SFU's School of Sustainable Energy Engineering (SEE) program and Corix - the company that designed, built, owns and operates the Renewable Energy Centre biomass plant on Burnaby Mountain - have embarked on a four-year research collaboration aimed at measuring the quality of locally-sourced wood waste and the plant's performance to improve operations and cut emissions even further.
"There is no better opportunity to analyze a system at scale and to further sustainability research than to do it right here in our backyard," says Eugene Fiume, SFU's dean of applied sciences. "The broad hands-on experience that will be available will accelerate the development of more efficient and powerful technologies while furthering our research mission."
The $360,000 project led by SEE professors Vahid Hosseini and Gordon McTaggart-Cowan - funded through the Mitacs Accelerate program and Corix - pairs industry with top-level research talent, leveraging the expertise of SFU faculty and highly skilled graduate students to solve challenges.
"Corix is proud to be part of this exciting project," says Lisa Sparrow, Corix president and CEO. "The Renewable Energy Centre is proof that remarkable outcomes can be achieved when industry and public sector collaborate, and this project is the next step in advancing our common goal for a more sustainable future."
Since connecting to the Renewable Energy Centre (also known as Burnaby Mountain District Energy Utility) in 2020, SFU has cut its greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) produced by the SFU central heating system by over 85 per cent. Corix has helped avoid a cumulative of about 24,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (tCO2e) since opening.
In 2023, SFU's total GHG emissions were 10,382 tCO2e, a 46 per cent reduction from the 2007 baseline, with a portion attributed to the Renewable Energy Centre. The university is on track to meet the 50 per cent reduction target by 2025.
By harvesting renewable energy and slashing direct emissions from operations and indirect emissions from energy purchased GHG emissions, SFU leads the way in sustainability with one of the smallest GHG footprints of any university in Canada.
Over the next four years, the research team aims to establish indicators for how changing characteristics of the biomass fuel impact the plant's performance. The team will develop models that relate plant performance, emission and pollutant dispersion to key fuel characteristics. The team is also planning to design and build a simple test rig to give rapid, low-cost assessment of the fuel, allowing plant operations to be optimized in near real-time based on the characteristics of the wood waste supply.
Corix's participation and oversight ensures that the research project is aligned with industry needs and provides a unique training opportunity for the student researchers.
The project will also assess the potential for further synergistic opportunities, such as the beneficial reuse of residual ash from the biomass process and carbon capture research alongside the new SFU-based Clean Hydrogen Hub.
SEE, now in its fifth year, focuses on engineering fields related to the harvesting, storage, transmission and use of clean energy.
The innovative school, which recently expanded with a Master of Engineering program, emerged to address a gap identified by the provincial and federal governments: the urgent need for engineers trained in new technologies that can change our world by tackling the causes and impacts of climate change.
