Saifur Rahaman and Yuan Wang study very different subjects — environmental engineering and finance, respectively — but the two Concordia scholars share one thing in common: they've both won a prestigious $10,000 research grant called the Petro-Canada Young Innovator Award.
The awards were given out on September 1 by Graham Carr, vice-president of Research and Graduate Studies, as part of an annual celebration of Concordia research excellence.
“Emerging, engaged and innovative faculty are essential to the dynamic research culture we are creating here at Concordia,” Carr says. “Saifur and Yuan are very deserving recipients.”
We asked this year's winners to explain their work.
Saifur Rahaman: "An important step towards ensuring adequate fresh water for all"
2015 Petro-Canada Young Innovator Award winner: Saifur Rahaman, assistant professor in the Department of Building, Civil and Environmental Engineering
Project: “Novel Inorganic/Organic Hybrid Advanced Materials for Thin-Film Composite Reverse Osmosis Membranes”
Summary: Reverse osmosis (RO) has become the most versatile and efficient technique to produce fresh water from saline water and other waste water.
Thin-film composite (TFC) polyamide membranes are widely used in RO plants, but they are subject to "biofouling" as micro-organisms grow on them. This results in reduced filtration capacity, and increased operational costs.
Adding a disinfection agent such as chlorine to the water can stop biofouling, but unfortunately even a few parts per billion of chlorine in water will rapidly degrade TFC polyamide membranes.
The main objective of this project is to develop a chlorine-resistant, mechanically robust organic/inorganic hybrid RO membrane.
We will investigate whether the active polyamide layer of TFC membranes can be substituted by a novel inorganic/organic hybrid material. Use of inorganic/organic hybrid material will eliminate the existence of amide linkages that render current TFC membranes highly susceptable to chlorine degradation.
Impact: Although the earth's surface is mostly water, the world faces a growing fresh-water crisis. Naturally this draws attention to water desalination. Improving this process through new and better materials would be an important step towards ensuring adequate fresh water for all.