in most animals. PrPSc forms clusters that impair neurological function and are strongly resistant to proteases­ — enzymes that break down proteins. Because of this resistance, such diseases are universally fatal.

A few compounds with a moderate ability to bind to PrPSc have been reported. Chemist Frederick West is with the University of Alberta group that has been studying these compounds and trying to improve on them.

“We made certain assumptions about what the business end of those inhibitors really was,” says West. “We then built molecules that consist of a series of arms coming out of a central core, each terminated with inhibitory groups, in the hopes of multiplying their effect.” The work was recently published in the journal Biomaterials.

Molecules created at the University of Alberta consist of a trimesic acid scaffold at the centre, connected with three chloroquinoline groups via linkers of various lengths. These compounds show some of the best activity to date against prions, the misfolded proteins that cause mad cow disease.

When tested against prion-infected mouse cells in vitro, most compounds were not very effective. However, one family of molecules showed an ability to reduce the number of prions to almost zero. These consisted of three chloroquinoline groups attached to a scaffold of trimesic acid via tethers of various lengths. West cautions that much more work needs to be done in order to see if the molecule could work in vivo. He is applying for funding to learn more about how the molecules work, and whether or not they could be made more drug-like.

EARTH CHEMISTRY

YUAN YOU

Atmospheric aerosols ­undergo phase separation

At 85 per cent relative humidity, both optical and fluorescence microscopy show two distinct liquid phases in this particle generated from an atmospheric filter sample taken in Atlanta­, Georgia in 2010. The ability of such particles to undergo liquid-liquid phase separation changes our understanding of atmospheric aerosol chemistry, and will impact weather and climate models.

Atmospheric aerosols—tiny particles that are a major component of ground-level air pollution—can be surprisingly complex, containing thousands of organic compounds as well as water and dissolved salts. New evidence shows that the organic and aqueous phases in these particles can separate into two distinct liquid phases, a finding that will impact weather and climate models.

Allan Bertram, a chemist at the University of British Columbia, and his team have collaborated with a group at Harvard University­ to create lab-grown aerosols that mimic those found in the atmosphere­. The sub-micron particles are then collected and recondensed to form particles big enough to see in a microscope.

Fluorescence microscopy showed a glowing ring around the outside of the particles. “Salt and water don’t fluoresce in our experiments, so the fluorescence must be from conjugated organic molecules,” says Bertram. He adds that the phase separation happens when relative humidity is between 40 and 90 per cent, and when the organics have a low ratio of oxygen to carbon, making them more hydrophobic­. Tests with real aerosol particles gathered from the air above Atlanta, Georgia showed the same result. The work is published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Although the process had been postulated before, this is the first direct evidence of phase separation in atmospheric particles, a finding Bertram says has many implications. “For example, we know that certain reactions can occur on aqueous particles, and ultimately­ these reactions can impact concentrations of groundlevel ozone,” says Bertram. “If an organic film forms on the outside of a particle, it can shut off these atmospherically important reactions.” Aerosols also serve as seeds for cloud formation, a crucial component of global climate models.

OCTOBER 2012 CANADIAN CHEMICAL NEWS 13

TURNING OVER

14 CANADIAN CHEMICAL NEWS

OCTOBER 2012

CHEMISTRY | ARTIFICIAL PHOTOSYNTHESIS

A NEW LEAF P

lants perform a kind of magic: they take the basic ingredients of a little sunlight, water and air, and turn them into fuel to grow leaves and fruit. If only mankind could do the same thing — turning those ephemeral ingredients not into the kind of fuel that produces tomatoes, but the kind that turns on lights and powers a car.

Researchers in the field of ‘artificial photosynthesis’ are now trying to do just that. Their mission rests on the idea that solar energy is mankind’s green dream: more hits the surface of the Earth in one hour than we use in a year. Solar cells have long turned this energy into electricity. But the Sun doesn’t always shine when we need it, and researchers would love to bottle the sun’s energy for a rainy day. The best way to do that, just as plants do, is to store it in a fuel.

Research in this area is now heating up. “Before 2005 there was really no interest in solar,” says Curtis Berlinguette, a Canada Research Chair in Energy Conversion, and director of the Centre for Advanced Solar

Researchers are trying to copy a trick of nature by turning­sunlight into fuel.

By Nicola Jones

Materials at the University of Calgary. “Now there’s a lot more money, both in industry and academia. As a result, there’s some real game-changing technologies in the works right now.” In the United States, a Joint Centre for Artificial Photosynthesis has been set up in California, backed by $122 million from the Department of Energy for five years. The company Sun Catalytix, with MIT chemist Daniel Nocera behind some of its patents, has grabbed headlines for its work on artificial leaves. And Berlinguette himself has just started a company, FireWater Fuel, with the same long-term goal.

The idea isn’t to exactly replicate what plants do. Plants aim to make complex sugars and carbohydrates; humans prefer the cleaner, easier-to-burn fuel of hydrogen. The complex molecules that let plants turn sunlight into fuel degrade quickly, and so they have to churn out more on an hourly basis; impractical for an

Plants aim to make complex sugars­ and carbohydrates­; humans prefer the cleaner, easier-to-burn fuel of hydrogen. artificial device. And plants don’t work well in full sunlight: put your houseplant on the south deck at high noon and its cells will get overwhelmed. “Photosynthesis shuts itself down in half an hour in bright sunshine; our goal is to not do that,” says Nate Lewis, director of the Californian joint centre.

Artificial alternatives have been found that are more efficient than nature at turning sunlight into fuel. But they tend to conk out after days as the parts oxidize or are etched away by acidic conditions, or they use overly-expensive parts like platinum. A commercial system will have to be efficient, cheap, and robust. Any system built today can meet one or two of those criteria, but not all three at once.

OCTOBER 2012 CANADIAN CHEMICAL NEWS 15

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CHEMISTRY | ARTIFICIAL PHOTOSYNTHESIS

A working artificial photosynthetic system first needs an antenna that sucks up light in the wavelengths provided by sunlight and kicks out electrons energetic enough to split water. That reaction requires at least 1.23 Volts, plus an extra kick to get over the energy barrier that stands in the way of any reaction. The silicon solar panels seen on rooftops don’t produce such high-voltage electrons. As far back as the 1970s, researchers used titanium dioxide — the same stuff used in white paints and sunscreens — to kick out electrons of the requisite energy. But this needs high-energy ultraviolet rays to drive it, which make up only five per cent of sunlight down here on Earth. So that system only works well in outerspace. Another solution is to use a stack of layered semiconductors, made of silicon or gallium for example, joined together like batteries in series for a voltage boost. So-called ‘triple junction’ silicon produces suitably high-energy electrons, but for three times the price of a normal silicon cell. Metal oxides are much cheaper, but so far no one has found one efficient enough for the job.

There are billions of possible combinations of different metals to trawl through, though, so the hunt continues.

To make the antenna’s task as easy as possible, researchers add catalysts to lower the required ‘over potential’ of the electrons. Such catalysts help by co-ordinating the complicated chemistry that needs to take place. On one side of the antenna, two electrons need to be collected and used to reduce water to hydrogen gas. On the other, oxidation side, four ‘holes’ (the gaps left by

departing electrons) need to be lined up at once to react with two water molecules to make a single oxygen.

For hydrogen production, plants use large proteins appropriately called hydrogenases as their catalysts, with a pair of iron atoms doing the job of electron shuffling and branches of proteins to co-ordinate the action. In the lab, there are simpler and more efficient options, including cobalt phosphate. “We have pretty good catalysts for the hydrogen evolving part,” says Harry Gray of the California Institute of Technology.

Oxygen production is trickier. Some researchers are aiming to find a metal oxide that will act both as a good antenna and as a good oxygen producer. Gray has recruited a willing army of volunteer students to do the otherwise-tedious work of trawling through the many possible metal oxide combinations. The hundreds of students now in his ‘solar army’ pick their own combination of three to five metal salts, and make a thin film of them on a piece of glass. They fire a bank of LED lights at this and watch the resulting current and voltage for hints that oxygen might

There are billions of possible combinations­ of different metals to trawl through, so the hunt continues. be being produced. Samples that produce a ‘hit’ are sent along to self-proclaimed ‘General Gray’s’ lab for further inspection. Thus far, “maybe four or five are worth moving forward,” says Gray.

Berlinguette is also working hard on the oxygen catalysis side of the equation, and thinks he has hit on a very cheap solution. “My ultimate goal is to make a really efficient catalyst out of nanoparticles of rust. We have basically done that, and we’re commercializing it now,” he says. Berlinguette won’t disclose the details of the chemistry that makes his iron oxide catalyst efficient enough; it will be FireWater Fuel’s first product.

Finally, all these components — antenna and both catalysts — have to work together, which isn’t as easy as it sounds. The catalysts, for example, both have to work in the same acid conditions, and many only work in a certain range of pH. Amazingly, the record-breaker for efficiency in an artificial synthetic system was set more than a decade ago. In 1998, John Turner of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colorado, made a water-splitter that everyone still points to as the ‘one to beat.’ He modified the same antenna used by solar panels on Mars rovers — layers of gallium arsenide and gallium indium phosphide, which together suck up light in the red and blue ranges of sunlight. His catalysts were platinum; together the device cost about $1 to $2 per square centimetre, making the hydrogen produced about 10 times too expensive for commercialization. “I wasn’t worried about cost.

Up until that time, people were barely eking out even one per cent efficiency and

OCTOBER 2012 CANADIAN CHEMICAL NEWS 17

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CHEMISTRY | ARTIFICIAL PHOTOSYNTHESIS

BOB PAZ

Research engineer Slobodan Mitrovic­prepares solutions of metal salts in a high-throughput inkjet printer at the Joint Center for Artificial­Photosynthesis in Pasadena, California. The salts are desposited onto glass substrates and annealed in ovens to make alloys­, which are then screened for their activity to act as light absorbers­or catalysts in reactions that split water into oxygen and hydrogen­gas.

they were kind of cheating on that. I just wanted to show that this whole process was doable,” he says. He succeeded. His system hit a record high of 12 per cent efficiency, compared to the few percent that crop plants usually achieve. But it had issues. It needed dilute battery acid to run, which etched away at the materials. It lasted about 20 hours before conking out. It wasn’t engineered for safe use: both the hydrogen and the oxygen bubbled up together, which can make for an explosive combination in the presence of a catalyst. Turner hasn’t yet managed to best his own result.

Today, researchers have made improvements in one area or another, but still don’t have a solution that hits all the key criteria: cheap, robust and efficient. In 2011, Sun Catalytix published a system that bragged of coupling together all the necessary bits so that they work on bog-standard river water, using cheap and relatively good catalysts but an expensive antenna. The efficiency of that system is only about 2.5 per cent.

Lewis’s well-funded Joint Centre is aiming to tackle the problem with massive firepower, with a centre that aims to ramp up to a staff of 200 people who will simply test every angle and every oxide they can think of for antennae and catalysts.

“We’re gonna turn out pieces that we hope we can mix and match. We’re still in

Researchers have made improvements in one area or another, but still don’t have a solution­ that hits all the key criteria: cheap, robust­and efficient­. the ‘turning up the cards’ stage,” says Lewis. Turner, meanwhile, is relying on theorists to tell him what sort of metal oxides would make for the best light absorbers.

They’ve published on a few good-looking candidates, but haven’t managed to actually make them. “I’m using smarts and Nate’s using brute force. But he has $122 million of funding and I don’t,” he says. Berlinguette, meanwhile, will be tied up for a while extracting the value from his iron-based catalyst; a full system that converts sunlight to fuel is, for him, a long ways off yet.

How close is the world to the dream solution? Turner guesstimates that commercial systems might hit markets in 15 years at the earliest. “The cost of conventional electricity is going to have to become a lot more expensive before this is commercial,” says Berlinguette. “But it depends on your location. For niche applications, for people not localized to the grid — not just in Africa, but say in northern Alberta — it has potential.”

Nicola Jones is a freelance writer based near Vancouver, B.C.

OCTOBER 2012 CANADIAN CHEMICAL NEWS 19

GOING WITH THE GRAIN Nano-scale grain sizes are key to improving metal coatings on everything from baseball bats to nuclear reactors.

By Tyler Irving

How do you re-invent a classic technology? That’s the problem that Gino Palumbo faced in the early 1980s, as he worked to develop a better process for electroplating metals onto surfaces. His solution — which involved shrinking the metal grain size 1,000-fold — applied not only to the nuclear steam generators he worked on, but to dozens of other fields as well. Today Palumbo is president and CEO of Mississaugabased Integran Technologies Inc. The company holds over 250 patents and employs its unique electroplating processes in the manufacturing of everything from military hardware to sports equipment. ACCN spoke with Palumbo to learn how innovating the tiniest of parameters can make a big difference.

ACCN Do you consider Integran a nanotechnology

company?

GP Yes, but I don’t usually use that term. When you talk

about nanostructured materials, people generally start thinking about powders. There are no powders involved in what we do; instead we use electroplating and electroforming technologies to create materials with an ultrafine internal crystal structure.

ACCN How does this improve on traditional

­electroplating?

GP Inside a bulk metal, all the atoms are lined up in tiny crys-

tals. Where the orientation of those atoms changes, you have what’s called the grain boundary. When metals deform, there are actually ripples in the material. It’s difficult for these ripples to move across grain boundaries, so the closer together those barriers are, the harder it is to deform the material. In conventional materials, the grain sizes are in the range of 10 to 30 micrometres; we reduce that down to 30 nanometres, and we can get a seven-fold increase in strength and in hardness.

There are other functional benefits: increased corrosion resistance, for example. We also see reduced friction

20 CANADIAN CHEMICAL NEWS

OCTOBER 2012

coefficients for reasons we don’t yet completely understand.

And since many of our materials are ferromagnetic in nature, we tend to see some interesting magnetic properties.

ACCN What was the breakthrough that enabled

you to reduce the grain size?

GP In the 1980s, many other researchers were trying to reduce

grain size by vaporizing metal, condensing it into tiny crystals, then re-compacting it into a fine structure. This involved very expensive equipment, which we didn’t have access to here in Canada. At the time, I was working at Ontario Hydro’s research division, in collaboration with Professor Uwe Erb, who was then at Queen’s University (he’s now at the University of Toronto). Together, we took a kind of chemical engineering approach, trying to get very fine crystals by modifying conventional electroplating processes.

When you first start electroplating, you cause the nucleation of crystals. If you use a direct current (DC) configuration, you’re just growing the crystals that you’ve already nucleated. But by pulsing the current, you can force nucleation to start anew with every pulse, which keeps the grain size very small. Combined with some changes in bath chemistry, the application of current pulse waveform technology made the difference. Ours was one of the first U.S. patents ever issued in the area of nanotechnology.

ACCN How did you apply the new technology?

GP The original application was to develop a repair tech-

nology for the steam generators inside nuclear reactors. We first put it into practice at the Pickering Nuclear Generating Station. We used robotics to send probes into the tubes, then pumped in solution and used the pulse deposition process to build up a layer on the inside of tubes that had been damaged.

I understand that those tubes we treated many years ago are still in service and doing just fine.

INTEGRAN TECHNOLOGIES INC.

BUSINESS | ELECTROPLATING

ACCN How did this turn into a company?

Gino Palumbo, (LEFT), started to develop a better­ way to electroplate­ metals in the early 1980s.

Golf club shafts coated with nanostructured metal on a carbon fibre substrate(MIDDLE and RIGHT) are both strong and lightweight; sports and military equipment are low-volume, highvalue applications for these types of coatings, originally developed to repair the inside of nuclear stem generator tubes.

GP Queen’s University has an excellent commercialization

arm called PARTEQ. Ontario Hydro had contributed a lot of money and intellectual property to the development, and we also had the involvement of Babcock and Wilcox, a major manufacturer of boiler equipment. So at the project’s completion in the mid-1990s, there was a general interest in launching a company where all that intellectual property could be vested. Ontario Hydro, Babcock and Wilcox, and PARTEQ were the initial owners.

Right away, we began to get a lot of interest from the U.S. Department of Defense. They liked the idea of being able to replace hard chrome coatings, which are used in all kinds of applications where you need very good wear resistance.

ACCN Why did the military want to replace

hard chrome?

GP Chromium is typically DC-plated from baths containing

hexavalent chromium, which you might remember is the carcinogen that made Erin Brockovich famous. The U.S. Department of Defense wanted to get rid of it, but finding something with the same properties as hard chrome was a real challenge. In the end, they funded us to develop a new process based on cobalt. This process is typically run at an efficiency of more than 90 per cent, compared to 20 per cent for hard chrome.

Still, most of our effort went into working on components of nuclear plants. At that time, the nuclear industry started to go downhill, and if it wasn’t for those U.S. Department of Defense contracts we probably would have been in a lot of trouble. Our shareholders were in the nuclear business, and they weren’t as

comfortable with this new direction. So in 2003, I orchestrated a management-employee buyout of Integran.

ACCN How has your focus changed since the buyout?

GP The hard chrome replacement is our flagship technology,

and we’re still finding new applications for that every day.

The rule of thumb is to look at where people will pay the most per pound of material: aerospace, defence and biomedical applications are ideal. But there are some surprises.

During the process of our management-employee buyout, we needed to talk to various groups about financing. One of the groups was a large Japanese trading company, and the president was an avid golfer. So we made a nanostructured metal driver head for him, as a gift. Afterward, he came to me and pointed out that in a driver, all the performance comes from the shaft: it’s all about bend, spring-back and minimizing the rotational distortion. So we began thinking about how to use our nano-metal for producing the best golf club available. The final result was a golf shaft that consists of our nano-metal coated onto a light carbon fibre composite. We’re now working on a new golf shaft which we hope to launch with a major sports equipment manufacturer in 2013.

ACCN What other applications are you into?

GP We do baseball bats, which are a nano-metal coating on

an aluminum substrate, providing better dent resistance and performance. We’re also working on a next-generation bat that will have some interesting features. Unfortunately I can’t say much as we’ve been sworn to secrecy!

OCTOBER 2012 CANADIAN CHEMICAL NEWS 21

We also do a fair amount of work with golf manufacturers like PING, including a new putter, which again is a nanometal on an aluminum substrate. We actually created a spinoff company called Powermetal Corporation to market the sporting good applications, which we manufacture at a facility in Tijuana, Mexico.

ACCN How does the military use your technology?

GP In some cases we aren’t even allowed to know. We do

know that they’ve been using a fair amount of our technology in magnetic shielding products. Previously, folks were doing magnetic shielding using rather expensive metal foil which had to be welded together. We realized that even if our stuff didn’t have better magnetic performance (which it actually does) the ability to electroform it right onto complex shapes allows for a fairly significant cost reduction. It’s now used for shielding of gyroscopes and other sensitive equipment.

On the structural side, there are the rocket launch tubes.

They used to be steel but carbon fibre composite is much lighter. Carbon fibre alone won’t work, but it does if we put our nano-metal on the inside. We also have a program with the Canadian Department of National Defence, working on erosion coatings for helicopter blades.

ACCN Where are these products made?

GP There are five locations around the world that have site-

licensed our technology, including military depots and our own manufacturing plant in Mexico. But we like to do the initial manufacturing here because long-distance trouble-shooting is very painful and costly.

22 CANADIAN CHEMICAL NEWS

OCTOBER 2012

We have about a 55,000 square-foot facility in Mississauga with about 50 employees, mostly scientists and engineers.

The vast majority of them have a background in chemical engineering, particularly electrochemistry, along with a lot of metallurgists and materials scientists. We can do the development prototyping and initial low-volume production, then we transfer it to where the higher volume production can be done.

Bringing a new material to market can take more than ten years, but recently we’ve begun to see a lot of our stuff reach maturity and start generating revenue. That’s allowed us to re-invest in additional development and people; our staff has doubled from where it was five years ago. And we plan on doing more. We now have over 250 issued patents, and on a per-employee basis, I think we do extremely well. I think our revenues are going to increase very significantly over the next few years; I’d be surprised if it was anything less than 10-fold.

ACCN How did you fund yourselves in the early years?

GP We didn’t go through the normal venture capital route:

we’ve always had revenues, and we’ve always operated within our means. On top of that, we have done extremely well at getting research and development support, primarily from U.S. government agencies like the Department of Defense.

But we’ve also gotten excellent support from the Canadian government through the Scientific Research and Experimental Development tax credits, and the Industrial Research Assistance Program (IRAP) from the National Research Council. I think we’ve had about four or five IRAP programs over the past 12 years.

ACCN Is your technology competitively priced?

GP Our economics are virtually identical to that of conven-

tional plating processes, but I think we bring a lot of additional value to the table. We’re competing with processes like machined aluminum and die-cast magnesium, and we’re competitive on both performance and cost.

ACCN What’s kept you motivated to keep working

in this field?

GP I’ve had the good fortune to be surrounded by great people,

many of whom I’ve been working with for over 25 years. At the end of the day I think it’s the people and the relationships that you develop that keep you motivated.

INTEGRAN TECHNOLOGIES INC.

Nanostructured metal—which provides strength as well as magnetic shielding— coats the lid of this device, which was part of a vacuum chamber­ constructed for the Smithsonian­Institution­ in Washington­, D.C. The chamber is used to run calorimetry experiments­ on meteorites­, which often contain magnetic­ metals.

Funding Chemical Education

CALL FOR PROPOSALS

Deadline: December 17, 2012 The CIC Chemical Education­Fund (CEF) is looking to support original and innovative­chemical­-related­ educational­projects. The CEF has sponsored­ student­conferences­, science fairs, chemical outreach­programs­, Northern outreach, and more.

For more information, contact info@cheminst.ca or visit www.cheminst.ca/cef

Nominations are now open for the Canadian­ Society for Chemical Engineering

2013 AWARDS

Do you know an outstanding person who deserves to be recognized? Act Now!

Canadian Society for Chemical Engineering | Awards Bantrel Award in Design and Industrial Practice • D. G. Fisher Award • Process Safety Management­ Award • R. S. Jane Memorial Award • Syncrude Canada Innovation Award

Deadline: December 3, 2012 for the 2013 selection.

Nomination Procedure: Submit your nominations to awards@cheminst.ca Nomination forms and the full terms of reference for these awards are available at:

www.chemeng.ca/awards

Safety

Haven

By Jodi Di Menna

When it comes to curbing incidents in the chemical industry, Canada’s approach has always been largely voluntary. This is in contrast to much of the rest of the developed world where the actions required to manage risks in the process industry are explicitly legislated. But it has been decades since Canada has seen a major accident in the chemical or petrochemical industries. At least not on the scale of the U.S.’s 2005 Texas City oil refinery fire that killed 15 people, or, the same year, the explosion—the largest in peacetime Europe—at the Buncefield oil storage facility in Hertfordshire, U.K. So is Canada lagging behind, or leading the charge on process safety management?

24 CANADIAN CHEMICAL NEWS

OCTOBER 2012

December 23, 1984 | BHOPAL, INDIA: Nearly 4,000 people die, several thousand more suffer permanent disability and over 10,000 experience long-term health effects after some 40 tonnes of methyl isocyanate is released from a tank at Union Carbide’s pesticide plant, and spreads over the city of 900,000 people shortly after midnight. Emergency sirens had been switched off. Many die in their beds, others die in the streets and later in hospital emergency rooms, largely from respiratory failure as their throats close and the burning gas causes their lungs to fill with fluid. The release had been caused by a large amount of water entering the storage tank where the chemical was held, a lapse that was noticed by employees less than an hour before the incident and which the supervisor notified failed to address. In addition, temperature and pressure gauges that had been found to be unreliable had been ignored, refrigeration units had not been working properly, a gas scrubber that would have neutralized the escaping gas had been shut off, as had the flare tower, the water curtain was not effective and the tank had been filled beyond the recommended capacity. ...

The world had never experienced anything like Bhopal.

There had been flickers of recognition in the 1970s of the enormous scale of damage that could be inflicted when something went wrong in the chemical industry: in 1974, 28 people were killed and 36 seriously injured in Flixborough, England when cyclohexane leaked from a nylon-precursor plant and exploded; in 1979, 200,000 people in the Toronto suburb of Mississauga were evacuated from their homes after a freight train derailed, spilling styrene, toluene, propane, caustic soda and chlorine onto the tracks.

Bhopal was a wake up call. The omen of that terrible tragedy could not be ignored for many developed countries that looked around at their own bustling industries and wondered “Could it happen to us?” The decade that followed the catastrophe was transformational for how companies manage the risk their plants present to the people around them.

CHEMICAL ENGINEERING | PROCESS SAFETY MANAGEMENT

UNITED STEELWORKERS

While Bhopal reeled, Canada’s Minister of the Environment ordered an assessment of the adequacy of the measures that existed to prevent and respond to major industrial accidents in Canada. By March 1986, the depart-

“No more Westrays” became the rallying cry in the late 1990s for activists lobbying for legislation to create more accountability­for workplace safety.

A granite memorial outside of New Glasgow, N.S. depicts rays from a miner's lamp containing the names of the 26 men who died in the Westray coal mine in 1992.

ment released a report titled “Bhopal Aftermath Review: Assessment of the Canadian Situation” which made 28 recommendations to prevent major loss of life due to an industrial incident in this country.

Process safety management (PSM), the term that in Canada refers to managing the risk of explosions, fires, releases of hazardous materials or any other event that could harm people, property or the environment, emerged as a new discipline. In practice, PSM is the efforts a company makes to reduce the possibility of an accident: it’s proper design, checklists, procedures and fostering a culture of safety.

And there’s one thing about Canada’s approach to PSM since Bhopal that

stands out from the majority of industrialized countries around the world: it is voluntary. ...

May 9, 1992 | WESTRAY MINE, NOVA SCOTIA: Twenty-six

men die in an underground coal mine in Pictou County, N.S. when a cloud of methane gas suddenly erupts from the Foord coal seam and bursts into flames. The fire ignites coal dust in the air, causing a massive explosion. The force of the blast shatters windows and rattles houses in nearby towns. An inquiry later finds several lapses on the part of the private company that managed the mine and government inspectors who ignored obvious safety abuses: ventilation design and maintenance was inadequate to keep methane and coal dust at safe levels; the layout of the mine forced miners to work in dangerous tunnels; methane detectors had been disconnected because of frequent alarms; procedures to “stonedust” coal to render it non-explosive were done only sporadically, usually before inspections; there was an “appalling lack of safety training and indoctrination” of miners. ...

The Westray story was “a complex mosaic of actions, omissions, mistakes, incompetence, apathy, cynicism, stupidity and neglect,” according to Justice Peter Richard who conducted the inquiry. When police and the provincial government failed to secure a conviction against the mining company or any of its managers, the Canadian

The omen of that terrible tragedy could not be ignored for many developed countries that looked around at their own bustling industries and wondered “Could it happen to us?"

Labour Congress led an intense lobbying effort to amend Canada’s criminal code to hold managers and directors of corporations criminally liable if they failed to take steps to protect the lives of their employees. In late 2003, the federal government enacted Bill C-45, the “Westray Bill,” that does just that.

OCTOBER 2012 CANADIAN CHEMICAL NEWS 25

26 CANADIAN CHEMICAL NEWS

OCTOBER 2012

August 10, 2008 | TORONTO: One

man dies and 12,500 are evacuated from their homes after an explosion launches tanks twice the size of rail cars off their mounts. One tank lands 500 metres away, embedded in a roadsalt dome, another ends up in a nearby city works yard. A series of smaller explosions send fireballs and clouds of smoke into the sky, along with pieces of metal from the exploding propane tanks that land on nearby streets and properties. Homes and businesses are damaged, windows shattered, and doors torn from their hinges. An investigation finds that propane was being transferred directly between tanker trucks, a practice that was both routine at the facility and prohibited in Ontario. ...

One year after the Sunrise Propane explosion, a student-led report sponsored by the Canadian Chemical Producers’ Association (CCPA, now CIAC) was published that stated that “a comparison of policies aimed at preventing major

Investigators sift through the rubble amid tanker trucks and propane cylinders after the August 2008 explosion and fire at the Sunrise Propane­facility near Toronto.

TORONTO FIRE SERVICES

In theory, the legislation encourages companies to carry out good PSM. But in practice, “it’s not likely to make a difference unless something goes seriously wrong,” says Graham Creedy, a recently retired consultant and senior manager at the Chemistry Industry Association of Canada (CIAC) and one of Canada’s foremost experts on PSM. That’s because many companies are in the dark on PSM: some companies know they should be doing something, but they don’t know exactly what; worse are the companies that “don’t know what they don’t know.” So something going “seriously wrong” might be what it takes for those companies to get the message. “If a director is personally charged and found guilty,” says Creedy, “corporations across Canada will sit up and take notice.”

Even then, Creedy points out, the criminal code doesn’t provide any advice on what companies can do differently. “It tells you you’re not supposed to murder anybody, but it doesn’t tell you how to not murder anybody. That guidance has to come from somewhere else.” Since 2000, after the dissolution of the Major Industrial Accidents Council of Canada (MIACC) — a voluntary organization put in place after Bhopal to create a public safety management framework — the PSM Subject Division of the CSChE has provided much of that guidance in the form of guidelines and assessment tools, with the newest additions — an updated PSM Guide and a new PSM Standard — launching this fall.

The weakness in this approach, says John Shrives, the recently-retired head of prevention in the environmental emergencies division of Environment Canada, is that the guidance provided isn’t referenced in any legislation. “It represents a great starting point, but would carry much more clout if it was a regulated requirement for industry.”

After the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, federal regulations governing chemical accidents were introduced into the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, but those deal mostly with emergency response plans after an incident occurs. Other legislation addresses the transportation of dangerous goods, but that aimed at the health and safety of workers doesn’t cover risks to the public “beyond the plant gates.” To date, there is no legal requirement for companies to carry out PSM either provincially or federally, a situation that leaves Canadians at the mercy of luck and the goodwill of companies.

CHEMICAL ENGINEERING | PROCESS SAFETY MANAGEMENT

industrial accident hazards across first world countries shows that Canada is far below the levels of protection established by other jurisdictions.” The statement is emblematic of the notion that without prescriptive legislation obligating companies to carry out PSM, Canada is lagging behind the rest of the developed world.

But our safety record says otherwise according to Gerry Phillips, owner of an Alberta-based consulting firm that specializes in PSM. “If we are looking for a benchmark, we can use the U.S. experience,” he says. “Given that Canada’s population is about 10 per cent of the U.S.’s and assuming a manufacturing and processing sector that is of the same ratio, we would expect to experience about one tenth of the incidents that the U.S. experiences. In fact, Canada is probably much closer to one hundredth in comparison to the U.S.” The success of Responsible Care, a voluntary charter launched in 1985 by the CCPA lends significant credibility to a non-legislative approach. Under the charter, chemical companies pledge to “do the right thing” in all aspects of their business including process safety.

The trouble with voluntary initiatives­, of course, is that they don’t apply to everyone.

suspended in the air may have been the cause of the incidents. Both mills were processing pine-beetle-killed wood, which is much drier than timber from live trees. A month after the Prince George incident, on May 19, a fire severely damages the Absolute Lumber Products Mill in Abbotsford, B.C. Three months later, the Waldun Forest Products cedar mill in Maple Ridge, B.C. is engulfed in flames. ...

The trouble with voluntary initiatives, of course, is that they don’t apply to everyone. “We’ve had four explosions in mills in western Canada this year,” says Masterson, “and some have resulted in fatalities. My observation is that none of those have occurred in companies that are recognized as industry leaders. They weren’t in the Weyerhausers and the Tembecs and the Georgia-Pacifics and the Canfors and the Cascades. As a society, we have leaders in all of our sectors, many of them know what the right thing to do is, most of them are probably doing the right thing. The question is, what about those that either don’t know or aren’t committed to doing the right things? What do you need to do?”

For those companies that don’t voluntarily institute PSM, perhaps regulation is part of the solution. In the meantime, at least for many industry leaders, our made-in-Canada approach to process safety seems to be working. ...

September 25, 2012 | ROCANVILLE, SASK.: Twenty

“We know our process safety efforts are working. There’s absolutely no question. We can quantify it,” says Bob Masterson, vice president of Responsible Care at CIAC, citing a 60 per cent decrease over the past 27 years in both the number and severity of process safety incidents for companies that have signed on to Responsible Care. “I can’t tell you anything about the rest of industry in Canada.” ...

January 20, 2012 | BURNS LAKE, B.C.: Two men die and

nineteen others are injured, some critically, as a result of a fire and explosion at the Babine Forest Products sawmill. Four months later, on April 23, another fire and explosion, this time at the Lakeland Mills sawmill in Prince George, B.C., kills two workers and injures 24 others. In both cases, it is speculated that higher-than-normal levels of dust particles

workers emerge from the Potash Corp mine unscathed after a fire breaks out around a set of wooden electrical cable reels. The blaze is quickly extinguished by crews using foam and water. The workers spend 18 hours in refuge stations waiting for the mine to cool and for massive fans to clear the air of smoke. They pass the time playing cards, phoning their spouses and talking. An additional nine people had been evacuated from refuge stations shortly after the fire started by workers wearing protective gear.

The mine’s mill operations superintendent, Terry Daniel, tells reporters: “We’re very pleased. It seems like everything we’ve prepared for over the years with all our teams has happened much in the way it was anticipated. Everything is going to work out as we’d always hoped. Everyone’s going to come up fine.”

OCTOBER 2012 CANADIAN CHEMICAL NEWS 27

(http://www.chemistry.mcmaster.ca)

(http://biointerfaces.mcmaster.ca).

chemchr@sfu.ca

http://schulich.ucalgary.ca/chemical/about/employment

(www.chemistry.sfu.ca/about/employment)

News from the Chemical Institute of Canada and its three Constituent Societies | SOCIETY NEWS

Things to know The CSC made recommendations to NSERC in September on behalf of Canada’s chemists for how to restructure the Research Tools and Instruments (RTI) Grant Program after its funding was reduced by more than half during the last federal budget.

The submission was based on the results of a survey conducted by the CSC and can be viewed at www.cheminst.ca/advocacy National Chemistry Week begins on October 13 and runs until October 21. Contact your Local Section through cheminst.ca to find events in your area.

Grapevine Elizabeth Edwards, (Chemical Engineering and Applied Chemistry, University of Toronto), Bruce Lennox and Chao-Jun Li (both, Chemistry, McGill University), Andrew J. Roger, (Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Dalhousie University), Tsun-Kong Sham, (Chemistry, Western University), Hans J. Vogel, (Biological Sciences, University of Calgary) and Gerard D. Wright, (Biochemistry and Biomedical Sciences, McMaster University) were all named fellows of the Royal Society of Canada in September.

John Paul Pezacki of the National Research Council's Biomolecular Sensing and Imaging group won the Royal Society of Canada’s Rutherford Memorial Medal in Chemistry in September.

Delegates pose at the national meeting of the American Chemical Society (ACS) held in Philadelphia in August.

Top: Barbara Albert, president of the German Chemical Society (left), CSC President Cathleen Crudden, and Lesley Yellowlees­, president of the U.K.’s Royal Society of Chemistry. Bottom: Roland ­Andersson, CIC executive director (left), Madeleine Jacobs, ACS ­executive director, and Nobuyuki Kawashima, ­executive director of the Chemical ­Society of Japan.

Save the date October 10-12, 2012 Pacific Rim Summit on Industrial ­Biotechnology & Bioenergy Vancouver, B.C. www.bio.org/events October 14-17, 2012 62nd Canadian Chemical Engineering Conference (CSChE 2012) Vancouver, B.C. www.csche2012.ca October 26, 2012 24e Colloque annuel de chimie Sherbrooke, Que. pages.usherbrooke.ca/colloque-chimie November 9-12, 2012 Quebec Ontario Minisymposium in ­Synthetic and Bioorganic Chemistry Windsor, Ont. www.uwindsor.ca/qomsboc May 26-30, 2013 96th Canadian Chemistry ­Conference and Exhibition (CSC 2013) Québec, Que. www.csc2013.ca June 15-19, 2013 World Congress on Industrial ­Biotechnology & Bioprocessing Montreal, Que. www.bio.org/events August 18-23, 2013 9th World Congress of Chemical ­Engineering (WCCE9) Coex, Seoul, Korea www.wcce9.org October 20-23, 2013 63rd Canadian Chemical Engineering Conference (CSChE2013) Fredericton, N.B. www.csche2013.ca

Find more news from the CIC at accn.ca/societynews. Is there something going on that you think we should write about in this section?

Write to us at magazine@accn.ca and use the subject heading “Society News.”

OCTOBER 2012 CANADIAN CHEMICAL NEWS 29

CHEMFUSION

Bewitched by witchcraft

W

orkers at a London construction site were mystified when they unearthed a sealed stoneware bottle in 2009, with some very strange markings including the image of a scary bearded man. The bottle, obviously buried a long time ago, was identified by archaeologists as a “witch bottle,” meant to provide protection from witches’ spells.

Back in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries there was a powerful belief in witches and their ability to cause illness by casting a spell. But the evil spells could be fended off by trapping them in a “witch bottle,” which if properly prepared, could even reflect the spell and torment the witch until the spell was removed, allowing the victim to recover.

More than two hundred witch bottles that had either been buried in the ground or hidden inside walls have been found, but the only one that was completely sealed was the one discovered at the London construction site.

After x-rays revealed that the bottle was half-filled with liquid and contained a variety of pins and nails, it was carefully opened and found to contain human urine, hair, fingernail clippings, brass pins and a dozen iron nails, one of which pierced a small leather heart. The liquid was handed over to Alan Massey, a retired chemist from the University of Loughborough, U.K., who determined it to be of human origin. More specifically,

30 CANADIAN CHEMICAL NEWS

OCTOBER 2012

it was the urine of a smoker, as evidenced by the presence of cotinine, a metabolite of nicotine. Historians suggest that the shape of the bottle represented the witch’s bladder and the nails and bent pins immersed in urine would somehow cause the witch to suffer pain every time he or she passed urine. The only option for the witch was to remove the spell.

As far as the leather heart pierced by the iron nail goes, we can only assume that it was to cause heartache for the witch.

The hair, nail clippings and pieces of what may have been belly button fluff were perhaps placed in the bottle to identify the person or persons who were to be protected or cured. The bearded face etched into the bottle was probably there with the hope of scaring off evil.

Such superstitions were understandable at a time when there was little understanding of disease and when physicians did not have much to offer in terms of effective remedies. But even today, the internet offers numerous formulas for witch bottles promising to protect against entities, spirits, demons and negative energies. They even throw in some scientific terms: “After charging, the bottle becomes an energetic trap for any force that intends to cause you harm. It is aligned to your energy field through the use of your own DNA.” What is to be put into the bottle? Rusty nails, broken glass and dead bugs along with menstrual blood or semen, which I guess provide the DNA. Users are instructed to urinate in

By Joe Schwarcz

the bottle to “provide a link for the energy to flow into the jar and remain” and to add three pinches of salt and a handful of earth while “feeling its connection to the planet and its ability to transform waste into fertility.” After the bottle is sealed with drippings from a black candle it is buried. Should it be disturbed “the negativity will not be released because it has already been neutralized by the salt and the handful of earth.”

Granted, not many people today are likely to be making use of witch bottles; that’s because we’re too smart these days to believe in witches’ spells. But there’s still plenty of witchcraft available for purchase. How about a belief that illness stems from a disruption of the body’s “energy field,” despite the fact that there is not one iota of evidence that any such energy field exists? Yet, you can buy an Electro Physiological Feedback Xrroid machine or a QuWave harmonizer, or just a simple hologram-equipped “energy bracelet” to realign or repair the body’s non-existent energy field that has been disrupted by exposure to the damaging effects of modern life such as electromagnetic radiation, genetically modified foods and, of course, “chemicals.” These devices have as much chance of affecting our health as a witch bottle. The belief in nonsense does not change, it is just bottled differently.

Joe Schwarcz is the director of McGill University’s Office for Science and Society.

Read his blog at chemicallyspeaking.com.

CIC.sclivelearningcenter.com

Chemical Institute of Canada | Outreach

National Chemistry Week!

October 13–21, 2012

An annual celebration of the chemical sciences in Canada.

NCW presents an opportunity for youth to connect with the wonders of chemistry. You can inspire and build enthusiasm for the creative future of chemistry by getting your children, classrooms and colleagues involved in NCW activities. Activities include the Canadian Water Experiment, “It’s Chemistry Eh!?” Youtube contest (see below) and the National Crystal Growing Competition. For program information, fun facts and cool experiments visit www.cheminst.ca/outreach.

“It’s Chemistry Eh!?”

Contest

Announcing the CIC’s 2012 YouTube Contest. Students are eligible to win funding towards further education by submitting a three-minute chemistry-themed video.

Contest is open: October 15, 2012 – November­30, 2012 For details, past entries­ and contest­rules visit

www.cheminst.ca/outreach­

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