Thirst for knowledge
Feds earmark $1.1M for CBU wastewater project
The Verschuren Centre at Cape Breton University received $1.1 million in federal funding Thursday to explore ways to develop clean technology for commercial and industrial wastewater systems.
The money was made available through the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency’s Atlantic innovation fund.
Cape Breton-Canso MP Rodger Cuzner announced the funding on behalf of ACOA Minister Navdeep Bains.
A byproduct of food processing, organic material routinely ends up in a company’s wastewater system and a new technology will attempt to degrade the organics and clean the water.
Releasing the organic wastewater material into the environment can deprive marine life of oxygen that’s required to survive.
Once developed by a team of scientists and engineers at the Verschuren Centre, the technology will clean the wastewater before it’s discharged into the environment.
“The end water will be the exact or better than what you would have at a water treatment plant,” Verschuren Centre CEO Andrew Swanson said following the announcement.
Working with large commercial and industrial companies, Swanson said the idea of cleaning wastewater and brainstorming ways to do it were brought forward to a number of the Verschuren Centre’s business partners. He declined to name the companies assisting in the development of the new wastewater cleaning technology because their participation in the research may indicate there are problems with their internal systems.
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Although he said they are “largely in the fisheries, in the food and beverage manufacturing” industries, as well as the oil-and-gas sector.
“Their interests are just as strong as ours in terms of environmental stewardship,” Swanson said.
“Bottom line to them is essentially every drop of water recycled is a buck saved and sometimes it’s multimillion-dollar bucks on a monthly basis for them.”
CBU will spend $500,000 as its stake in the $1.6-million project.
Five full-time equivalent jobs will be created — scientists, water engineers, a business developer and a marketer will all work on the project as it unfolds over the next three years.
Xu Zhang, the research chair in applied nanotechnology at the Verschuren Centre, will lead the project and student researchers in masters and PhD level programs will also play a part, Swanson said.
Most of the work will happen in laboratories at the Verschuren Centre.
Besides salaries, the funding will go toward ensuring the prototypes developed in the second year of the project will function properly with the systems already in place at the participating companies.
The university has struggled with a declining enrolment and has yet to pass a budget for the 2016-17 fiscal year, which may still include faculty layoffs.
The university is currently saddled with a $1.3-million deficit.
CBU president David Wheeler told the crowd at Thursday’s announcement that universities — even undergraduate institutions such as CBU — will need to invest more money on research and development initiatives in the future to become key economic players at the provincial and national levels.
“This is what universities have to do. It’s not an alternative,” he said.
“I think this university can be considered an exemplar of this vision, which is provincial and national, for universities to pull their weight.”
Swanson said the university would likely be able to recoup its investment through licensing agreements and the potential sale of the technology.
“Our role is to get (the technology) to a point where a company would continue to invest into it and see it as a viable option.”