Grant: Applied Research Tools and Instruments Grants

In alignment with Canada's 2050 Net-zero emission targets, growing demand for environmental and social initiatives is driving a transition to sustainable energy and products. Achieving this goal requires improved access to critical minerals essential for renewable energy and storage as well as robust monitoring systems to mitigate rising metal toxicity concerns in the environment and consumer products. This requires detailed knowledge of metal composition, including trace metals present in feedstocks, waste streams, products, and the environment. Such analyses require an inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometer (ICP-MS), an instrument that is not currently part of the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology (NAIT) analytical suite. While ICP-MS analysis is available at other research institutions and third-party analytical testing facilities, these services can be extremely costly, require extensive time for sample preparation and shipping, and can have lengthy turnaround times. Acquiring an onsite ICP-MS would negate these concerns, allowing NAIT to provide timely, cost-effective, and accurate data to numerous existing and potential industry, government, Indigenous, and academic partners across multiple sectors. These crucial data will expedite technology innovation, commercialization, and/or adoption that addresses applied research in these critical areas: 1. Identifying and quantifying metal leaching in plastic circularity efforts 2. Critical mineral identification and extraction 3. Trace mineral identification for circularity efforts in forestry waste streams 4. Indigenous community-led environmental monitoring (IEM) 5. Improving methodology for service labs to prevent matrix interference Procuring an ICP-MS would also allow NAIT to enhance hands-on training for students, postdoctoral researchers, and technologists, a fundamental tenet of polytechnics. Furthermore, through our IEM program, this invaluable training will extend to Indigenous community members who will acquire hands-on expertise on use and maintenance of an ICP-MS for metals analyses. This training will also enable data sovereignty for our IEM partner communities, further demonstrating NAIT's commitment to equity, diversity, and inclusion. Taken together, investment in an ICP-MS at NAIT is crucial to enhancing innovation through our current and future projects across multiple disciplines, and for training students and HQPs on this industrially relevant and in-demand skill set.