Grant: Engage Plus Grants Program

This project aims at optimizing and scaling up the electrospinning process to obtain membranes of nanofibersof copolymers to improve the reaction rate of Albarrie super absorbent smart fabrics for high powertransformer secondary oil containment application.In a first phase project, financed by an Engage grant, Prof. Demarquette and her team in collaboration withAlbarrie Ltd. research team obtained several electrospun membranes and tested them for oil retention. Theobtained results indicated three block copolymers as best candidates for oil retention. They also indicated thatthe quantity of copolymers used in the smart fabrics produced by Albarrie Ltd. , could be reduced by 5 folds ifin the form of nanofibers, which would imply a cost reduction for the membranes of 50%. During the firstphase project, the membranes were obtained using a homemade electrospinning machine and the processpresented several limitations: only small membranes with an area of around 10 cm2 could be obtained; arecurrent problem of needle clogging was observed. Furthermore, the process was not optimized in terms ofmembranes geometry and nanofiber size.The present project aims therefore at optimizing and scaling up the spinning process to obtain copolymermembranes of nanofibers to be used in oil retention. The steps of the project are1) Solve the problem of syringe clogging during spinning2) Scale up of the process3) Optimisation of the scaled up processThis project shall ultimately lead to the creation of high-quality manufacturing jobs at Albarrie Ltd. Thisproject will strengthen Canada's position as a leader in oil containment and oil spill response technology andhelp mitigating public concerns over potential environmental risk related to oil production, transportation and