ACCN, the Canadian Chemical News

l’actualité chimique canadienne canadian chemical news ACCN

september|septembre • 2010 • Vol. 62, No./n o 8

The

SaskatchewanIssue Saskaboom

Canola biofuels

Synchrotron Six Years IN

AChemical PublicationInstitute of the Chemical Institute of Canada and its Constituent Societies / Une publication de l’institut de chimie du canada et ses sociétés constituantes of Canada

september|septembre • 2010 • Vol. 62, No./n o 8

Contents

Features

rises in the ranks of “have” provinces 12 Saskatchewan

By John Gray

12 23 Departments 5

From the Editor De la rédactrice en chef

7

Guest Column Chroniqueur invité

30 synchrotron six years in 18 Saskatoon’s Pour obtenir la version française de cet article, écrivez-nous à magazine@accn.ca

By Ajay Dalai

8

Chemical News Actualité chimique

Society News 29 Nouvelles des sociétés

30

Chemfusion

By Joe Schwarcz

biofuels and the next chapter in the Cinderella story 24 Canola

By Debbie Lockrey-Wessel

From the editor De la rédactrice en chef

ACCN Executive Director/Directeur général Roland Andersson, MCIC Editor/Rédactrice en chef Jodi Di Menna Graphic Designers/Infographistes Krista Leroux Kelly Turner Editorial intern Andrea Ozretic Marketing Manager/ Directrice du marketing Bernadette Dacey Staff Writer/rédactrice Anne Campbell, MCIC

T

his October, more than 1,000 chemical engineers will gather in Saskatoon at the 60th Canadian Chemical Engineering Conference. In this issue, we focus on Saskatchewan to find out what chemical scientists and engineers are contributing in the central prairies.

Writer John Gray examines how the economy of the resource-rich province is embracing the markets. We take the opportunity in our Q and A to check in with the Canadian Light Source, Canada’s only synchrotron facility, to see how it’s living up to expectations since its opening in 2004. Finally, we look at one example of how intelligent engineering is giving canola farmers an edge in the biofuels business. ACCN

Awards and Local Sections Manager/ Directrice des prix et des sections locales Gale Thirlwall Editorial Board/Conseil de rédaction Joe Schwarcz, MCIC, chair/président Cathleen Crudden, MCIC Milena Sejnoha, MCIC Bernard West, MCIC Editorial Office/ Bureau de la rédaction 130, rue Slater Street, Suite/bureau 550 Ottawa, ON K1P 6E2 T. 613-232-6252 • F./Téléc. 613-232-5862 magazine@accn.ca • www.accn.ca Advertising/Publicité advertising@accn.ca

I hope you enjoy the read!

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ACCN (L’Actualité chimique canadienne/Canadian Chemical News) is published 10 times a year by the Chemical Institute of Canada / est publié 10 fois par année par l’Institut de chimie du Canada. www.cheminst.ca.

Jodi Di Menna Editor

Write to the editor at magazine@accn.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.

Recommandé par l’Institut de chimie du Canada, la Société canadienne de chimie, la Société canadienne de génie chimique et la Société canadienne de technologie chimique.

Les opinions exprimées ne reflètent pas nécessairement la position officielle de l’Institut ou des sociétés qui soutiennent le magazine.

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ISSN 0823-5228

www.accn.ca

Guest Column Chroniqueur invité

Saskatchewan: a haven for scientists and engineers

S

askatchewan is truly a land of opportunities. With a population of around one million, and abundant natural resources including 48 per cent of Canada’s agricultural land, large deposits of uranium and potassium, forestry and the country’s second largest oil and gas deposits, the province is a hotbed for science and engineering.

The University of Saskatchewan and the College of Engineering, created in 1907 and 1912 respectively, are nearly as old as the province itself which was formed in 1905. The University is known for its rich history, quality of education, and campus beauty and life.

The University of Saskatchewan holds the only Chemical Engineering Department in the province. It was created in 1982 and has since evolved into one of the finest chemical engineering departments in the country. In July 2010, the University of Saskatchewan Chemical Engineering Department amalgamated with the Agriculture and Bioresources Engineering Department in the College of Engineering to form the new Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering.

With 24 faculty, 15 staff, over 350 undergraduate students and 100 post-graduate students and post doctoral fellows, the new department provides highly trained students for many industries mostly based in Saskatchewan and Alberta.

Innovation Place, established in 1980, is one of the most successful university-related research parks in North America. It is situated on 80 acres adjacent to the University of Saskatchewan, and builds on the institution’s strengths in agriculture, information technology, and environmental and life sciences. Innovation Place is also home to the renowned Saskatchewan Research Council and Bioprocessing Centre, and provides custom processing for the manufacturing, services, research and development, nutraceutical, cosmetic and agri-food industries. The Canadian Light Source (CLS), a billion dollar investment used for carrying out cutting edge research and development work on material science and engineering, is located on the University of Saskatchewan campus and next door to Innovation Place.

Regina, the capital of Saskatchewan, is home to the University of Regina which houses the Process Systems Engineering Department which creates additional opportunities for faculty and staff to serve the needs of industry and society.

Ajay Dalai

The economy of the province of Saskatchewan is truly innovative in nature. In 2009, Saskatchewan’s real Gross Domestic Product (GDP) was 36.9 billion dollars including 12.4 per cent from mining and petroleum, 12.1 per cent from agriculture, forestry, fishing and hunting, 7.7 per cent from manufacturing, and 61.1 per cent from the service sector. The province produces around 17 per cent of Canada’s crude oil, and wind power represents 5 per cent of Saskatchewan’s electrical power. There are also ample opportunities for technology developers, providers and creators in the province of Saskatchewan.

Some of the research aims are to develop new fuel alternatives, such as biodiesel fuels from inedible materials left over from crops such as canola, mustard and other oilseeds. There are opportunities in creating biosyndiesel and bioethanol from syngas derived from municipal solid wastes, agricultural residue such as straw and dry distiller’s grain, forest wastes such as sawdust and bark, and organic wastes such as meat and bone meals. Advanced and catalytic materials and bio-materials research is being conducted by people from Saskatchewan and around Canada and the world at the Canadian Light Source, the only synchrotron facility in Canada.

The province of Saskatchewan is known for its high quality of life. In October 2010, over 1,000 chemical engineering professionals and students will visit Saskatoon to participate in the 60th Canadian Chemical Engineering Conference and to taste our rich lifestyle. The conference will cover 15 themes that focus on the opportunities that exist in various chemical engineering topics related to industry needs, research and development, improving climate change issues and other societal needs. The theme of the conference — Opportunity + Innovation = Advancement — reflects the promise of Saskatchewan, its host province. ACCN Ajay Dalai is conference chair for the 60th Canadian Chemical Engineering Conference and is a professor of Chemical Engineering and associate dean (research and partnerships) in the College of Engineering at the University of Saskatchewan. He holds the Canada Research Chair in bioenergy and environmentally friendly chemical processing.

Want to share your thoughts on this article? Write to us at magazine@accn.ca

september 2010 Canadian Chemical News 7

Chemical News Actualité chimique

Cashew Cure Cashew seed extract shows promise as an effective anti-diabetic, according to a new study from the Université de Montréal and the Université de Yaoundé (Cameroun).

The investigation analyzed the reputed health benefits of cashew tree products on diabetes, notably whether cashew extracts could improve the body's response to its own insulin.

Diabetes is caused when a person has high blood sugar because their body does not respond well to insulin and/or does not produce enough of the hormone. The illness, which affects nearly 220 million people worldwide, can provoke heart or kidney disease. The goal of the study was to examine the impact of leaves, bark, seeds and apples from cashew trees, native to northeastern Brazil and other countries of the southern hemisphere, on cells that respond to insulin.

“Of all the extracts tested, only cashew seed extract significantly stimulated blood sugar absorption by muscle cells,” says senior author Pierre S. Haddad, a pharmacology professor at the Université de Montréal's Faculty of Medicine. “Extracts of other plant parts had no such effect, indicating that cashew seed extract likely contains active compounds, which can have potential antidiabetic properties.”

Cashew tree products have long been alleged to be effective anti-inflammatory agents, counter high blood sugar and prevent insulin resistance among diabetics. “Our study validates the traditional use of cashew tree products in diabetes and points to some of its natural components that can serve to create new oral therapies,” adds Haddad.

Université de Montréal

fish were present along approximately 600 kilometres of river,” says paper co-author Lee Jackson, executive director of Advancing Canadian Wastewater Assets, a research facility that develops and tests new approaches for treating wastewater. “The situation for native fish will likely get worse as the concentration of organic contaminants will become more concentrated as a response to climate change and the increase in human and animal populations,” adds Jackson.

The study focused on two rivers in the South Saskatchewan River Basin: The Red Deer and Oldman rivers, located in southern Alberta. The water was analyzed for more than two dozen organic contaminants, many with hormone-like activity, commonly found in wastewater or rivers impacted by human and agricultural activity. Compounds detected in the water included synthetic estrogens (birth control pill compounds and hormone therapy drugs); bisphenol A, a chemical used in making plastics; and certain types of natural and synthetic steroids that are byproducts of agricultural run-off and cattle farming.

Researchers tested a native minnow, longnose dace (Rhinichthys cataractae), and found that at nearly every site, 14 out of 15 locations, males showed elevated levels of a protein, hepatic vitellogenin, which is normally only found in the blood of females and is used by females to produce eggs.

Co-author Hamid Habibi says the results downstream of two communities are striking.

“Most notably, we saw a significant increase in a specific protein marker for the presence of compounds with estrogen-like activity in areas downstream, south of Fort Macleod and Lethbridge. Our results showed females make up 85 per cent of the population of longnose dace.

In the upstream locations, females comprise 55 per cent of the population,” says Habibi.

Gender-Bending Fish Chemicals present in two rivers in southern Alberta are likely the cause of the feminization of fish say researchers at the University of Calgary.

“What is unique about our study is the huge geographical area we covered. We found that chemicals — manmade and naturally occurring — that have the potential to harm

8 L’Actualité chimique canadienne

University of Calgary

Sea Lamprey Stress Buster A University of British Columbia zoologist has discovered a new corticosteroid hormone in the sea lamprey, an eel-like fish and one

Septembre 2010

of the earliest vertebrates dating back 500 million years. These findings have shed light on the evolution of steroid hormones and may help conservation and management efforts for lampreys.

“This new discovery has significant scientific implications and application for sea lamprey control or pacific lamprey conservation,” says lead author and principal investigator David Close, an assistant professor in the UBC Department of Zoology.

Close and colleagues at Michigan State University identified a corticosteroid hormone — called 11-deoxycortisol — in the sea lamprey that plays dual roles in balancing ions and regulating stresses, similar to aldosterone and cortisol in humans.

The sea lamprey is regarded as a pest in the great lakes region, while Pacific lamprey on the west coast is an endangered resource.

Additional knowledge about stress in lampreys will help in solving the problems presented by both species.

Native to the Pacific Coast of North America and Asia, Pacific lampreys are an important ceremonial and subsistence food for Aboriginal peoples in the Columbia River basin. They are born in freshwater, swim out to the ocean as adults and return to freshwater to reproduce in similar habitats to Pacific salmon and trout. Adult lampreys can grow to approximately 75 centimetres long and use their sucker-like mouth to attach to other fish while in the ocean.

“The origin of the corticosteroid signaling pathway has remained controversial over the past several decades because the identity of the ancestral corticosteroid has been elusive,” says Close, who is also director of the Aboriginal Fisheries Research Unit at UBC’s Fisheries Centre.

“This discovery will help us better assess environmental and other stress factors on lamprey species — and provide insight into how stress-regulating hormones evolved from the earliest of vertebrates,” says Close.

The study was initiated as part of efforts to restore populations of Pacific lamprey in the Columbia River Basin. Pacific lamprey numbers in the Columbia River have greatly declined since the construction of dams along the river.

University of British Columbia

september 2010 Canadian Chemical News  9

Chemical News Actualité chimique  Continuing Education for Chemical Professionals

indoor air qualitycourse

2010 Schedule

October 14 –15, 2010

Burnaby, BC

Registration fees

$247.50 BCIT Faculty $495 CIC members $695 non-members $75 Students

T

he Chemical Institute of

Canada (CIC) and the Canadian Society for Chemical Technology (CSCT) are presenting a two-day course designed to enhance the knowledge and working experience of chemical technologists and chemists. This course will provide a range of material which will enable the participants to understand the transformations that take place in air when pollutants are present, and to familiarize themselves with the analytical techniques currently used for air testing. Upon completion of this short course, the participants will be able to perform some of the laboratory analyses for the major atmospheric contaminants as required by engineering consulting firms, private laboratories, and government laboratories involved in pollution analysis.

For more information about the course and locations, and to access the registration form, visit

www.cheminst.ca/profdev  10 L’Actualité chimique canadienne

Organic Order Although they could revolutionize a wide range of high-tech products such as computer displays or solar cells, organic materials do not have the same ordered chemical composition as inorganic materials, preventing scientists from using them to their full potential. But an international team of researchers led by McGill's Dmitrii Perepichka and the Institut national de la recherche scientifique's Federico Rosei have published research that shows how to solve this decades-old conundrum.

The team has effectively discovered a way to order the molecules in PEDOT, the single most industrially important conducting polymer.

Although Perepichka is quick to point out that the research is not directly applicable to products currently on the market, he gives the example of a possible use for the findings in computer chips. “It's a well known principle that the number of transistors in a computer chip doubles every two years,” he said, “but we are now reaching the physical limit. By using molecular materials instead of silicon semiconductors, we could one day build transistors that are ten times smaller than what currently exists.” The chips would in fact be only one molecule thick.

The technique sounds deceptively simple. The team used an inorganic material — a crystal of copper — as a template. When molecules are dropped onto the crystal, the crystal provokes a chemical reaction and creates a conducting polymer. By using a scanning probe microscope that enabled them to see surfaces with atomic resolution, the researchers discovered that the polymers had imitated the order of the crystal surface. The team is currently only able to produce the reaction in one dimension, that is, to make a string or line of molecules. The next step will be to add a second dimension in order to make continuous sheets (“organic graphite”) or electronic circuits.

McGill University

Lucky Find An intriguing byproduct of a complicated chemical procedure in a laboratory experiment has become the discovery of a lifetime for some University of Guelph researchers. The byproduct, which would ordinarily be discarded, has turned out to be a new nanoparticle and a promising platform technology with many applications.

Physics professor John Dutcher and his team have increased production of the material from laboratory levels to kilograms and have plans to scale up to industrial levels of 1,000 tonnes per year. As well, they’ve given the particles a name — PHYTOSPHERIC™ polysaccharide nanoparticles. They’re unique in that they have uniform size and surface chemistry. The human body has enzymes to break them down, which makes the particles safe and particularly attractive for biomedical applications.

“You can think of these particles as making any product more environmentally friendly,” said Dutcher. “They can serve as non-toxic biodegradable replacements for current synthetic nanoparticles or petroleum ingredients.”

Paint and cosmetic companies are interested in the particles’ light-scattering properties, which enhance colour vibrancy and sheen. Adding the nanoparticles to clear liquid soap gives it a pearl-like opaque appearance, currently achieved using inorganic particles.

Because the nanoparticles absorb and retain water, they have a natural moisturizing effect, unlike the greasy sensation common in many moisturizers that results from fatty acids or petroleum- and oil-based ingredients. Dutcher envisions many other future uses for the nanoparticles, including biomedical applications such as drug delivery.

“It’s about being imaginative about what kind of molecules you can attach to the particle’s outside surface to get the function you want,” he said. “We can work with companies to do this at an economical price and in an eco-friendly manner.” ACCN University of Guelph

Septembre 2010

september 2010 Canadian Chemical News  11

INDUSTRY: ECONOMY

This Year Country Rich in uranium, potash, oil and gas and arable land, socialist Saskatchewan is embracing the markets as it rises in the ranks of the “have” provinces.

By John Gray

12 L’Actualité chimique canadienne

Septembre 2010

T

he narrative of Saskatchewan is so deeply etched and so familiar that talking to Larry Sommerfeld is a shock. He is that rarest of creatures — a happy farmer who is looking to the future with confidence.

Sommerfeld stretches out in his chair and smiles: “It’s a nice place to be right now, Saskatchewan. Everybody’s pretty optimistic.”

Apart from being the proprietor of a 3,000acre farm, Sommerfeld is mayor of the town of Allan, a half-hour’s drive southeast of Saskatoon. He sees change everywhere. The PotashCorp mine on the edge of town is in the middle of a half-billion-dollar expansion, which is a lot of money for a town of 700.

The trailer court and the hotels are jammed.

Sommerfeld talks of Saskatchewan people returning home from Alberta, where the living these days is no longer quite so easy. Local trucking operators — a business Sommerfeld knows from his own seasonal work driving rigs — are bringing in trainees from as far away as the Philippines. And everywhere, wages are going up because the mines and the oil and gas operators are competing for employees.

When we first met seven years ago, Larry Sommerfeld was not a happy man. He had just bought a tractor and he was not looking forward to his next meeting with the bank manager. His three sons were not much inclined to take over the farm after he retires and he was not in much of a mood to tell them they should. He was pretty pessimistic about farming, period.

These days, Sommerfeld’s wife, Bev, still works at the local Walmart to help out with the bills. His canola and pea crops were not as great as they might have been this year. But he had one of his best years ever for wheat and barley. More important, he has even made a big bet on the future. He shakes his head and laughs at it, but he confesses he has just bought himself a combine for $400,000. “I guess I look at it this way: If I go broke, at least I’ll have something good on my auction sale.”

Not so long ago, most Canadians felt a bit sorry for Saskatchewan, that poor cousin on the bald prairie. The people of Saskatchewan called their province “next-year country,” but the wise guys said that was because this year was always so unfailingly wretched.

Think about it. If it was not the cracking cold of winter, it was the baking heat of summer,

probably with hailstorms and locusts thrown in for good measure. True, the province had always relished its reputation as the breadbasket of Canada, if not the world. But when the numbers were added up at the end of the year, Saskatchewan was always in the bottom half of the Canadian ledger. Saskatchewan was a perennial have-not, reliant on handouts from Ottawa.

But lately, Saskatchewan has been watching the world’s commodity prices rise — wheat, barley, lentils, chickpeas, potash, oil, gas, uranium. Saskatchewan is rich in them all, and suddenly, as of last year, the province is in the top half of that Canadian ledger, looking down on even stumbling Ontario.

At the same time, something here is changing besides the numbers.

Saskatchewan’s personality is changing too.

The place that had to stick together, the place that was proud of its Crown corporations, its institutions designed to protect farmers from capitalists, and the pragmatic strain of social democracy that produced medicare, is now in love with the markets.

Is Tommy Douglas rolling in his grave?

Perhaps. To hear one of his ideological descendants tell it, there is a danger in forgetting how cruel commodities markets can be. It was dust bowl hardship that made Saskatchewan, according to Nettie Wiebe. “I think it evoked in people — and with wise leadership got articulated as — a need for a recognized interdependence,” she says. “That is less and less the case now. Not just because it has become that much easier here, but also because of larger influences that have tossed us all into a kind of globalization that inhibits us from recognizing our interdependence.”

Nettie Wiebe represents the old Saskatchewan — she has led the radicalroots National Farmers Union, and was a left-wing candidate for the provincial NDP leadership. If you want a symbol of the new Saskatchewan — or what is assumed to be the new Saskatchewan — you could do worse than to consider Mayo Schmidt, an American agribusiness veteran who arrived at the Saskatchewan Wheat Pool in 2000.

The Pool is one of those prairie institutions that sprang out of hardship and common cause; it was formed by farmers in 1923 to get them a better deal after decades of rude treatment by grain traders.

september 2010 Canadian Chemical News 13

INDUSTRY: ECONOMY What Schmidt found 77 years later was a farmers’ co-op that had become seriously dysfunctional, with a debt of close to half a billion dollars. “For me it was time for the company to stop talking about what it had done, many years past, and start talking about what it was going to do to get in control of a situation that was beginning to be out of control,” he says.

Schmidt slashed hundreds of jobs and cut into the array of 30 companies that came under the Pool’s umbrella, ranging from grain terminals in Mexico and Poland to a doughnut chain, a meat company, a fish farm, a livestock business and the Western Producer, the newspaper for western farmers.

But the most important change — which didn’t come without a struggle — was to convert the Pool from a co-op owned by farmers into a public company owned by shareholders. That transition, says Schmidt, has given the company a new life and the ability to become a global player in the food business: “The difficulty for the organization was that access to capital was not available. People in the capital markets don’t put money into businesses when they don’t have a vote.

“So it created a conflict. It created an untenable situation. I didn’t change the intent and the mind and heart of the company. What I did was change its financial condition to allow it to have access.”

Schmidt’s protest aside, he did change the heart and mind of the company. After its financial crisis was resolved in 2003, the Wheat Pool set out to expand its horizons. A shakedown in the grain handling industry in the Prairie provinces appeared to put Agricore United — itself the union of the pools in Alberta and Manitoba — in a commanding position. A lot of smart money had predicted the Pool would be swallowed. But at the end of a six-month bidding war, Mayo Schmidt and the Saskatchewan Wheat Pool had emerged on top, controlling an estimated 45 per cent of the Western Canadian grainhandling business.

From the moment he came to the Pool, there had been speculation that Schmidt was a Trojan Horse for one of the American agribusiness giants, either Cargill or his alma mater, ConAgra. He was just grooming Viterra, as the Pool was renamed, for a takeover, it was said. To that, Schmidt replies,

“There aren’t companies today of any scale that are immune to the interest or affection of another company. That’s the world today.

Companies in all sectors, in all businesses, are constantly and continually assessing their opportunities to combine, to acquire and to grow. …You can’t afford to stand on the sidelines.”

Just a few days after this interview, the shareholders of ABB Grain, Australia’s largest agribusiness — itself the product of the same sort of consolidation and co-op-to-corporation evolution — voted to merge with Viterra.

The takeover cost the Canadian company $1.4 billion and elevated it into the top tier of global grain handlers. The onetime farmer co-op is now in the Cargill league.

A base in Australia gives Viterra a yearround cash flow, with harvests twice a year — twice the opportunity to collect grain and twice the opportunity to sell fertilizer and seed.

Schmidt sketches for Viterra a Google Earth road to prosperity, with minerals and agricultural products becoming continually more precious, with 75 million new mouths to feed every year, and a world population that will swell from 6.6 to nine billion by 2050. “So you take the market signals today and the resource constraints and diminishing arable land and water resources in the world, and Saskatchewan becomes a very, very desirable place to do business — a centre that provides ingredients for food supplies, critical nutrients and also many other mineral sources, including potash and others for growing food.

“When you look at that, it really is Saskatchewan’s time. It’s its opportunity to take advantage of the market conditions and the trends, and to build its economy and build its resources and its strength and attract new opportunities to the province.”

Wheat is very old Saskatchewan. It’s

You take the market signals today and the resource constraints and diminishing arable land and water resources in the world, and Saskatchewan becomes a very, very desirable place to do business.

14 L’Actualité chimique canadienne

Septembre 2010

also new Saskatchewan, as Viterra’s success shows, but only one part. Premier Brad Wall tells the whole story well: “I think every now and then, Saskatchewan people have thought to themselves or maybe had a coffee conversation that went something like: ‘How is it that the place that has half of the arable acres in all of Canada, that boasts a quarter of the world’s uranium production, that has a third of the world’s potash production, that is Canada’s second-largest producer of oil and third-largest producer of natural gas, that is responsible for 25 per cent of the world’s

mustard production and a third of most of the pulse crops — how is that province a have-not province?’”

Now that Saskatchewan has earned its spot in the “have” column, however, nobody is boasting. “There’s been no spiking the ball in the end zone by Saskatchewan’s people,” Wall says. “Maybe it’s because we know how long we were a have-not, and I think we just want to keep our head down and be modestly, humbly self-assured about this new status.”

The Premier knows that Saskatchewan has been powerfully lucky.

Beneficent geology has endowed the place with oil, gas, uranium and potash in abundance. There may even be diamonds.

The province produced 160 million barrels of crude oil last year, second in Canada only to Alberta’s total output and about equal to that province’s production of conventional oil (in other words, once the oil sands are put aside). Saskatchewan is the world’s top producer of uranium, accounting for about a quarter of total production. And then there is potash, which modern agriculture relies on for a basic nutrient (potassium), and which Saskatchewan calls “pink gold.” The last provincial budget forecast that potash revenue would account for 18 per cent of government revenue.

On the farm front, the surprise is that much of the new prosperity comes from pulses, crops that were hardly known in the Prairies two or three generations ago — peas, beans, chickpeas, lentils. In 1981, 85,000 acres of lentils were planted; this year, there were 2.3 million acres. In 1976, 15,000 acres of peas were planted; this year, 2.8 million acres. Canada is now the leading exporter in the world of both foods, almost all of it from Saskatchewan.

As Wall acknowledges, Saskatchewan is still dependent on the vagaries of commodity price cycles. But — and it’s a big but — “when it comes to resource profile, we’ve got more than one horse to ride.”

The lucky horse at the moment is oil. In his office in the legislature in Regina, Wall points to a large television that is set to a business channel. The 2009 budget forecast for oil was $48 (U.S.) a barrel, but the price was $77 (U.S.) as of early December. Every dollar increase in the price of oil means $18 million in revenue for the province.

A moment later, Alberta’s Finance Minister, Iris Evans, appears on the screen, admitting that the plunge in natural gas prices and the prospect of a budget deficit are “a real kick in the head.” A sympathetic Wall grimaces. If an economic powerhouse like Alberta can tumble into a deficit, a Johnny-come-lately like Saskatchewan cannot afford to gloat.

Wall, after all, has his own problem. Since Saskatchewan’s March budget, potash revenue has been tumbling out of control. By November, a mid-year budget report revised an expected $1.93 billion in potash revenue to just $109 million. Thank heaven Wall has those other horses, specifically oil, to ride: The November numbers showed that oil revenue would be $952 million instead of the $573 million forecast in March. That, says the Premier, is what will save Saskatchewan this year.

Still, there’s a shortfall. The government promised to maintain a balanced budget, but that will be painful. Some spending will be cut or deferred. And Saskatchewan’s rainy-day Growth and Financial Security Fund will be almost chopped in half, to $650.8 million.

The plunge in potash revenue was a case of too much of a good thing. For PotashCorp, the largest potash producer in the world, the company that is sitting on so much of the stuff that it can control the supply in the same fashion as OPEC does oil, the year has been a horrendous embarrassment. Skyrocketing prices last year, which

How is it that the place that has half of the arable acres in all of Canada, that boasts a quarter of the world’s uranium production, that has a third of the world’s potash production, that is Canada’s second-largest producer of oil and thirdlargest producer of natural gas, that is responsible for 25 per cent of the world’s mustard production and a third of most of the pulse crops — how is that province a have-not province?

The McArthur River uranium mine, situated 620 kilometres north of Saskatoon, is the world’s largest high-grade uranium deposit. september 2010 Canadian Chemical News 15

industry: economy

briefly made PotashCorp the biggest company in Canada by market capitalization, produced plummeting sales this year. When potash went above $1,000 (U.S.) a tonne last year, the world’s farmers decided they could not afford that kind of hit.

As sales dropped, chief executive officer Bill Doyle began whistling past the graveyard. Fertilizer customers cannot defer purchases indefinitely­, he said. Major markets would have to rebuild their supplies. Farmers are playing a dangerous game that will have consequences, he said. The current slowdown will pass, and a strong demand surge is likely to follow.

That was Doyle in April and May of last year. By October 2009, he was whistling a different tune. After acknowledging a third-quarter drop in earnings of almost $1 billion (U.S.) from a year earlier, Doyle said, “I’ve personally done a horrible job of forecasting this year. …I’ve looked like a jerk all year long. …I fell on my face.”

But Doyle is still betting on the long term. The gamble is that although the global recession hurt the fertilizer industry, the science of food production has not changed — meaning that the potassium that has been mined from the soil for crop production must be replaced. And Doyle knows as well as anybody that PotashCorp controls about a fifth of the world’s potash production capacity. (Doyle was unavailable for an interview for this story.)

Another hugely successful Saskatchewan company has suffered in recent months from an uncomfortable drop in prices and sales volumes. But like PotashCorp, Cameco Corp., the world’s biggest

16 L’Actualité chimique canadienne

Septembre 2010

uranium producer, has the comfort of knowing that it has vast reserves that will not go bad if they stay in the ground for a few more years, and of knowing also that the world will soon be desperate for its product.

Nuclear power, after a 20-year construction hiatus courtesy of Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, is enjoying a global renaissance as governments desperate for low-emissions energy suddenly see nukes as green. Cameco even has a direct and profitable slice of that business, through its one-third share of Bruce Power, Ontario’s biggest nuclear generator. And Premier Wall is a backer of the nuclear industry, having expressed interest in building a nuclear plant in Saskatchewan.

So there was a ring of familiarity when Cameco chief executive Jerry Grandey explained the slip in third-quarter revenue from uranium in the same terms that Bill Doyle might have used about potash.

Notwithstanding the short-term events, he said, the long-term fundamentals of the market remain robust.

In fairness, it’s hard to argue with their assessments. One company accounts for about 20 per cent of the world’s uranium production (“We are the Saudi Arabia of uranium,” Wall has boasted), the other for about 20 per cent of the world’s potash. Yes, the long-term fundamentals remain robust.

By way of coincidence, Doyle, Schmidt and Grandey all took over as head of their companies in a three-year period at the turn of the millennium. By way of further coincidence, all three are American. And all three companies, having been created by the public — farmers, in the case of Viterra; the provincial government, in the cases of Cameco and PotashCorp — have been turned over to the capitalists.

It is tempting to speculate about a sea change bringing Albertan and American values to Saskatchewan. But Roger Gibbins, CEO of the Canada West Foundation, for one, sees no evidence of a new entrepreneurial class in Saskatchewan. Real wealth has come from big players dealing in global commodities, says Gibbins — “no sort of global mom-and-pop potash mines or mom-and-pop uranium mines, but big-scale things that have very strong provincial government impact.”

For Premier Wall, the current economic difficulties are uncomfortable, but there is no sign of a real political threat that might cause him grief. After 16 years in power, the New Democratic Party was in need of a rest, and Wall’s conservative Saskatchewan Party gave it one in the November, 2007 election. The NDP, the province’s supposed natural governing party, limped through an anemic leadership campaign to replace Lorne Calvert last summer, and its surprising choice was a former NDP cabinet minister who had been out of politics for nine years. Not only had Dwain Lingenfelter been out of politics, but he had gone to Calgary to work for a major oil company, Nexen. (The provincial NDP has at least held on to its urban base. The federal wing, which had a dominating ten seats in the 1988 election, has elected exactly zero members from Saskatchewan in the last three trips to the polls; it was Nettie Wiebe, incidentally, who came closest to winning a seat.)

Although Lingenfelter comes from the right wing of the NDP, Wall paints him as a radical who wants to interfere in businesses and raise royalties and taxes. But in the 2007 election campaign against Lorne Calvert, Wall was careful not to disturb Saskatchewan icons; in particular, he promised to preserve the province’s remaining Crown corporations — indeed, to expand their role.

For Wall, there must have been times when it was awkward to attack the New Democrats.

NDP premiers Roy Romanow and Lorne Calvert set up two tax review committees under Jack Vicq, an accounting professor and one-time senior provincial bureaucrat. Both reports recommended wide-ranging corporate tax cuts, which were promptly enacted by the NDP; the cuts were in place when the Wall government came to power. Vicq says the NDP knew that Saskatchewan’s tax regime had to be competitive with Alberta’s and British Columbia’s in oil and gas, and with New Brunswick’s in the case

of potash — “So it was a competition driven for exploration dollars.”

Because the province’s economy began to boom, and Saskatchewan ceased being a have-not province after the New Democrats were chased from power, Wall and the Saskatchewan Party get much of the credit for the turnaround. His own government’s cuts to the lower end of the income tax rolls notwithstanding, even Wall admits the heavy lifting had already been done. The Premier solemnly assures a visitor that “I work hard to make sure we give credit to the previous government.”

Gibbins of the Canada West Foundation believes Saskatchewan’s emergence as a “have” province simply stems from the convergence of a lot of resource markets rather than the new tax regime or the overall tenor of government toward business. He points particularly to the huge swings in the resource markets in recent years: “The royalty review in Alberta has come under a lot of attack, but when gas prices are plunging down to a dollar a gigajoule, it really doesn’t matter what you do with the resource structure. Nobody’s buying it; it doesn’t matter.

“At the same time, when resource prices are pretty robust, companies do well even though they may argue that the tax system is not as good as it could be. So I think that in Saskatchewan the tax system works kind of at the margins. Where it did play a role was in sending the signal that Saskatchewan has become more competitive with Alberta, and was trying to lure oil and gas production back from Alberta. And the signal may be more important than the real bottom line.”

Juggling royalties and taxes against the Alberta standard is another stage in Saskatchewan’s struggle of keeping up with the Joneses. Nothing illustrates that struggle, or at least Saskatchewan’s vulnerability, as well as the growth of the population in the West. There was a time when Saskatchewan was the biggest dog on the Prairies, but Manitoba, Alberta and British Columbia kept growing, and Saskatchewan did not, or not as much. In fact, the place became known as an exporter of people. By that measure, the province’s revival can be pinned to the start of this decade, when its population began increasing gradually, returning, as of 2006,

We are the Saudi Arabia of uranium

to the peak it hit around 1985. That said, the head count has stayed stuck in a range around one million ever since the dust bowl 1930s.

If the growth in population doesn’t continue, it won’t be for lack of effort

by Brad Wall, whose infectious boosterism has persuaded some that he might one day become the leader of the federal Conservative Party. Wall got so excited about a Statistics Canada jobs report last winter that he phoned the Toronto Star to invite the people of Ontario to come work in Saskatchewan. “We’ve been a great place to be from in the past. We’re now a great place to be,” he told the Toronto reporter. “It’s not just a great place to make a living—it’s a great place to make a life.”

No lament from him for lost inter­ dependence and neighbourly co-operation.

But it may be that the new Saskatchewan does contain that old Saskatchewan; it’s simply taken for granted, not something that needs to be proclaimed. This would explain why the gulf between the NDP and the Saskatchewan Party is much narrower than between the NDP and the old Conservative Party of Grant Devine.

“For me,” says Nettie Wiebe, “as someone who cares very much about equality and social well-being of everybody, not just the privileged few, it’s a great comfort to know that those ideas are so deeply ensconced here that you can’t win an election, no matter how much money you throw into it, if you’re seen to challenge medicare, for example.

“In this place, the deepest sort of socialist momentum is rooted enough that you can’t challenge it.” ACCN This story was first published in the January 2010 issue of Report on Business magazine.

Want to share your thoughts on this article?

Write to us at magazine@accn.ca

september 2010 Canadian Chemical News 17

CHEMISTRY: synchrotron

QA

Tom Ellis

Bright Light, Big Science

Canada’s synchrotron is six years old and fulfilling its expectations

Canadian Light Source Inc.

&

Q & A with

T

he world’s first synchrotrons were add-ons to facilities built to study subatomic physics. Every time electron beams went through a bending magnet, they lost energy in the form of synchrotron light. Previously just an annoyance to subatomic physicists, synchrotron light is now used in more than 40 facilities around the world to study everything from soils to drugs to alternative fuels as scientists use it to gather information about the structural and chemical properties of materials at the molecular level. In 2004, the Canadian Light Source (CLS) opened its doors on the University of Saskatchewan campus, giving Canada its first synchrotron facility. ACCN spoke with Tom Ellis, director of research at CLS, to see how the first six years have paid off.

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ACCN: The Canadian Light Source has been operating for about six years now. Has it lived up to expectations?

T.E.: I believe that we have. The expectations of course are very high for such a high profile project. One of the ways that we try to compare ourselves is to look at other international facilities. We’re constantly asking ‘how are we doing compared to other new facilities?’ The answer we get back very consistently is ‘You’re doing well on an international standard.’ It takes a long time to develop these facilities. It takes a few years to build user communities and sometimes we have growing pains.

But it’s always interesting that the international committee goes “Yep, been there, done that. You’re following the same trajectory that everybody else did and you’re doing well.”

ACCN: So what’s the measurement of success?

T.E.: That’s an issue that’s very common, not just to CLS but to the entire scientific community­ in Canada. We’re being asked more and more “What are the outputs and outcomes? What are the measures of success?”

For NSERC programs, for CIHR, for government research labs — everybody’s trying to address that question and there are no easy answers because it basically comes down to quantity and quality. You need both. So it’s not sufficient just to say “We’ve had 100 publications,” because it’s not just bean counting.

You need to know the quality of the publications. But at the same time, if the numbers aren’t there, then it’s hard to justify things.

We look at both sides, both the outputs and outcomes but also, what is the level of demand, are people coming to us, looking to use our facility?

ACCN: Have there been any let downs?

T.E.: No major bumps at all. Sometimes because of inflation or construction costs, you have to do a bit less than what you originally planned for, you have to make some choices.

But we’ve delivered on the primary goals and we’ve done that within the budgets that we were allocated and we’re pretty proud of that.

ACCN: Tell me briefly how it works.

T.E.: Unlike impressions some people might have of a major science project where you’re basically doing one big experiment, we are a research facility where many people from many different backgrounds — chemists, physicists, engineers, biologists, veterinary scientists, medical researchers, environmental scientists — come to do their experiments. What they have in common is they’re using synchrotron light. Picture our facility as a WalMart-sized building and in the middle of it is this large storage ring. So the core of our facility is a series of three particle accelerators that

accelerate electrons up to relativistic energies.

Electrons are going around and around at near the speed of light in the storage ring, which is a circular ring of a large diameter, and as they go around, they are generating many different intense beams of radiation. We have various openings in the storage ring where the beams of light come out. The whole purpose is for people to use that light to do their experiments. That light covers the full range of the electromagnetic spectrum all the way from the terahertz, low energy, all the way up to the high energy x-rays.

Any particular beamline is using a portion of that electromagnetic spectrum and tuning the light over a part of that spectrum.

ACCN: What, specifically, does CLS provide that can’t be achieved through other means?

T.E.: There are very few ways to make broadly tuneable radiation. For example, take the analogy of a laser. A laser produces an intense beam of light. It’s coherent, it’s focused into a beam and in some cases, it’s tuneable. That would be another example of a light source. So if you have a laser available that exists to do an experiment, you wouldn’t come to a synchrotron. But lasers tend to fall into the visible spectrum and a little bit into the UV and a little bit down into the infrared, but as you get down into the rest of the infrared or into x-rays there are no laser facilities. Synchrotron is the only game in town.

If you want to use that type of radiation, in terms of a tuneable beam, you basically have to come to a synchrotron facility.

ACCN: Your website describes CLS — the only synchrotron in Canada — as a “much-needed national R&D facility.” Muchneeded in what way?

T.E.: Science is driven by people trying to solve scientific questions. They could be either very fundamental science questions or they could be very practical questions. They need techniques and they will have available to them a range of techniques. If they know about what synchrotrons can do, then often they will say “In order to answer this particular question, I need to know the structure of this particular protein or

Bacteria that contain tiny internal magnetic compasses are giving up their secrets to the CLS’s x-ray spectromicroscopy beamline. The finding opens the door for tailoring the organisms for use in new kinds of data storage devices, nanomachines or drug delivery systems.

Magnetotactic bacteria (above), which are typically found in oxygen depleted water, grow tiny magnetic crystals called magnetosomes which they use for navigation. Each species of magnetosome grows uniform crystals of the same size and structure. Some produce magnetite, some produce greigite, and others produce both.

Synchrotron technology has allowed scientists to ‘see’ the magnetism of magnetosomes within individual bacteria cells, which sheds light on how the tiny magnets grow in response to genetic and environmental factors. The research is helping scientists better understand the nature of the templating used to make these perfect single crystals, and the mechanism used to control the final size of the magnets, says Adam Hitchcock from McMaster University who is the principal investigator on the project.

There is a huge demand to minimize magnetic structures for memory storage (which is currently largely done with bigger magnets). If harnessed correctly the nanomagnets could also possibly help to target the delivery of medicine to certain parts of the body.

The magnetosomes range from 20 to 30 nanometers in size. They are large enough that they exceed the superparamagnetic limit.

This means they are stable enough that they will not randomly change their magnetic orientation as a result of thermal effects. At the same time they are sufficiently small that they only have one magnetic vector. Once they are 100 nanometers or larger they would spontaneously split into north seeking and south seeking magnets, “The bugs are exquisitely finding a very specific size range which mankind would very much like to be able to make very efficiently,” says Hitchcock.

september 2010 Canadian Chemical News 19

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Septembre 2010

ACCN: Where would we be without it?

M. Korbas

I need to know the local chemical environment of some atoms in this particular nanomaterial.

I need to get this particular information and I know the synchrotron will do it for me.” In many cases, the synchrotron experiment is part of a larger program that people have, but often it can be the key piece of information that they need to get from a synchrotron.

Images of a zebrafish head, comparing a stained thin-section under visible light (far left), an XRF map for mercury, showing the element’s concentrated presence in the fish’s eye lenses (centre left), along with maps showing distribution of calcium (centre right) and sulphur (far right).

Peng Zhang

T.E.: If people had no access to synchrotrons then a lot of science wouldn’t be done. We can take the example of drug discovery. Much in the field of rational drug discovery is based on knowing the structure of proteins and knowing how various forms of molecules will interact with these proteins and have certain effects. A whole branch of that just wouldn’t exist. If we didn’t have the Canadian Light Source, people would be doing what they did before and travelling abroad and getting beam time at foreign facilities. That works up to a certain point but having a facility in Canada has its advantages. It’s not just proximity because of course

There is something special about gold when it breaks into extremely small particles, often called nanoparticles. They are small in size ­— only 1 to 100 nanometers in diameter — but show promise for applications ranging from catalysis to medicine and tissue engineering. In order to harness their potential, Peng Zhang, and his colleagues at Dalhousie University are trying to better understand the atomic structure of the nanoparticles and how this correlates with their properties.

Some of the gold nanoparticles they are interested in are quite different from regular nanoparticles. These special nanoparticles are actually clusters of less than 200 gold atoms (about 1 nanometer in diameter) with precisely controlled composition and coated with a thin layer of molecules called thiolate. Using four beamlines at the CLS, Zhang’s group have been able to get a detailed picture of their structure that

Canada is a very big country and to travel from one part of Canada to another is still a big investment in travel. All of our beamlines have been proposed by the Canadian scientific community. All of the beamlines that we have have come about to meet the particular needs of the Canadian scientific community.

ACCN: What, in your opinion, has been the most exciting research done at CLS so far?

T.E.: Do you want me to tell you who my favourite children are? (Laughing) It’s hard for me to do that. I can give you a few examples.

One that was done by an academic researcher that received worldwide attention was professor conventional characterization techniques can hardly provide. For instance, by using a synchrotron technique called x-ray absorption spectroscopy, they have uncovered that the surface atoms in a 144atom gold cluster arrange themselves with a geometry called “staple” motif.

Zhang's group is particularly interested in the gold's applicability in functionalizing bone implant surfaces.

They believe it would be a good candidate for use in the binding between the implant (titanium and alloy) and the bone cell in order to promote bone cell growth which would create a better hold between the tissue and the implant (above left).

The key to this is understanding how to control the interfacial reaction between bone cells and the implant.

Traditional implants typically last 10 to 15 years because tissue tends to detach from the implant.

Zhang and his group are currently doing lab tests on a prototype to see how the properties of gold nanoparticles could help to improve this.

By peering into the eyes of zebrafish larvae, CLS has given researchers insight into how mercury exposure could impact fetal development.

Though the dangers of mercury exposure are well known, many questions remain about the exact mechanism of its toxicity and how it gets into cells.

To understand this better, Malgorzata Korbas and co-workers Pat Krone, Ingrid Pickering and Graham George from the University of Saskatchewan raised zebrafish larvae (above) in water containing methyl mercury. After one to three days they noticed that the lens epithelium in the eyes of the organism had the highest concentration of the heavy metal, while the brain, optic nerve and other organs had much lower levels.

“The epithelial cells in the lens accumulate more mercury than neurons and liver cells, which was surprising to us,” says Korbas. Of particular interest was that eight and a half days after the fish were transferred from the methylmercury solution to clean water, the total amount of mercury in their lenses was six times higher than the amount measured immediately after exposure.

Synchrotron x-ray fluorescence mapping allowed researchers to localize and to quantify mercury accumulation in zebrafish larvae at the cellular level, something that traditional techniques have not allowed for.

Zebrafish embryos and larvae are increasingly used in toxicology studies, in part because there are significant similarities in the morphology of embryos between zebrafish and mammals. As well, since they are in an early development stage they can show the impact of toxic substances on embryonic development.

The finding is significant because cells in the lens epithelium are much like some found in a human fetus because they are rapidly dividing.

“Cells that are so actively proliferating are different in general in their molecular biology than any other cell. There must be a feature about them that allows them to accumulate so much [mercury],” says Korbas who hopes the research could lead to improvements in treatment for mercury poisoning.

september 2010 Canadian Chemical News 21

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Ken Ng from the University of Calgary. He was trying to understand the Norwalk virus and trying to understand the mechanism by which the virus reproduces itself, with a particular thought that by understanding this there would be a way to disrupt it. It got quite a bit of attention in Canada. It also got a huge amount of attention in Britain because there happened to be a major outbreak of Norwalk virus in Britain at the time so the newspapers picked it up. So it’s just one example of literally hundreds of examples of exciting research that’s being done on protein structure.

We do have a unique facility that’s a medical imaging beamline. It’s one of our newest beamlines. It has only been in operation for about a year now in its testing stages.

It basically uses x-rays to do imaging but unlike a conventional medical x-ray that you might get in a hospital, which is mostly used to detect bones and hard tissue, x-rays generated by the synchrotron can reveal much more information about soft tissue. Or it could be more chemically selective imaging.

One of the areas that we see, where the Canadian Light Source is going to be a world leader is in the imaging of bones and joints. So it’s not just looking at the bone itself, we’ll be able to see the cartilage and all the soft tissue around the bones and joints. People working in the field of osteoarthritis and osteoporosis are quite excited and as it turns out, in western Canada, both at the University of Saskatchewan and the University of Calgary, there is a

world-class group of researchers who are doing bone and joint imaging. They are very excited and are part of the first user community.

In the broad category of nanomaterials, what a synchrotron can do is give information about molecular structure and the local chemical environments of atoms. For almost any material, particularly complex material, because of the tunability of the x-rays, we can zoom in on a particular element and find out what that element is doing in a particular material. Even if that material is not a crystalline material, highly ordered, there are synchrotron techniques that can give you local order. Those two properties together, the natural ability of synchrotrons to be strong in that particular area, lends itself to people who are creating new nanomaterials.

ACCN: How does the CLS rank at an international level? Is there something that we do particularly well in Canada?

T.E.: Our biomedical imaging beamline is considered to be one of the best. We’re also unique because we designed an experimental hutch to do experiments that can accommodate large animals, up to horses and cows. We’re the only synchrotron in the world where horses and cows will be coming in to be imaged. ACCN

Want to share your thoughts on this article? Write to us at magazine@accn.ca

Looking for reassurance that their operation was up to snuff environmentally, a major uranium mining company turned to the CLS to get a close up view of what was in their tailings.

Arsenic is a headache for most mining operations including uranium extraction which produces it as a byproduct in its tailings. At the uranium mine at McLean Lake in Saskatchewan (below), tailings are stored in an old mine pit and expected to remain there for tens of thousands of years. The company had devised a process to engineer mine tailings so that the arsenic would be stored in a stable mineral, meaning that the toxic element should stay put in the tailings facility (and out of the groundwater) for a long time.

The trouble was that conventional x-ray diffraction techniques couldn’t produce evidence of mineralization in the sludge. When regulatory agencies “adopted a precautionary stance” the company turned to CLS.

Using extended x-ray absorption fine structure spectroscopy, the research team was able to identify that the arsenic was contained in the mineral scorodite, an iron arsenate. The finding means that the company can now make more accurate geochemical models, observing how the iron arsenate behaves over time. Through accelerated testing, researchers are aging the iron arsenate to make predictions about the longterm repercussions of the deposits.

They believe any major changes to the chemistry of the deposit happen early on and then stabilize.

september 2010 Canadian Chemical News 23

CHEMical engineering: biofuels

Cash

Crop The rags-to-riches story of the Canadian canola industry continues as clever engineering creates new opportunities in the biofuels business.

Debbie Lockrey-Wessel

I

t’s a familiar vista: big blue prairie sky draped above a laser-straight horizon that gives way to vast fields of yellow. Canola, that iconic Saskatchewan crop introduced to the prairies just 30 years ago, is coming into its own once again, this time as a feedstock for biodiesel.

Foam Lake, Sask., a mixed-farming community situated halfway between Saskatoon and Yorkton, is at the centre of the biofuels buzz.

The town of 1200 was settled by Icelanders and Ukrainians in the late nineteenth century. Today it unabashedly deems itself “the best place in the world to live” and celebrates its hockey heroes and protected wetlands. One could argue that the town fits nicely into that bucolic prairie scene, a quaint farming community. But to preserve that stereotype, one would have to ignore the feat of engineering operating at the edge of town for the past year.

Biodiesel production company, Milligan Bio-Tech Inc. celebrated the grand opening of their crushing and biodiesel facility in Foam Lake in July 2009. Founded by a group of forward thinking and passionate canola producers, Milligan uses technology licensed from Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada to produce biodiesel from non-food-grade canola that is normally considered unusable by the industry.

The market for canola has been growing steadily worldwide since its introduction just a few decades ago. Canola was developed through conventional plant breeding from rapeseed, an oilseed used for hundreds of years as oil in lamps or in cooking and, more recently as a lubricant in steam engines in naval and merchant ships. After World War II, when demand for rapeseed declined sharply, farmers began to look for other uses for the plant and scientists worked to improve the quality of the crop.

Canola was developed to reduce levels of glucosiniolates (which contribute to the sharp taste in mustard), lower erucic acid (which makes oils go rancid quickly) and to remove two fatty acids that are not essential for human growth. The resulting oilseed crop is high in good fats like monounsaturates and omega-3s, while low in bad fats such

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Septembre 2010

as saturates and trans and a good source of Vitamin E. Canola oil has found an important place in the world’s kitchens, food processing companies and restaurants.

Now, thanks to another injection of scientific innovation and collaboration, new markets are opening up for what was once considered a waste product of canola, and in the process, a whole new canola-based biodiesel industry in Canada has been jump started.

High energy costs and depleting fuel supplies necessitate the creation of renewable energy sources around the globe.

While other countries are developing their biodiesel industry, Canada can either ship its raw material elsewhere and import biodiesel back into the country, or create a biodiesel industry here.

According to canolabiodiesel.org, a subsidiary of the non-profit Canola Council of Canada which represents the entire canola industry, a canola-based biodiesel industry in Canada represents the opportunity to generate $620 million in capital investment in this country, contribute more than $1.1 billion per year in additional farm income, and inject an additional $2.4 billion into the economy annually.

Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada (AAFC) has played a key role in the canola story since its inception in 1974, when AAFC’s Keith Downey and the University of Manitoba’s Baldur Stefansson released the Cinderella crop to the world. A once-declining crop quickly transformed into a valuable commodity and created an entire industry in Canada — from growers, input suppliers, researchers, crushers and processors to exporters and marketers.

By 1993 canola was well established in Canada and had healthy export markets. Like other commodities, canola growers formed organizations such as the Saskatchewan Canola Development Commission (SaskCanola) whose mandate was to enhance canola producers’ competitiveness and profitability.

At this time biodiesel was virtually unheard of in Canada, yet both Martin Reaney of AAFC’s Saskatoon Research Centre and SaskCanola began investigating the potential for biodiesel production in Canada to create another market for the canola crop.

This interest was supported by local canola producers from Foam Lake, (who incorporated to form Milligan Bio-Tech Inc. in 1996), and the Foam Lake Marketing Club.

Since technology using canola to produce biodiesel was available in Europe, the Canadian partners first analyzed the biodiesel industries in Austria, Germany and France. The European biodiesel industry was running on high fuel prices, tax incentives and government subsidies to encourage farmers to grow canola for use as a biofuel feedstock. In Canada, the price of the vegetable oil needed to produce biodiesel was significantly higher than the price of diesel fuel. In the absence of injections of government cash, the economics just weren’t there.

Market research conducted by Sandy Bresciani, now Manager of Marketing and Licensing at AAFC, showed that consumers in the 1990s were not willing to pay a premium for a bio-based fuel.

“Nobody had heard of biodiesel in Canada when we started out,” explains Bresciani who was a commercialization officer at the on-set of the project. “We were trying to investigate the market potential for a product that consumers did not yet understand. At the time, diesel fuel was relatively cheap and nobody was prepared to pay more for fuel.”

The results of further market research and the development of a computerized economic model by Bresciani helped focus the research to develop a technology that produced biodiesel more economically. It became clear that for canola biodiesel to be successful in Canada, either lower-value oilseeds needed to be used or higher-value products needed to be produced.

Reaney, now the Chair in Lipid Quality and Utilization in the College of Agriculture and Bioresources at the University of Saskatchewan, was AAFC’s lead scientist when the project began.

“It became clear that biodiesel could not be made economically with the technology that was available,” recalls Reaney. “We soon realized that an alternative model of production was needed and set out to develop a technology that could be used to make biodiesel economically in Canada.”

Today, Reaney is credited with developing low-cost biodiesel using cold press technology for crushing off-grade canola that would have otherwise been waste.

Finding the right ingredients would be just the beginning. Biodiesel producers would need to find buyers for their product september 2010 Canadian Chemical News 25

CHEMical engineering: biofuels and determine if they could access enough raw materials in the form of low-grade canola.

Zenneth Faye, P Eng. and former head of the Saskatchewan Canola Development Commission as well as one of the founders of Milligan Bio-Tech, was one of a small group of canola farmers who came together in 1991, trying to find new markets for their oilseed crop.

“Even with the development of a technology that relied on cheaper inputs, we didn’t know whether we could obtain a constant supply of the low grade canola needed to produce a steady supply of biodiesel for the market,” explains Faye, now the executive manager of Milligan Bio-Tech.

“Although a proportion of the Canadian canola crop routinely falls short of the high standards required for export and domestic crush, until we started advertising for offgrade canola, there were no records of annual supplies of such oilseeds. The grain was either disposed of in landfills, blended off in low ratios with higher grade seeds, or fed to livestock.”

Reaney and AAFC colleague, Neil Westcott, embarked on “pioneer” research to develop a technology to produce biodiesel from low grade canola. They ran into numerous roadblocks in the production process brought about by the variability in the composition of the oil obtained from off-grade canola and other off-grade oilseed feedstocks.

Chemical conversions on low quality material are difficult as the process design must be robust and tolerate all input materials. Quality control and quality assurance measures must also be put in place to allow the handling of the low quality material.

As the researchers gained experience, and with lab testing, continuous improvements in terms of quality and process refining were realized and output and production efficiencies increased.

Once the technology was developed at the bench-scale, the end-product needed to be made on a large enough scale to test the market and create product awareness. It also had to be tested at the pilot scale before setting up a plant in Foam Lake.

The expertise of various players in Saskatchewan — including POS Pilot Plant (a Saskatoon-based company specializing in extraction, fractionation, purification and modification of bio-based materials), Saskatchewan Research Council and the BioProcessing Centre in Saskatoon — was

26 L’Actualité chimique canadienne

called upon to not only gather the data necessary to scale up the technology, but also to help increase the visibility of the project. The results from the test market would help determine whether there was a business case to set up a larger-scale facility.

“For the first 10 years or so, there was not much interest in biofuels in Canada,” explains Faye. “The early years were spent educating the public on the benefits of biodiesel and working with potential end-users to solicit their input and evaluate the product.”

These potential end-users included industries that typically operate in environmentally-sensitive areas, expose workers to diesel emissions within enclosed environments, or expose the general public to diesel emissions — for example agriculture, aviation, forestry, trucking, mining, provincial and municipal government fleet vehicles.

One concern voiced by these potential end-users was that the engine and pump

Septembre 2010

manufacturers would not honor their warranties if they used biodiesel in their equipment and vehicles. Barry Hertz, of the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Saskatchewan, joined the research team in the mid 1990s and began performing engine-wear tests using the canola biodiesel that was being made in Reaney’s laboratory.

As part of the field testing in 2002, the team joined forces with Saskatoon Transit and introduced a “Bio Bus” (which is still in operation) to examine how bio-diesel would affect the fuel consumption, engine wear, and longevity of these heavy duty engines.

(A later phase of the Bio Bus testing would include use of 1 per cent biodiesel in the entire Saskatoon Transit fleet and testing of 5 per cent biodiesel with Ultra Low Sulphur Diesel (ULSD) in four of the newest buses with the latest emissions technologies.)

Hertz’s lab discovered that canola biodiesel blended with regular fuel reduced

other forms of biofuel have been said to compete for food production, the Canadian technology increases total food production by recovering the low quality stream and converting 70 per cent of the seed to animal feed. Through access to university and AAFC facilities for large animal feeding trials, Reaney has been able to arrange testing of feed materials for cattle for Milligan’s canola-based meal feed supplements.

The biodiesel technology developed in Saskatchewan will help the Canadian industry achieve federal targets requiring two per cent renewable fuel content in diesel fuel and heating oil that go into effect in 2012. It also enables the use of oilseed crops in high value applications, constitutes a more cost effective process for refining waste from the oilseed industry, reduces the cost of producing biodiesel, allows manufacturers to diversify their product offerings and increases the performance of biodiesel for the end consumer.

Of the 10 million tonnes of canola seed produced annually in Canada, more than half of this seed is processed elsewhere.

Bioprocessing more crops in Canada benefits the Canadian economy through job creation and economic development. To meet Canada’s future bioenergy and bioproducts needs, technology for processing Canadian agriculture commodities to finished products must be developed in Canada following the lead of this “pioneer” canola research that was developed in Saskatchewan. ACCN Debbie Lockrey-Wessel is a Science Business Analyst with the Research Branch of Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada.

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Write to us at magazine@accn.ca

Miligan Bio-Tech Inc.

engine wear. It was ultimately shown that as little as 0.1 per cent biodiesel could have a dramatic effect on increasing lubricity and decreasing engine wear. In addition, even at this low concentration, fuel economy was significantly improved, especially in vehicles operating on Canadian winter diesel.

This lubricity research propelled the group to examine nontraditional, higher-value co-products such as fuel additives: if sold as fuel additives, the products did not need to compete with diesel fuel, but rather with other fuel additives of compar­ able value.

Milligan Biotech saw an opportunity to establish a new industry in Saskatchewan and has worked with Reaney to introduce several new products including a diesel fuel conditioner (2001), penetrating oil (2003) and road dust suppressant (2004).

The research group also knew canola had been converted to fuel in Europe, but the winters are milder there than in Saskatchewan, so the challenge was to develop a fuel that wouldn't freeze at sub-zero temperatures.

Additional field testing during a 2007-08 initiative known as the Alberta Renewable Diesel Demonstration confirmed the suitability and operability of low-level renewable biodiesel blends in cold weather. Managed by Climate Change Central and sponsored by AAFC, Shell Canada Ltd., the Canola Council of Canada, Milligan Bio-Tech and others, the field tests became Canada's largest study into the cold weather performance of renewable diesel with over 60 trucks of various sizes participating in the demonstration.

Throughout the years and with the input from various field tests and end-users, canola biodiesel has improved continuously to the point of passing both the North American ASTM 6751 and the European EN 14214 standards. Sales of Milligan’s four canolabased products have increased annually since production began in 2001 and markets have expanded across Canada, the United States and overseas.

Scientific efforts have resulted in a trade-secret technology and numerous patents on innovations that increase the value of biodiesel for producers and consumers. Five of the twenty patents Reaney has filed are in commercial use. Milligan is using two of these applications and is seeking additional filings with Reaney.

Milligan’s crushing and biodiesel facility in Foam Lake came about thanks to this technology. This partnership between scientists and canola producers has not only helped establish a canola-based biodiesel industry in Canada, it has also significantly benefited Foam Lake and Saskatchewan through job creation and economic benefits. Milligan now has a total investment of over $15 million, employs 35 people in Foam Lake, and brings new residents to a rural community that was in decline.

Milligan continues to introduce new products and plans to expand production to 150 million litres of biodiesel per year by 2012. Their goal is to establish plants near sources of low-grade seed in a “hub and spoke” model across the prairies to reduce transportation costs.

Biodiesel can replace a significant percentage of petroleum diesels worldwide with a positive environmental effect. While

Biodiesel researchers Martin Reaney (right) and Neil Westcott (left) fuel a car with canola-biodiesel during the grand opening of the Foam Lake plant in 2009. september 2010 Canadian Chemical News 27

CIC Fellowships Do you know a deserving member? The CIC Fellowship is a senior class of membership that recognizes the merits of CIC members who have made outstanding contributions. Four areas of achievement are considered: • • • •

scientific, engineering, and technical contributions; CIC, CSC, CSChE, and CSCT activities; management of science, engineering, or technology; teaching and promotion of chemical public awareness.

In general, candidates should have made contributions in all four areas; outstanding contributions in one area may partially offset weaknesses in another area. Nominees should be members in good standing for at least ten years.

Nominations for 2011 CIC Fellowship are due October 1, 2010.

For more information, visit www.cheminst.ca/fellowship.

Department of Chemistry University of Waterloo 200 University Avenue West Waterloo, Ontario, Canada N2L 3G1

Tel: 519-888-4591 Fax: 519-746-0435 J.F. Honek, Chair

University of Waterloo – Lecturer (half-load), 3 year Definite-Term Appointment Primary responsibility is the preparation and presentation of a 32 hour sequence of lectures on health risk assessment, nanotoxicology, nanomaterials risks/benefits and exposure assessment, environmental impact, and exotoxicology associated with nanotechnology engineering research and practice, with the lectures distributed over a five-term (1B-3B) sequence of academic terms. Two additionval one-term courses related to nanomaterials chemistry and/or nanotechnology engineering will make up the remainder of the academic teaching duties associated with this position. An appropriate service component will also be expected of the successful candidate. This position could increase to full load at some future date.

Qualifications: The successful candidate will be the holder of a Ph.D. in nanomaterials or inorganic materials chemistry and will have relevant postdoctoral experience. Experience or training in health-related area(s) will be an asset.

All qualified candidates are encouraged to apply, including women, members of visible minorities, native peoples and persons with disabilities; however Canadian and permanent residents will be given priority.

This appointment is subject to the availability of funds. The closing date for receipt of applications is October 31, 2010.

The University of Victoria invites applications for the position of Associate or full Professor and Chair of the Department of Chemistry. The Chemistry Department is home to 20 faculty members and 65 graduate students, and offers a range of degree programs in Chemistry www.chemistry.uvic.ca. The Department has undergone significant recent growth of undergraduate and graduate programs, has a dynamic complement of faculty and staff, and has recently occupied substantial new synthetic research space. The position offers an opportunity to build on the considerable strengths of UVic Chemistry.

The successful applicant will have a distinguished record of scholarship and teaching, demonstrated administrative experience, and a deep understanding and enthusiasm for both teaching and research. The area of expertise is open, but should complement existing and emerging research strengths of the Department.

Applications should include a CV, and a statement of research interests, teaching philosophy, and administrative vision. The candidate should also supply names and complete addresses (fax and e-mail) for three or more people able to act as referees. Applications should be sent by e-mail to: Dr. Robert Lipson, Dean, Faculty of Science, University of Victoria, Box 3065, Victoria, B.C., Canada V8W 3P6 (e-mail: sciedean@uvic.ca). Review of applications will commence by September 15, 2010, and will continue until the position is filled.

The University of Victoria is an equity employer and encourages applications from women, persons with disabilities, visible minorities, Aboriginal Peoples, people of all sexual orientations and genders, and others who may contribute to the further diversification of the University.

All qualified candidates are encouraged to apply; however, in accordance with Canadian Immigration requirements, Canadians and permanent residents will be given priority.

28 L’Actualité chimique canadienne

Septembre 2010

Society News Nouvelles des sociétés  Continuing

Careers The Chemical Institute of Canada will hold a career fair during the 60th Canadian Chemical Engineering Conference (CSChE2010) in Saskatoon, Sask. The fair will match employers with science and engineering professionals and post graduate and graduate students seeking employment. The fair will include resume submission, employer presentations and on-site interviews. Prior to the conference all resumes submitted will be sent to employers participating in the career fair. Employers will contact individuals directly to schedule interviews to take place during the conference. To register to participate in the career fair visit the CSChE2010 website at www.csche2010.ca.

Education for Chemical Professionals

Laboratory Safety course

2010 Schedule October 4 –5, 2010

Upcoming Events October 4-5, 2010, Laboratory Safety Course Calgary, Ont. | www.cheminst.ca/index.php/ci_id/1717/la_id/1.htm October 6-8, 2010, 2010 Western Canadian HAZMAT Conference Saskatoon, Sask. | www.canadahazmat.com/ October 14-15, 2010, Indoor Air Quality Course Burnaby, B.C. | www.cheminst.ca/index.php/ci_id/1631/la_id/1.htm October 24-27, 2010, 60th Canadian Chemical Engineering Conference Saskatoon, Sask. | www.csche2010.ca October 24-27, 2010, 60th Canadian Chemical Engineering Conference, Saskatoon, Sask. | www.csche2010.ca October 29, 2010, Colloque annuel des étudiants et étudiantes de 1er cycle en chimie Université de Sherbrooke, Sherbrooke, Que. pages.usherbrooke.ca/colloque-chimie December 15-20, 2010, The 2010 International Chemical Congress of Pacific Basin Societies (Pacifichem), Honolulu, Hawaii www.pacifichem.org September 25-29, 2011, 8th European Congress of Chemical Engineering, Berlin, Germany | www.events.dechema.de/ecce2011 November 14–16, 2011, Interamerican Congress of Chemical Engineering, Santiago, Chile | www.ciiq2011.cl

Calgary, AB

Registration fees $550 CIC members $750 non-members $150 student members

T

he Chemical Institute of Canada

(CIC) and the Canadian Society for Chemical Technology (CSCT)

are presenting a two-day course designed to enhance the knowledge and working experience of chemical technologists and chemists. All course participants receive the CIC’s Laboratory Health and Safety Guidelines, 4th edition. This course is intended for those whose responsibilities include improving the operational safety of chemical laboratories, managing laboratories, chemical plants or research facilities, conducting safety audits of laboratories and chemical plants. During the course, participants are provided with

In memoriam The CIC wishes to extend its condolences to the family of Ayako Ichikizaki who passed away on July 3, 2010 in Japan at the age of 86.

Ichikizaki took over as chair of the Ichikizaki Fund for Young Chemists when her husband Iwao Ichikizaki passed away in April 1994. The Ichikizaki Fund for Young Chemists was set up when the couple settled in Canada following Iwao’s retirement. He wanted to encourage young chemists, both in Japan and Canada, in the pursuit of their studies and provided funding for them to attend international forums. ACCN

an integrated overview of current best practices in laboratory safety.

For more information about the course and locations, and to access the registration form, visit

www.cheminst.ca/profdev

 september 2010 Canadian Chemical News 29

Chemfusion Joe Schwarcz

I

Wrapped for Ripeness

t’s alive! The banana’s alive! So is the broccoli and the asparagus and the melon!

A new horror movie? No. But real life horror for fruit and vegetable marketers. Such produce contains living cells which continue to “respire” even after picking, inhaling oxygen and exhaling carbon dioxide and water. During respiration, which is exactly the opposite of photosynthesis, oxygen reacts with stored glucose, and provides the energy needed to fuel the reactions we interpret as “ripening.” Complex starches are broken down to simple sugars, acidic compounds are reduced, the texture is softened and the colours that signal ripening appear.

Because respiration continues after harvest, fruits and vegetables can be picked unripe, and allowed to ripen before reaching the consumer.

Were they to be picked when already ripe, they would be overripe, or spoiled, by the time we get to taste them. So, there is a delicate balance here. Not enough respiration during transit is a problem, as is too much.

A great deal of scientific effort has been expended to ensure that produce reaches us in an optimal state, especially with all the emphasis these days on eating more fruits and vegetables. This means attempting to control

30 L’Actualité chimique canadienne

respiration rates in transit, an incredibly complex business.

Commonly, produce is shipped packed in a polyethylene bag inside a cardboard box.

The plastic keeps moisture in and bugs out.

As respiration proceeds, oxygen is consumed, and as less and less oxygen becomes available, the rate of respiration drops. This is actually desirable because it prevents premature ripening. But if the oxygen level drops too low, and carbon dioxide levels rise too high, other problems appear. Too much carbon dioxide can damage produce, and too little oxygen can allow anaerobic microbes (those that do not require oxygen) to proliferate.

However, since polyethylene is not impervious to the passage of gases, some carbon dioxide can escape and some of the oxygen that has been used up can be replenished from the surrounding air. All is well, as long as respiration rates are modest, which is the case when the temperature is reasonably low. But if the temperature goes up, so does the rate of respiration, and oxygen extinction inside the plastic bag becomes a possibility.

What is needed is some sort of packaging that allows a greater passage of gases as the temperature increases. If such a material were available, then the greater oxygen requirements of the respiring broccoli could be met by oxygen from the air, and any excess carbon dioxide could readily escape.

Quite a challenge! Chemical ingenuity has, however, risen to the occasion in the form of a special acrylic polymer with side chains that melt and solidify in response to temperature.

As the side chain components melt, gas permeation increases dramatically! The idea is to place a film of this material over a window cut in the polyethylene bag, allowing for automatic oxygen entry and carbon dioxide exit according to the prevailing temperature. An excellent example of one of the many chemical advances about which the general public is unlikely to hear, but from which it is likely to benefit!

Extending the freshness of broccoli, asparagus, cherries, bananas, blueberries and melons allows for the delivery of higher quality produce to the consumer and increased consumption of some of the healthiest components of our diet.

But there's another player in the ripening game. While respiration provides the energy needed for all the reactions involved in ripening, it is ethylene that sets these reactions in motion. Although this gas was only

Septembre 2010

identified as a plant hormone in 1934, stimulation of ripening by triggering ethylene production dates back to ancient Egypt, albeit without recognition of what was actually happening. Back then fig growers noted that placing an overripe or physically damaged fig in a basket of unripe figs would hasten ripening. An explanation was not found until the twentieth century when lemon growers discovered that green fruit would quickly ripen when placed in a shed with a kerosene heater, but not with any other kind of heater.

Ethylene gas given off by the burning kerosene was determined to be the key to ripening! Before long it became clear that ripe or damaged fruit also releases ethylene, which is the reason that green bananas can be readily ripened by placing them in a bag with a ripe tomato.

Excessive ethylene released by produce during transport is a huge problem. That's why one rotten apple really does spoil the whole barrel! To prevent this, ethylene has to be removed from the environment as efficiently as possible. Once more, chemistry to the rescue!

Ethylene scavengers are big business, grossing some $120 million a year. The market leader is potassium permanganate, immobilized on an inert mineral support such as silica or alumina, and packed into tubes or sachets that can be placed anywhere produce is stored. Any first year organic chemistry student should recognize what is happening: ethylene reacts with permanganate to produce acetic acid and ethanol. Other technologies are also available.

Activated carbon, the same substance used in water and air filters, can also adsorb ethylene.

And then there are the zeolites, various aluminosilicate minerals found mostly in volcanic rocks. They're riddled with microscopic pores that can trap a variety of molecules, such as ethylene. Not only are zeolites used to scavenge ethylene in commercial storage facilities, they can be ground to a fine powder and embedded in polyethylene bags or containers that are sold to consumers for home use. Obviously “active” packaging involves a lot of savvy chemistry. ACCN

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

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