May | mai 2011 • Vol.63, No./no 5
Canadian Chemical News | L’Actualité chimique canadienne A Magazine of the Chemical Institute of Canada and its Constituent Societies | Une magazine de l’institut de chimie du canada et ses sociétés constituantes
Rebuilding the Landscape
After the Oil Sands Tailings Ponds
PM40021620
Suzanne Fortier’s chemistry roots Make way for micropharma www.accn.ca
Chemical
Contents
Features tony fouhse (left) / Dalhousie University
May | mai 2011 Vol.63, No./no 5
12
Canadian science’s most spirited advocate By Peter Calamai Special Report for the International Year of Chemistry
16
Big pharma makes way for small, agile biotech companies By Tyler Irving Pour obtenir la version française de cet article, écrivez-nous à magazine@accn.ca
Suncor Energy Inc. (right, and on cover)
Departments 5
From the Editor
7
Guest Column
8
Chemical News
By Don Wiles
Canada’s top headlines in the chemical sciences and engineering
Reported and written by Tyler Irving
20
Will Suncor’s reclaimed tailings pond stand the test of time? By Gordon Jaremko
29
Society News
30
Chemfusion By Joe Schwarcz
On the Cover: About 65, 000 truckloads of dirt were used to cover the surface of Suncor’s tailings Pond 1 in a 50 centimetre-thick layer of soil during reconstruction.
may 2011 CAnadian Chemical News 3
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FRom the editor
Executive Director
Roland Andersson, MCIC
Editor
Jodi Di Menna
news editor
Tyler Irving, MCIC
Graphic Designers
Krista Leroux Kelly Turner
Society NEws
Bobbijo Sawchyn, MCIC Gale Thirlwall
I
Marketing Manager
f you’ve ever attended an event where Suzanne Fortier is presenting, you’re familiar with the affable enthusiasm she exudes from behind the podium; Or if you’ve come across a news release or photo from an NSERC funding function in the last few years, you certainly know her name and face. What’s not as well known about this prominent figure in Canadian science is that before she was NSERC president, she was an established chemist. In this issue, Peter Calamai gives us a window into Suzanne Fortier’s less public life in the third profile in our series on women in the chemical sciences and engineering that celebrates the International Year of Chemistry. In our Q and A, we talk to Donald Weaver of Dalhousie University about the rise of micropharma: How small biotech firms are picking up where big pharma is leaving off. Also in this issue, we visit a former oil sands tailings pond that has been drained and returned to a solid surface, and which the industry is heralding as a reclamation success.
I hope you enjoy the read!
Bernadette Dacey
Marketing Assistant
Luke Andersson
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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CIC
guest column
One Reason Why Fukushima is not Chernobyl: Seafood
W
ith all the exciting and disturbing news stories about the Japanese nuclear problems in recent weeks, several aspects vital to human health seem to have missed everyone’s attention. They are: the difference between external and internal radiation sources, the physical chemistry of the radionuclides involved and the physiology of the human body. First and simplest, if the radiation source is external to the human body one can, in principle, erect a protective barrier or merely walk away. In most cases this is done successfully. On the other hand, if the radiation source is inside the body, it’s a different matter. It is difficult to walk away from your own bones! (Even then, internal sources of radiation need not always be serious. I have had a detectable dose of radium in my bones for 60 years since working in Port Hope as a radium chemist.) Now, a more subtle chemical fact: The products of nuclear fission are generated inside the uranium fuel rods. Most of them are quite similar in ionic radius and ionic charge to U+4 and, according to Goldschmidt’s Rule, will likely remain locked in the crystalline UO2. Notable exceptions to this include isotopes of iodine, bromine, cesium, rubidium and a few others that are known to migrate to the cooler outer surface of the fuel, from which they can perhaps evaporate. The only isotope of major concern here is 131I, which is volatile, and has a high fission yield and a short half life of just eight days. Toss in a bit of physiology here and we come closer to the point. While many elements pass quickly through the blood stream to the urine and out, others go directly to certain organs. Strontium
By Don Wiles
and barium go directly to the bones and stay there. Cesium-137 is widely distributed throughout the body and ultimately leaves. But iodine goes directly to the thyroid gland, where it can do its damage, causing thyroid tumours and cancers. There is one more critical aspect to this story: If one’s thyroid is in need of more iodine, it will take all it can get from what’s available. If it doesn’t need any more, it won’t take much. This is a very important difference between the Chernobyl accident of 25 years ago and the present Japanese situation. The residents in the area of Chernobyl were very low in iodine (and the government gave them none) so their thyroids took in whatever they could get. The result was, of course, many hundreds of thyroid cancers. On the other hand, the Japanese eat a lot of seafood including the seaweed nori, which gives them all the iodine they need, and the government is giving them potassium iodide pills. So their thyroids don’t need to scrounge any more iodine from the surroundings, and the likelihood of thyroid cancers is minimized. While this analysis is not intended to suggest that the present situation is good, a more reasoned approach to such an emotional issue will allow us to concentrate more on the real problems and not waste our efforts worrying about less important things. Don Wiles, Professor Emeritus at Carleton University, is the author of two relevant books: The Chemistry of Nuclear Fuel Waste Disposal and Radioactivity. Both are published by Polytechnic Presses in Montreal Want to share your thoughts on this article? Write to us at magazine@accn.ca or visit us at www.accn.ca
may 2011 CAnadian Chemical News 7
Biochemistry
WATER
The test results are in, and the news may be shocking: Your blood contains measurable levels of at least 4,229 different naturally occurring chemical entities. An international group of researchers, headed up since 2005 by David Wishart at the University of Alberta, is driven by a monumentally ambitious goal: To characterize and measure every last molecule that can be found in the human body. The field — called metabolomics — uses a multitude of analytical techniques, from nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy to gas chromatography/mass spectroscopy. The analysis of human blood, the results of which were published in late February, is the most recently completed phase of the project. Like the rest of the team, Wishart was surprised at the total number of compounds found. “Our survey had originally said there were going to be 800,” he says. “We knew there were going to be some lipids, but we didn’t really know how many.” Lipids make up about half of the new total, but Wishart, who is a professor in the departments of biological sciences and computing science, thinks this might be just the tip of the iceberg. “Looking at chemicals, you’re limited by technology. If we had instruments that could detect things down to pico- or femto-molar concentrations, this list of 4,200 would be maybe 42,000.” The list is now kept in the open-access Human Metabolome Database, which Wishart curates. It’s the equivalent of GenBank for gene researchers, or UniProt for proteins. Wishart hopes that it will be a useful tool as scientists begin the long process of unravelling the functions of these compounds. “For the last century we’ve been looking inside our bodies through a keyhole. Now that the technologies exist, we should be able to see through a picture window.”
8 L’Actualité chimique canadienne
Phosphorus Troubles Return to the Great Lakes Beaches of rotting algae, low-oxygen conditions, and loss of aquatic life: These were some of the problems that plagued the Great Lakes during the 1960s and 1970s because of high levels of phosphorus in the water. According to the latest report of the International Joint Commission (IJC), which monitors the lakes, the troubles are back. Phosphorus gets into the lakes mainly through sewage and agricultural runoff. “The problem almost went away after the phosphorus content of [laundry] detergents was restricted back in the 1970s, and a lot of sewage treatment plants were also upgraded,” says Bill Taylor, professor of biology at the University of Waterloo, and a member of the IJC’s Great Lakes Science Advisory Board. “But it’s back big-time and seriously fouling the shoreline.” Blooms of Cladophora, a kind of freshwater algae, are not only unsightly, they can actually block water intake pipes near the shore. Nobody is sure where the increased phosphorus is coming from, in part because many phosphorus monitoring programs were terminated years ago. Nevertheless, increasing numbers of algae blooms indicate that there is a problem. Theories include increased population and land-use changes, as well as increased precipitation due to climate change, which can wash more fertilizers into the lakes from farms and golf courses. “We know that a lot of phosphorus comes into the lakes from these diffuse sources,” says Taylor. “In other jurisdictions in North America, they’re going toward regulating how much phosphorus farmers can apply to their fields.” There’s also talk of regulating the phosphorus content of dishwasher detergent. In its report, the IJC recommends that “all levels of government implement actions to reduce nonpoint sources” as well as increased monitoring and restoration of wetlands, which act as buffer zones for the lakes.
materials
New Permanent Coating Clears Foggy Lenses If you wear glasses, safety goggles, or scuba masks, you know how annoying (and occasionally dangerous) foggy lenses can be. So it’s good news that researchers at Université Laval have created the world’s first permanent anti-fog coating. Gaetan Laroche and his team started by etching a glass surface with acid to produce hydroxyl functional groups. These were then converted to amino groups by exposing the surface to nitrogen and hydrogen in a plasma reactor. Finally, alternating layers of poly(ethylene-maleic anhydride) (PEMA) and poly(vinyl alcohol) (PVA) were deposited by spin-coating. The PEMA acts as an interface, while the PVA provides a strongly hydrophilic surface. This causes moisture to spread out in a thin, transparent layer, instead of forming the droplets that cause fog. The team tested their coating using an apparatus that measured transmission of light through the sample as the fog formed. “Our best sample had 60 per cent of light transmission after 30 seconds , which I think is not too bad,” says Laroche. The team also tested a commercial spray-on coating using the same method. Although the spray-on coating performed better initially, it was completely washed off by immersion in water. By contrast, the permanent coating continued to work at the same level, even after immersion. Laroche says the coating can be applied to any clear surface, including polycarbonate or plexiglass, and he has already received calls from a major eyeglass manufacturer. “Ours is the standard to beat,” he says.
mai 2011
DAvid wishart
Over 4000 Chemicals Discovered in Human Blood
Chemical News
Canada's top headlines in the chemical sciences and engineering hydrocarbons
Quebec Puts the Brakes on Shale Gas Any new shale gas wells in the province of Quebec will be for environmental study purposes only. That was the decision taken in early March by provincial environment minister Pierre Arcand, in the wake of a highly anticipated report on the subject by the Bureau d’audiences publiques sur l’environnement (BAPE). Quebec sits on top of over a billion cubic metres of natural gas, trapped in the Utica shale formation, underneath the St. Lawrence Valley. Unfortunately, the only way to get at the gas is by hydraulic fracturing. Also known as “fracking,” it involves blasting high-pressure liquids into the shale rock to create fissures through which the gas can be extracted. Residents of American states in which fracking has been carried out have complained of everything from contaminated water supplies to small
earthquakes. The day before the BAPE report was released, flash fire broke out during a fracking operation at a natural gas well near the hamlet of Robb, Alta. Somehow, the liquid propane being injected into the well caught fire, injuring 13 workers, some of them critically. All have now recovered, but the cause of the fire has not been determined. The BAPE report concluded that “for certain fundamental questions, the answers are still incomplete or non-existent.” It recommended the creation of a “strategic environmental evaluation,” for which a panel of experts is now being chosen. The study could last up to 36 months; during that time all new commercial wells will be prohibited. Former Quebec Premier Lucien Bouchard, now chair of the Quebec Oil and Gas Association, responded on behalf of the industry, saying “the government has our support to quickly put in place the measures required to conduct a thorough study and promote an informed debate regarding the collective decisions to be made.” Brenda Kenny, president of the Canadian Energy Pipeline Association, put it more bluntly: “We are confident, based on experience in other jurisdictions, that shale gas can be developed safely in Quebec.”
Gary J. Schrobilgen
Fundamentals
Xenon Dioxide May Help to Solve One of Earth’s Mysteries Chemists at McMaster University have become the first in the world to synthesize and characterize XeO2, an unusual compound that could be the solution to a decades-old mystery. In the early 1960s it was discovered that, contrary to their reputation, the heavier noble gases can form compounds under certain conditions. Xenon oxides like Xe04 and Xe03 have been known for years, but XeO2 and XeO were predicted to have marginal stabilities. David S. Brock
and his supervisor Gary J. Schrobilgen wanted to test this prediction. “When you react XeF4 with water, the final product is Xe03 and Xe gas,” says Brock, “However, if you cool it down and you do it around zero degrees Celsius, you can actually obtain a bright canary-yellow, transient solid.” Because this solid decomposes after a few minutes, it had never been characterized before. By cooling it to minus 78 degrees Celsius, Brock was able to get it to last long enough to run Raman spectra that proved it was XeO2. The compound may explain an enduring mystery. It has been known for decades that the abundance of xenon in our atmosphere is quite low compared with that in the solar system generally, as measured from meteorites. Various theories have been proposed, but none could account for the full amount of Xe that was missing. In 2005, a team led by Chrystele Sanloup of Université Pierre et Marie Curie in Paris proposed that, under certain conditions, Xe can substitute for Si in the quartz (SiO2) that forms most of earth’s crust. Brock believes that his spectroscopic measurements of XeO2 lend further weight to that hypothesis. “Being able to synthesize and characterize such a species that’s on the border of stability, and how it may have implications for the missing xenon . . . that was really fascinating.”
Colorless crystals of XeF4 (45 mg), react with water (crushed ice) forming bright yellow to yellow-orange polymeric XeO2, which has a half life of approximately two minutes, at zero degrees Celsius. The newly-observed compound could help explain the depletion of xenon from Earth’s atmosphere.
may 2011 CAnadian Chemical News 9
Nanotechnology
Magnetic Microcarriers Can St Cancer treatments are notor iously imprecise in that they often damage healthy cells along with the unhealthy ones. But what if it were possible to steer drug particles through blood vessels to reach the target tissues? Researchers from École Polytechnique de Montréal recently used magnetic particles to do just that. Sylvain Martel and his team started with small particles (approximately 50 µm in diameter) made
of a biodegradable polymer (poly(D,L-lactic-co-glycolic acid), or PLGA). Into these they embedded the cancer drug doxorubicin and nanoparticles made of iron and cobalt. Unlike previous research, which has used localized magnetic fields, Martel’s team mobilizes their particles using an MRI machine. “If you put [the particles] in the homogeneous field of the MRI scanner, then it becomes independent of distance; you can be just as effective in the middle of the body, or close to the skin,” says Martel. “Plus you can track them with the MRI, so you have much better control.” The MRI can be programmed to provide a magnetic gradient, in this case a maximum of 400 milli-teslas per metre, along which the particles move. The team has already demonstrated that they can steer particles through the hepatic arteries of rabbits. However, as the particles get smaller and as the MRI chamber gets bigger, the power required to mobilize the particles goes up
Climate Change
Colder Stratosphere Leads to Thinning Arctic Ozone
10 L’Actualité chimique canadienne
mai 2011
Vitali Fioletov, Environment Canada
Remember that “hole” in the ozone layer? It never entirely went away; each spring the Arctic experiences a certain amount of ozone loss, usually in the range of 10 to 20 per cent. This spring however, cold stratospheric temperatures have led to more depletion than usual: in some areas, losses were as high as 40 per cent. Although they were controlled by the 1987 Montreal Protocol, chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and their chlorine-bearing derivatives (like ClNO3 and HCl) won’t completely degrade for decades to come. During the Arctic winter, cool temperatures in the stratosphere form polar stratospheric clouds. Ice crystals in these clouds catalyze reactions that convert the non-reactive forms of chlorine into reactive ones. “The reactive chlorine isn't released until sunlight returns to the polar region,” says David Tarasick, a researcher with Environment Canada’s Experimental Studies Unit (ARQX.) “That’s why ozone depletionover the poles is a springtime phenomenon.” This year, colder-than-usual temperatures in the stratosphere have led to more polar stratospheric clouds, which in turn contributed to the record loss of ozone. These cold years may happen more often in the future: as greenhouse gases trap more heat in the lower atmosphere, less of it radiates back to the stratosphere. “On average, that means that, barring changes in stratospheric circulation, there may be a tendency to have years where it’s colder in the stratosphere, and one of the results of a cold year is more of these clouds forming,” says
The amount of ozone in the atmosphere is shown here as a percentage of the level before 1980, when CFCs began to come into wide use. The thinning of the ozone layer over the Arctic can be clearly seen; in some areas the depletion is as much as 50 per cent.
Kaley Walker, assistant professor with the University of Toronto’s Department of Physics. Despite the loss of ozone in the north, the danger of increased UV radiation should be minimal. The suns rays don’t strike as directly in the Arctic, and the ozone-depleted regions disperse each spring as winds mix in ozone-rich air from the south. “Further south, we’ll probably see somewhat lower ozone in spring and early summer,” says Tarasick. “But I wouldn't expect the effect to be very large; likely a few percent.”
Chemical News
Canada's top headlines in the chemical sciences and engineering
teer Drugs Toward a Target exponentially. “We can get pretty close, but now we’re working on being able to deliver the drugs directly to the tumour,” says Martel. “We’ll need to complement with a completely different technology to be able to do that.”
Sylvain Martel
Antitumor drug
Small particles (approximately 50 um) (above) made of a biodegradable polymer embedded with magnetic nanoparticles (approximately 200 nm) and the cancer drug doxorubicin can be steered through arteries by means of a magnetic gradient created in an MRI chamber. Using this approach, the drug-loaded particles are steered through the bifurcation of a rabbit’s hepatic artery (left).
Left liver lobe Catheter Therapeutic magnetic microcarriers (TMMC)
Business Briefs
company, Switchable Solutions Inc. The company is based
The scramble for iron ore deposits in eastern Canada continues.
from a two-phase to a one-phase system on the addition of
on a switchable hydrophilicity solvent (SHS) which can switch
India’s Tata Steel recently made a deal with Montreal-based
CO2. The first applications are expected to be in systems for
New Millennium Capital Corp. to advance two potential
recycling post-consumer plastics, particularly polystyrene,
mines along the Quebec-Labrador border. The mines could
which is hard to recycle using conventional solvents.
cost up to $4.9 billion and produce up to 22 million tonnes of ore per year. Similar deals were recently signed by China’s
Encana Corp. has bought a 30 per cent stake in Kitimat LNG, a
Wuhan Steel with several Canadian companies with holdings
proposed west-coast natural gas exporting facility. The project
in the same area, including Century Iron Mines Corp. and
is also supported by the Canadian subsidiaries of Apache Corp.
Adriana Resources Inc.
and EOG Resources Inc., and is expected to cost $4.7 billion in total. The facility would provide access to Asian markets, some-
Troubles at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant have im-
thing currently lacking in the natural gas production industry.
pacted the uranium mining industry here in Canada. Shares in Cameco Corp. dropped by 22 per cent in the week following
The oilsands off-gas business recently got a boost with a
the disaster, while those of Uranium One Inc. lost nearly half
deal between Williams Canada and NOVA Chemicals.
their value. Cameco CEO Jerry Grandey said the reaction was
Williams has been a pioneer in extracting off-gas, which is
“largely driven by emotion,” and that he did not expect any sig-
normally burned, and using it to produce feedstocks for the
nificant direct effects in the short or long term.
petrochemical industry. Under the deal, Williams will supply 17,000 barrels a day of ethane and ethylene to NOVA. The new
GreenCentre Canada, which specializes in commercializing
production will require a $311 million upgrade to Williams off-
early-stage discoveries that make chemical processes more
gas extraction plant near Fort McMurray; the work is expected
sustainable, has announced the creation of its first spin-off
to be completed by 2013.
The Chemical News is reported and written by Tyler Irving. Want to share your thoughts on our news stories? Write to us at magazine@accn.ca or visit us at www.accn.ca
may 2011 CAnadian Chemical News 11
A
Third in a five part series profiling Canadian women in the chemical sciences and engineering in celebrationof the International Year of Chemistry.
rdent dministrator How Suzanne Fortier’s unmistakable enthusiasm for Canadian science began with a passion for solving the “beautiful puzzles” of the structure of matter.
Special Report for the International Year of Chemistry
By Peter Calamai Photo by Tony Fouhse
W
hen Suzanne Fortier was about 10 years old, she told her parents she wanted a chemistry set for Christmas. “They asked, where have you heard of this thing? They had no idea where to get one,” she recalls. A rudimentary chemistry set was eventually tracked down but Fortier still needed somewhere to carry out experiments. Her convent school in the village of Saint-Timothée west of Montreal had nothing as grand as a science lab; however, her mother and father owned and operated a small local hotel. On the hotel’s ground floor a large room was devoted to eating, drinking and dancing — and usually deserted in the afternoons. This explains how an illustrious career in science for the current president of the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council came to life on the beer-stained tables of a village bar, with a precocious young girl trying to make perfumes from local flowers.
12 L’Actualité chimique canadienne
mai 2011
Chemistry | Administration
may 2011 CAnadian Chemical News   13
Suzanne Fortier grew up in a world far removed from that of most of her female scientist counterparts in Canada and her journey to prominence is as fascinating as the outcome. For the first 20 years of her life she spoke only French. Her elementary school had just one bookcase of books. She was in the first group of girls admitted to the local CEGEP, previously a seminary. And no one in her extended family had ever gone to university. Yet intense curiosity, infectious enthusiasm, recurring serendipity and lots of hard work saw Fortier earn a B.Sc. and PhD in just eight years, engage in frontier crystallography research, branch out into computing, win praise as an imaginative and committed university administrator and, in January, renew for a second fiveyear term as NSERC president. Along the way the 61-year-old has also become proficient in English and Italian (with a smattering of Greek as well), raised a son together with husband Doug Babington, survived a bout of breast cancer, honed an appreciation for Italian wine and cuisine and racked up more than 80 scientific publications and a string of honours. “Science was Suzanne’s passion and what she pursued,” says astronaut Julie Payette, a Fortier friend. “She shows that if you have an objective and a dream in life there is no reason you can’t accomplish it.” Like nearly everyone interviewed for this profile, Payette cites Fortier’s sharp intellect and easy-going demeanour as key to her success. “There’s no wall around Suzanne. She doesn’t carry any of the stereotypes you associate with
14 L’Actualité chimique canadienne
such a person. She’s very welcoming,” says Payette. The astronaut also notes that the NSERC president isn’t “especially tall” and therefore not imposing in a traditional physical sense. Yet in person Fortier radiates electricity like a Van der Graaf generator (one blessed with innate fashion sense) while her darting eyes constantly absorb information from all around. Such curiosity and enthusiasm undoubtedly played a crucial part in Fortier’s first life-shaping lucky break. She and a fellow female CEGEP student entered a project on the diffraction of sound waves in the 1968 Quebec provincial science fair. A crystallographer from McGill University (likely Professor A. J. Freuh, she thinks) stopped at their exhibit and invited the two girls to visit his lab if they wanted to learn more about diffraction. Fortier went, and was hooked. “I discovered then that crystallography presented you with beautiful puzzles to solve. There are incredible pictures that you get of the structure of matter.” When the unilingual francophone entered anglophone McGill in 1969, she declared she wanted to pursue a bachelor’s degree in crystallography, not realizing no one had ever done that there. Fortier also didn’t realize that she had been placed directly into second year, as part of the first CEGEP graduating class in Quebec. Nor did she know there was such a thing as graduate work. Along came another instance of serendipity in the form of a famous husband-and-wife team of crystallographers, J.D.H and Gabrielle Donnay, whom McGill had just
mai 2011
Sydney R. Hall (bottom) / NSERC (middle two) / Scott McAlpine (BCIT) (top)
Crossing the country to present grants and awards is part of the job for NSERC president Suzanne Fortier. From the top, Fortier talks with Azzedine Boukerche of the University of Ottawa at a grants announcement at the British Columbia Institute of Technology in February; Presents an award for innovation at The University of British Columbia last November; And celebrates with Governor General David Johnston and Tom Brzustowski from the University of Ottawa at an awards reception at Rideau Hall last February. A young Fortier (bottom) poses for the camera in Adelaide, Australia in 1987 with fellow crystallographers Frank Allen (left) and Chris Gilmore.
recruited from the U.S. Gabrielle advised Fortier to apply for an NSERC scholarship and jump directly from a B.Sc. to a PhD, which she did with Gabrielle as her supervisor. As Fortier was winding up her thesis, she experienced something akin to a scientific epiphany at a conference talk by U.S. mathematician Herbert Hauptman, a pioneer in direct methods for determining crystal structures. “His talk was all formula. I thought it was the best thing I had ever heard in my life. We could crack the big puzzles by using mathematics — probabilistic theory,” Fortier says, simultaneously searching her office shelves for a book by Hauptman, who shared the 1985 Nobel Prize in chemistry with Jerome Karle. For six years Fortier worked with Hauptman in molecular biophysics at a private research institute in Buffalo, first as a post-doc and later as a research scientist. In between came a two year break during which she married, lived briefly in Greece while her husband taught and was a research associate at the National Research Council in Ottawa. In 1982 she launched the Queen’s University phase of her career, which would last until 2005 and culminate in back-to-back appointments as vice-principal research and vice-principal academic following a decade as a professor of chemistry and also as a professor of computing. Fortier added computing to her resume by sitting in on classes on artificial intelligence, logic and machine learning. “It was pretty much serendipity. I had friends who were in this area. Your mind is always open to get new ideas.” Sometimes serendipity has had a helping hand, as Fortier acknowledges happened with her appointment as a member of the now-defunct Ontario Council on University Affairs. “I was young, a woman in science, and French. When you’re trying to fill various subgroups and all of it is in one place, you grab it.” The council experience was followed with increasingly responsible posts in Queen’s administration until Bill Leggett, the newly arrived principal, tapped Fortier in 1995 to become vice-principal for research after a wide search. “Suzanne has an infectious enthusiasm for research and what it means to the country,” Leggett says. “She gets as much pleasure from the research of others as from her own research.” Anyone who has seen Fortier beaming with enthusiasm as she hands out NSERC’s annual research awards can vouch for this vicarious enjoyment.
No amount of enthusiasm, however, could have steeled Fortier for what she calls her breast cancer “triathlon” of surgery, chemotherapy and radiation soon after being appointed to her “dream job” as NSERC president in 2006. Heading for Thompson Rivers University in B.C. to accept an honourary degree, she bumped into TRU chancellor Nancy Greene in an airport and confessed her concerns. “I told her I was worried that the NSERC staff was going to say they had been given a lemon. She’s just arrived, and she’s broken. “Nancy said there is always someone injured on a ski team, and the team rallies round them. ‘Trust your team,’ she said. ‘They will get stronger rather than weaker.’ It was just what I needed to hear.” Suzanne Fortier also became stronger. She handles a gruelling travel schedule (92 days away from Ottawa on NSERC business last year) and manages a $1 billion-a-year operation that’s adjusting to a world-wide demand from government for more immediate pay-offs from science and engineering research. Her former Queen’s colleague, Bill Leggett, is confident Fortier will defend the core values of independent inquiry. “She is a very principled woman … very principled. She is prepared to stand and fall on certain basic principles that she believes are fundamental to human behaviour.” Peter Calamai is a freelance writer and editor based in Ottawa who began reporting on science for Canadian newspapers in 1969. He shares Suzanne Fortier’s passion for Italian wine and food but unfortunately not her prowess in Italian. Want to share your thoughts on this article? Write to us at magazine@accn.ca or visit us at www.accn.ca
may 2011 CAnadian Chemical News 15
Q A
Canoe Versus Oceanliner; Bigger Isn’t Always Better
&
Big pharma’s heyday for discovering new drugs is waning, but small, agile, biotech startups could fill the breach. By Tyler Irving
T
his November the world’s highest-selling drug — the anti-cholesterol treatment Lipitor — will go off-patent. Pfizer, the drug’s manufacturer, has already announced massive layoffs and cutbacks to its R&D budget. It’s part of a pattern that’s reaching across the entire industry; as the old cash cows bite the dust, there are fewer new ones taking their place. So who will discover the drugs of the future? Donald Weaver, Canada Research Chair and Professor of Chemistry at Dalhousie University, believes that small, academia-based companies can play a role, and he’s got the track record to prove it. ACCN spoke with him to find out more about the rise of micropharma.
less than 10 employees. They arise from universities, hospitals or research institutes. They tend to be created by about two or three academic researchers, who then join forces to design, discover, and develop new therapeutics or diagnostics for human health disorders. The advantage is that this model permits high-risk approaches, and demonstrates a capacity to absorb both success and failure, and therefore is really built for the notion of creativity and innovation. My colleague Christopher Barden and I published a paper called “The rise of micropharma” [in 2009] so we coined the word, but this is a process that has been evolving for a while. It’s been recognized that translational research has to increase within the academic sector, and micropharma is one way of endeavouring to achieve that.
ACCN: What’s wrong with the current
ACCN: In that paper, you talk about the “five
“big pharma” model of drug development?
golden goals” of micropharma. What are they?
DW: The current model has issues [such as] a lack of inno-
DW: The first one is to actually achieve a product that has
vation and a lack of creativity. They have a long arduous process in going from research to development, and because most of the companies currently have financial issues with lots of layoffs, there is a motivation to take a conservative approach. But conservative approaches are usually not supportive of innovation. Because of this, the pipelines of the major pharmaceutical companies are really quite depleted; through 2006, 43 per cent fewer new chemical entities became drugs in the 21st century than did so in the last years of the 20th century.
efficacy in a recognized model of a relevant human disease. That is important because if you have a new drug that works in a new model of the disease, you have a few too many “news” in there. The second thing is that you want to have insights into its mechanism of action. If you try to partner, the partnering groups are going to want to know about that because that is important in being able to further optimize your discovery. Rules three and four really relate to something that people in academia seldom think about, especially organic chemists, and that’s the pharmacokinetics and toxicology. Every drug is a molecule, but every molecule isn’t a drug, so you want it so that it can withstand the long arduous trip from gums to wherever the target is in the body. It has to have the right pharmacokinetics and it has to be safe.
ACCN: What is micropharma? DW: Micropharma are academia-originated, biotech startup
companies that are efficient, flexible, innovative, productfocused and small, having usually less than 25 and frequently
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Dalhousie University
Business | PHARMACEUTICALS
The final goal, which is one that I find is the most [misunderstood] within the academic sector, is that you have to protect your intellectual property through a patent strategy that optimally includes composition of matter, means of production and use of your product. I must say, I always do find it surprising how many people in the academic community don’t understand what patents really are, don’t understand the implications of public disclosure to patentability, and this really is an extremely important issue if you want to take your product and ultimately make it. ACCN: You’ve had some first-hand experience
with micropharma, haven’t you? DW: My first experience was with a company called
Neurochem, a spin-off company out of Queen’s University. Neurochem had a molecule called Tramiprosate, which was therapeutic for Alzheimer’s disease. Tramiprosate did make it all the way to a phase three human clinical trial, which is an impressive feat for a molecule developed at a Canadian university. Regrettably it was not successful in that phase three trial, and has progressed no further. But that was certainly an immense learning experience for me. Since that time we’ve done a number of other micropharmas, right here in Nova Scotia having spun out of Dalhousie. One is called Treventis corporation, and it also works on molecules which are meant to treat and prevent Alzheimers disease, hence the word “trevent,” a combination of treatment and prevention. Another one of the spin-off micropharma that we have out of Halifax is called DeNovaMed, and it’s endeavouring to devise new chemical entities as therapeutics for infectious disease. So yes, we’ve got a number of irons in the fire, which I suppose fits with the definition of micropharma that I put forward, that you can have several of these going ahead in parallel, which demonstrates their capacity to be flexible and to absorb both success and failure.
ACCN: How did you become convinced that you
needed to move into the business world? DW: I started off as a physician with an interest in neurology. Frequently neurologists are represented as the “diagnose and adios” specialty. We see patients, and we say this is what you have, and by the way there’s nothing we can do. So because of this, I migrated over to medicinal chemistry, and actually did my PhD in medicinal chemistry after my medical training. And then as part of this, trying to translate products to actually help patients, commercialization became an obvious next step. If you really want to develop a compound that makes a difference in the lives of people, whether you like it or not, the commercial sector is the sector that achieves that goal. So you have to set up your research in such a way that you can ultimately partner with big pharma to facilitate and enable that ultimate objective. ACCN: How does the world of chemistry
compare to the world of medicine when talking about drug development? DW : The notion of creating new chemical entities, of
patenting them and protecting them is an idea which is less foreign to a chemistry environment, and chemists are more willing to embrace that and move it ahead. I also think that the pharmaceutical sector is better regarded by
may 2011 CAnadian Chemical News 17
chemists. When you’re a clinical physician, you always have to be aware of conflicts of interest with the pharmaceutical sector because they’re trying to sell products, whereas I think chemists look at the pharmaceutical sector as a group of highly talented chemists who do really interesting work and make really interesting molecules. When a chemist from academia talks to a chemist from industry, it’s all about molecules, whereas physicians are the ultimate users of the end product, so there’s a bit of a different relationship there. ACCN: What lessons have you learned from your
adventuresin micropharma? DW: Number one, this is an extremely worthwhile under-
taking. Actually going through the steps of taking a molecule and trying to move it ahead so that it really becomes a drug is fun, it’s interesting, and ultimately, it’s a lot more rewarding than simply putting a sentence at the front of your grant saying “and these molecules may be relevant to Disease X.” The second thing is that it certainly facilitates multi disciplinary work. I think that universities are too much built with a silo mentality. You have a chemistry department, you have a biology department, half the time they’re on opposite sides of the campus, most of the time, faculties don’t really interact with each other. You make your molecules, you publish it, they do their biology and publish it, and those two Venn diagrams never overlap. If you’re actually trying to do micropharma, where you have to prove mechanisms of action, you have to get involved with pharmacokinetics and whatnot, you really do have to have meaningful interactions with biology colleagues, and once again that just enriches the overall program, and enables it to be diversified. The third major advantage out of this is that it does open the door to new funding opportunities. In the typical academic world, you’re looking at NSERC grants, whereas if you get into micropharma, it gives you the opportunity to interact with angel investors, with venture capitalists, and with members of the industrial sector as an alternative means of raising funds for pursuing research, which in the modern competitive environment, certainly is an advantage and quite important. The warning that I always give with this, though, is that most angel investors are not angelic, and some venture capitalists are vulture capitalists; these are people who are focused on making money. And so you have to convince them that doing good science is a way of making money.
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ACCN: Many micropharmas will fail. How do you deal
with that? DW: I always say, this is why it’s called research, and not just search. You have to repeat and redo until you get it right. Drug discovery is loaded with failure. There are so many hurdles that have to be traversed in going from an academic concept to a potentially commercializeable molecule, and there are so many different roads that one can go down that could ultimately culminate in failure, that you can’t be put off by failure. You have to look at failure as steps in the ultimate route to success. If you’re not failing, you’re not working hard enough. ACCN: Do micropharmas handle failure well? DW: Yes, most definitely, I think that’s one of the virtues of
micropharma; it’s a small group, you can do high-risk stuff, and if it fails you haven’t committed millions of dollars of resources to it. I always say: Compare micropharma to a canoe versus an ocean liner which is big pharma. If you’re trying to change directions, you can do it very quickly in a canoe, you can’t do it in an ocean liner. So the capacity to absorb failure, to deal with it and move on is easier in a micropharma/canoe environment. ACCN: Why do you believe that micropharma will
succeed where big pharma has failed? DW: I think that recent evidence in big pharma with multiple
companies letting go a lot of their medicinal chemists suggests that the big pharma model of R&D is making R progressively smaller and relying on the D. They’re going to have to find sources of innovative and original research, and that is going to have to come either from smaller biotechs, or from university labs or micropharmas. So, I see that the evolution of the pharmaceutical system is one in which micropharma will play a prominent role, and I’m optimistic that this represents a viable approach. Want to share your thoughts on this article? Write to us at magazine@accn.ca or visit us at www.accn.ca
Dead trees, some upside down, were deliberately placed on Suncor’s tailings Pond 1 to create perches and nesting sites for birds.
Suncor Energy Inc.
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Chemical Engineering | OIL SANDS
A
Tailings Tale By Gordon Jaremko
Suncor claims to have completely reclaimed an oil sands tailings pond, a first for the 44-year-old industry. But is it enough to coax nature back to normal?
K
arl Clark, revered as the father of Alberta oil sands production, foresaw the environmental drawback of taking his hot water separation process past the trial stage in his Edmonton laboratory and out into commercial use. In 1956 — 11 years before Great Canadian Oil Sands (GCOS) inaugurated the industry by starting up the ancestor of Suncor Energy Inc.’s Fort McMurray plant — the inventor predicted that lakes of wet waste were inevitable. By the reserved standards of science, Clark used dramatic words in giving advice to GCOS engineers about tailings ponds. His daughter Mary Clark Sheppard preserves his warnings for the public record in her book
Athabasca Oil Sands: From Laboratory to Production — the Letters of Karl A. Clark, 1950-66. “For an operation of 20,000 cubic yards [15,200 cubic metres] of oil sand per day, the size of pond required is rather staggering and for still bigger operations it gets to be terrific,” he wrote. As a rule of thumb, Clark and federal government peers in an ancestor of Natural Resources Canada calculated that every cubic yard (0.76 cubic metre) of oil sands ore that a plant put through his process would leave behind 1.4 tons (1.3 metric tonnes) of the yogurt-like tailings blend of water and solid waste particles. In a single year the forecast showed that a minimal-sized commercial plant, digging up 15,200 cubic metres of ore a day to produce 10,000 barrels of oil, would cast off nearly a square kilometre of liquid waste eight metres deep. A more economic project, using 76,000 cubic metres of ore every day to pump out 50,000 barrels of oil, would discharge a 1.6-square-kilometre tailings pool 21 metres deep. Today’s biggest mega-mines dig up and process about five times more ore than the largest operations foreseen by the early tailings studies. In the 1950s and ’60s, only a few specialists understood the titanic scale
of oil sands projects, and until the late ’90s they remained an obscure industry branch regarded as experimental by most mainstream investment managers. From an environmental and public point of view, development was a case of out of sight, out of mind. The bitumen mining district was far beyond paved highways in the beginning. Travel was by brutally rough gravel roads, bush plane or a famously slow railway branch line, which tacked dilapidated passenger cars onto freight trains as a Muskeg Express that was renowned for stopping at every hamlet and cabin along its 500-kilometre route between Edmonton and Fort McMurray. Clark told GCOS, “I do not believe that the government has any policy at the present about tailings disposal. I believe that the first plants can handle the matter in whatever way is judged best.” He saw no threats to tourism or farming. “There is no scenery to spoil along the Athabasca River. And certainly there is no arable land that must be protected.” But as an avid naturalist and hunter, Clark urged industry to behave responsibly: “The one thing that must not be done is to put, or allow the sand to get into, the river. And of course the same
may 2011 CAnadian Chemical News 21
Making it Work
22 L’Actualité chimique canadienne
restriction applies to oil that will be associated with the tailings.” GCOS responded by adding liquid waste tailings ponds to its project, as engineered structures intended to provide at least durable leak-proof storage for as long as solid particles took to congeal and settle to the bottom naturally. Clark hoped for more. He suggested numerous potential lines of research into ways of doing cleanups simultaneously with mining and bitumen separation — yet without putting beyond range elusive speed
mai 2011
targets that had to be hit by the production line to make the plant economic. His thoughts turned to a method resembling the workings of his household washing machine, which he borrowed for bitumen extraction experiments. He had ideas about using a thickening agent or chemical and a centrifuge, to congeal solid waste particles and spin them apart from water. He had too many duties to concentrate full time on tailings issues. But before he died, just prior to the startup of oil sands production in 1967, he wrote, “Tailings disposal problems … are going to have to be faced sooner or later.” The environmental thorn in the fledgling industry’s side never stopped bothering Clark professionally and personally. As the first plant entered its construction stage he wrote, “I am not too happy in my own mind that the disposal of tailings, and the implications of this, has been thought through as carefully as it should be.” Fast forward 44 years. Suncor president Rick George startles visitors and environmental critics during a ceremony
Suncor Energy Inc. (diagram and photo)
Dealing with mature fine tailings (MFT) - the troublesome layer in oil sands tailings ponds where clay particles remain suspended in water - has been a major obstacle to reducing the oil sands’ footprint. The conventional method of adding gypsum and coarse sand to MFT meant it took decades to firm up the material enough to begin reclamation. In 2007, Suncor started searching for chemical additives to speed the dewatering process and landed on a customized anionic polyacrylamide, similar to the polymer flocculants used to settle out solids in municipal waste water treatment facilities. The flocculant adheres to the clay particles, causing them to bundle together creating a porridge-like consistency that, when dried can support the weight of vehicles. Finding the right chemical additive “was key,” according to Suncor’s TRO director, Bradley Wamboldt, but just the beginning. “Now that you can make this material, how do you make it consistently, at large scales, how do you get it out on the beaches … there’s a surprising amount of chemical engineering.” J.D.
Tailings Pond 1 (above, in 2002) was in operation from 1967 to 1997. The pond grew to make way for more tailings as production increased, with dykes built to deepen and widen the basin. Eventually the pond was lifted about 100 metres above the Athabasca River and had a circumference of about three kilometres. By June, 2010, after reclamation efforts, the surface was solid enough to grow vegetation (left). Suncor’s oil sands operations, like this mine located east of the Athabasca River in 2007 (right), currently producesupwards of 300,000 barrels per day.
Suncor Energy inc. / David Dodge, The Pembina Institute, oilsandswatch.org (circular image)
that celebrates draining, refilling and reclaiming an oil sands mine tailings pond for the first time. George calls the occasion a historic turning point for the petroleum industry’s technology frontier. The site is the original GCOS “Pond 1.” The event, held last September, is broadcast over the Internet and the digital record is stored for repeated reuse. The restored landscape is 2.2 square kilometres of grass and tree seedlings. That’s seven per cent of the 31.5 square kilometres of liquid waste storage ponds that the mega-mine has filled with 200 million cubic metres of tailings since production began in 1967. But George’s choice of words draws no quarrels from industry and government veterans who know the full panorama of gradual technology evolution, titanic scale and engineering complications in the oil sands. The accomplishment goes beyond just turning a fragment of oil sands eyesores into a lone green spot that an environmental critic immediately dismisses derisively as the world’s most expensive garden. Suncor’s ceremony
draws a bevy of high officials led by Alberta Premier Ed Stelmach because it marks a new departure of incorporating liquid waste cleanup and land restoration into the economic routine of bitumen mining. Insults hurled by eco-warriors bounce off George. “Actions speak a lot louder than words,” the Suncor president says. He and Stelmach pick up shovels to plant a couple of the 600,000 trees and shrubs that will eventually cover the Pond 1 site in greenery. The premier says, “When we have people coming to this province, this is what they have to see. We’ll show them real progress.” Patented and trademarked TRO, short for tailings reduction operations, the method is the innovation that Clark wanted — a reclaim-as-you-mine addition that blends into the production system without disruptions. The cost is estimated at about $1.2 billion. But the investment works out to less than $1 a barrel when spread over time and high production volumes, and it will pay priceless dividends of public good will, George assures Suncor shareholders.
Some of the cost will eventually be recovered as savings off expenses for engineering and constructing tailings pond dykes, adds TRO director Bradley Wamboldt. The mega-mine is going through an environmental retrofit. New tailings ponds are no longer being made. The eight waste storage lagoons on the Suncor site are being cut down to a single pool that will be about 20 per cent of their combined size after the new system disposes of the tailings legacy, Wamboldt says. Suncor is also offering to rent out its green technology addition to recover some of its $250 million in development costs since 2003. TRO employs a synthetic polymer flocculant, which is a long-chain molecule that acts like household or carwash cleaning cloths by absorbing dirt and releasing water. The chemical chamois for the oil sands operates on a colossal scale, producing fields of grey cobblestonelike congealed tailings lumps. The tailings clods dry out into a “competent” material that supports equipment, and can be transported
may 2011 CAnadian Chemical News 23
Keeping Perspective For an industry saddled with a lousy public image, trumpeting an environmental coup to wring the most out of the story is an obvious strategy, but one that environmental watchdogs for the oil sands aim to keep in check. Although even some of the harshest critics of the industry give Suncor credit for their success at Pond 1, they argue that it’s a matter of perspective. The Pembina Institute reported that part of the effort to convert the tailings pond to a solid surface involved simply transferring 12.5 million cubic metres of mature fine tailings to other ponds and pointed out in a press release that “After more than 40 years of oil sands operations less than 0.2 per cent of disturbed lands are certified as reclaimed.” Pembina also noted “The complete reclamation of toxic tailings waste has not been fully demonstrated …Tailings reclamation is in its infancy and needs to stand the test of time before it can be deemed successful.” J.D.
then sculpted into solid landscapes by earthmoving contractors. Dried tailings are sterile. But reclamation covers the solidified plant waste with fertile “overburden,” or natural soil that is scraped off the top of oil sands deposits and piled beside the mega-mine for future replacement and replanting as an Alberta conservation requirement. In its beginning states, the reclamation system made 200,000 tonnes of dried tailings in 2009. The pace accelerated more than 12-fold to about 225,000 tonnes per month in 2010. To work on the oil sands scale, astronomical totals have to be reached. Bitumen mine tailings lagoons are built on the scale of upside-down, hollow Egyptian pyramids. A hole bigger than a golf course and more than 40 metres deep had to be filled up to create the solid surface of Suncor Pond 1 for reclamation. The TRO system is being fitted into the entire oil sands mega-mine, from the moment overburden stripping begins. “We’ve got a reclamation plan
This article originally appeared in the December 2010 issue of Alberta Oil magazine. Want to share your thoughts on this article? Write to us at magazine@accn.ca or visit us at www.accn.ca
24 L’Actualité chimique canadienne
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David Dodge, The Pembina Institute, oilsandswatch.org
Suncor upgrader operations along the Athabasca River.
when we start,” says company mining vice-president Anne Marie Toutant. In future, restoration specialists may start refilling and reconstructing the pit on the heels of the shovels and trucks as soon as they dig out deposits. Although the environmental addition is still too new to establish a reliable track record, Suncor has an informal “tree-to-tree” target of 10 years. The goal is to go from breaking virgin ground through mining and reclamation in a decade, or more than four times faster than the old pace. “Where we’re standing right now, 18 months ago dredges were operating,” Suncor research engineering manager Sean Wells says during a tour of the showpiece reclamation site. “No one has ever reclaimed a tailings pond before. Now we know it can be done. We’ve demonstrated we know how to do it.” While environmentalists steadfastly refuse to credit oil sands operations with any improvements, there are signs of acceptance in other quarters. As guest buses pull away, deer munch on the reclaimed Pond 1 vegetation. Workers report sightings of small mammals, amphibians and birds of prey. A bear is spotted sniffing around before the official ceremony, possibly staking an early claim on freshly restored territory of its ursine ancestors.
Canadian Society for Chemical Engineering
Call for papers Opens March 15, 2011 - closes May 31, 2011
Innovation, Industry and Internationalization 61st Canadian Chemical Engineering Conference LOndon, ontario, Canada
October 23–26, 2011 www.csche2011.ca
CSChE
Société canadienne de génie chimique
Demande de communications Débute le 15 mars 2011 – Se termine le 31 mai 2011
Innovation, industrie et internationalisation 61e Congrès canadien de génie chimique LOndon, ontario, Canada
DU 23 AU 26 OctobRE 2011 www.csche2011.ca
SCGCh
Canadian Society for Chemistry
Nominations are now open for the
CanadianSociety for Chemistry
2012AWARDS
Do you know an outstanding person who deserves to be recognized?
Rio Tinto Alcan Award Alfred Bader Award Strem Chemicals Award for Pure or Applied Inorganic Chemistry Boehringer Ingelheim (Canada) Doctoral Research Award Clara Benson Award Maxxam Award R. U. Lemieux Award Boehringer Ingelheim (Canada) Research Excellence Award Bernard Belleau Award John C. Polanyi Award Fred Beamish Award Keith Laidler Award W. A. E. McBryde Medal E.W.R. Steacie Award CCUCC Chemistry Doctoral Award
Act now!
Deadline The deadline for all CSC awards is July 4, 2011 for the 2012 selection.
Nomination Procedure
Submit your nominations electronically to: awards@cheminst.ca Nomination forms and the full Terms of Reference for these awards are available at www.chemistry.ca/ awards.
Society news International Year of Chemistry
Marc robitaille
Students Aglow With Excitement for IYC Université Laval recently got into the International Year of Chemistry in a big way: by setting a Guinness World Record for the largest ever glowstick figure. The event was organized by the Department of Chemistry at Université Laval, in collaboration with the organizers of the Québec and Chaudière-Appalaches Regional Final of the Hydro-Québec Science Fair. Over 100 teenaged participants in the Science Fair got to experience “CSI Québec,” a series of challenging lab-based activities devised and hosted by the department. They were then joined by hundreds more participants for the glowstick event, which was supervised and verified by an official from Guinness World Records. In all, 308 people created a giant glowing figure of H 2O, the world’s best-known molecule and the one responsible for life. This smashed the previous record of 181 participants, set by students from California State University in 2003. Glowsticks represent sophisticated chemistry, as they are powered by a chemical reaction between a fluorescent dye, hydrogen peroxide, and diphenyl oxalate (also called Cyalume).
The successful event was just one more way in which IYC 2011 is inspiring current and future chemists across Canada. Volunteers also organized a trivia quiz for a radio station in Sydney, N.S. One chemistry question was broadcast each day for a week and listeners were invited to call in with answers. In Toronto, Joe Schwarcz continued his lecture tour for the international year with a talk he called “Are cows more trustworthy than chemists?” The audience of over 200 was captivated by Schwarcz’s talent for myth busting; This time he focused on familiar products that aim to fool consumers with misleading science. And exactly what is the connection between cows and chemists? Schwarcz drew his inspiration from a nutrition professor at Columbia University in New York City, who, when asked if butter is better than margarine, responded that she’d trust a cow more than she’d trust a chemist, a fallacy that Schwarcz aims to correct. Check out video footage of Université Laval’s IYC events at www.iyc2011.ca/worldrecord
Recognition
luke andersson
Keeping it Green
Mitchell Winnik of the University of Toronto delivered an animated keynote address after winning the LeSueur Award at this year’s SCI/CIC Awards Dinner and Banquet. The annual event, held March 24, 2011 at the Hyatt Regency in Toronto, honoured five major award winners for excellence in research, service to industry, and environmental stewardship. It also recognized new talent in the form of over a dozen student merit award winners. This year, for the first time, dinner was preceded by an afternoon seminar series, the theme of which was “Green, Clean, and Sustainable Chemistry.” Attendees heard from a variety of speakers representing both industry-wide associations and individual
companies, such as Lanxess Inc., Woodbridge Foam Corp., GreenCore Composites Inc., and EcoSynthetix Inc. Following the talks, two lively round-table discussions explored ways in which government, industry, and academia can work together to drive sustainable chemistry forward. As the dinner hour approached, the crowd swelled. Executives from companies both big and small mingled with distinguished professors and fresh-faced students just beginning their journeys in chemistry and chemical engineering. Over a delicious three-course meal (roast beef or filo-wrapped ratatouille) the winners were recognized with speeches, plaques, and warm applause. The success of this year’s event will no doubt carry forward to March of 2012, when the next set of winners will be announced. A list of the award winners can be found on www.cheminst.ca; click on “Awards” and follow the links.
Correction
On page 8 of the April 2011 issue, a news article referred to a shipment of “steam turbines” from the Bruce Nuclear Generating station. The stainless steel objects are in fact steam generators, not turbines.
may 2011 CAnadian Chemical News 29
Chemfusion
Sniffing Out a Landmark Compound By Joe Schwarcz
I
had never heard of “storax” until the word caught my ear while watching “Perfume: The Story of a Murderer.” Based on Patrick Suskind's 1985 novel, it’s a fascinating film, especially for anyone interested in chemistry. Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, a man who has no body odour himself, becomes obsessed with smells and dreams of creating the “perfect” perfume. Believing the ideal ingredient to be the scent of young virgins, Grenouille embarks on a murderous spree to collect the prized ingredient. Using a perfumer’s technique commonly applied to botanical matter known as “cold enfleurage,” he wraps the murdered women in linen soaked in animal fat. Their fragrance diffuses into the fat, from which he proceeds to extract it with alcohol. The wretched man learned the art of perfumery from master Giuseppe Baldini. Baldini had been trying to reproduce “Amor and Psyche,” a rival perfumer’s popular product when Grenouille happened to wander into his shop. After sniffing the original, Grenouille immediately concluded that it contained cloves, roses and storax. I knew that roses and cloves were common ingredients in perfumes, but what was storax? The search for an answer took me on a journey from ancient tropical trees to modern
30 L’Actualité chimique canadienne
computer housings. Storax, it turns out, is a resin produced by a number of tropical trees of the family Styracaceae when their bark is injured. It has a long history of use in perfumes because of its lingering fragrance and its ability to slow the evaporation of other compounds that contribute to the overall scent. This “fixative” effect allows a perfume to keep the original fragrance for a longer time. Storax is a complex mixture of compounds. Cinnamic acid, alphapinene, ethyl cinnamate and vanillin are just some that have been isolated. But in terms of historical impact, perhaps the most interesting compound found in storax is styrene. In 1839, Eduard Simon, a German apothecary was attempting to separate the components of storax obtained from the Liquiambar orientalis tree by distillation. One of the fractions he collected was an oily substance that seemed to be a single compound. Simon named it “styrol” and stored it in a bottle. Within a few days and much to his surprise, his styrol had changed from an oil into a hard translucent mass. Since he hadn’t added anything to the sample, Simon figured that it must have reacted with oxygen, and dubbed the new material “styrol oxide.” As it turned out, he was wrong. August Wilhelm Hofmann, one of the leading lights of German chemistry, showed that the styrol transformation also occurred in the absence of oxygen. A solution to the mystery was proposed in 1866 by the brilliant French chemist, Marcelin Berthelot. The molecules of styrol, Berthelot suggested, must have joined together to form a long chain. Just three years earlier, he had delivered a landmark lecture to the Chemical Society of Paris in which
mai 2011
he introduced the novel idea of small molecules linking together to form giant molecules, or polymers. But Berthelot did more than theorize. He carried out experiments to show that ethylene molecules could be joined together to form a new substance he dubbed “polyethylene,” surely the first time that term was ever used. The history of polymer chemistry can be said to have begun with Berthelot’s pioneering work. Simon’s “styrol” was eventually identified as the compound we now know as styrene, and his “styrol oxide” was actually polystyrene. Neither Simon nor Berthelot found a practical use for polystyrene, but by the 1930s German chemists did. They discovered that it could be cast into virtually any shape by pouring the molten substance into moulds. It could also be extruded into sheets or films. Today, polystyrene is used to make a myriad items ranging from clear plastic glasses, laboratory equipment and “jewel” cases for compact discs, to smoke detectors and disposable razors. The most common use for polystyrene, however, is to produce “expanded polystyrene.” That’s the foamy stuff of coffee cups, insulation materials and those packing peanuts used to cushion electronic equipment. And what happened to the murderous Jean-Baptiste Grenouille? In a desperate effort to be loved, he sprinkled his “perfect” perfume on himself. A crowd quickly gathered. Overcome by the seductive scent, people just could not get enough of Grenouille and ended up devouring him. Joe Schwarcz is the director of McGill University’s Office for Science and Society. Read his blog at chemicallyspeaking.com. Want to share your thoughts on this article? Write to us at magazine@accn.ca or visit us at www.accn.ca