Grant: Discovery Grants Program - Individual

Each Canadian produces 850 kg of waste annually, of which three-quarters is landfilled. As a result, Canada buries 25 billion kg of waste - equal to filling 70,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools - each year. Much of this is organic waste (textiles, sludge, paper and wood waste, agricultural waste) and the majority is from industry. This practice is not sustainable: it produces greenhouse gases, consumes energy, pollutes the environment, impairs our health, and costs the economy. Furthermore, it buries badly needed resources such as metals and soil nutrients. Of the world's developed countries, Canada ranks last for effective waste management. A sustainable future requires moving from a “throwaway” society to a “circular” economy, where the residue from one process becomes the raw materials of another. To achieve this we need to discover innovative ways to convert waste into energy and resources. ***This research explores an entirely new waste conversion idea. Smouldering is the process that slowly converts charcoal in your barbeque into heat. Since uncontrolled smouldering can lead to fires, it is usually considered a process to be avoided. However, Dr. Gerhard has led the world in developing intentional, controlled smouldering as an engineering technology to solve environmental problems. Dr. Gerhard's Canadian industry partners are now cleaning up polluted sites around the world using smouldering to destroy toxic chemicals industry has left in the ground. This research explores intentional smouldering in a whole new way: as a method to convert waste to energy and resources. Smouldering has the potential to be a very efficient and cheap process for generating energy from waste, since it generates much more energy than it uses. In addition, it has the ability to make resources (e.g., metals and fertilizer) available for recovery. Moreover, smouldering is expected to destroy pollutants in the waste that makes it hazardous, thereby eliminating the toxicity and enabling its safe reuse. ***This research is expected to generate an entirely new waste management process, one that could be of tremendous benefit for achieving a sustainable, circular economy. The outcomes will provide enormous environmental benefit by diverting waste from landfills, reducing the gases that contribute to global warming, recovering needed energy and resources, and eliminating toxic pollutants that otherwise leach into our water, soil, and air. Moreover, they will generate major economic benefits. Waste conversion and reuse produces ten times as many jobs as waste burial while the energy and resources recovered have high market value. Furthermore, as with polluted site cleanup, Canadian companies would lead the worldwide delivery of a new technology that uniquely fills a large market, creating jobs and growth at home while solving environmental challenges worldwide.