Grant: Industrial Research Chairs

The NSERC Chair in Water Treatment at the University of Waterloo functions as a centre of expertise, with a mission to conduct leading edge, fundamentally based, yet practically oriented research on critical issues related to water treatment and quality, and to facilitate interactions between Canadian industry and universities. Our research addresses the short- to medium-term needs of our funding partners, which include municipalities, consultants and industry involved in the treatment and provision of water. Research conducted over the five year period (2018-2022) of the Chair term will address challenges including drastically changing source water qualities, more stringent regulations and the desire for more sustainable processes all the while ensuring robust protection of public health. The three major research themes include: A - Successfully Managing Raw Water Quality Changes through Robust Systems, which will develop tools to help utilities plan for extreme weather events, spill scenarios, seasonally occurring cyanotoxins blooms, and emerging contaminants such as microplastics. B - Green and Innovative Treatment Processes, which will study biofiltration for cyanotoxin removal, sustainable approaches to control groundwater hardness and manganese using newer technologies, and novel, reusable composite adsorbents for contaminants such as cyanotoxins. C - Understanding Corrosion with a Focus on Lead, which will investigate corrosion control measures to minimize lead release from existing lead pipes and lead-bearing plumbing system components, and also