Research
Ocean Current Energy Conversion for Powering Sensors
Many organizations which conduct oceanographic research, such as CSIRO, make use of electronic sensors for monitoring ocean conditions. At present, these sensors are powered by batteries, but this causes their deployment time to be limited by battery life. This limitation could potentially be overcome by harvesting energy from the environments surrounding the sensors. One such source …
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Passive Irrigation Controller
The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations calculates that agricultural irrigation consumes 70 percent of our global fresh water supply, they further express that 60 percent of that water is then wasted before it is used by crops. An important cause of water waste is the inappropriate scheduling of the irrigation periods leading to …
Pico-Scale Hydro Turbines
This project has been outsourced to WERL by a Toronto-based company that is currently developing innovative pico-scale hydro turbine systems, used for energy harvesting in both water disinfection and pressure regulation applications. In the disinfection system, a generator coupled to the pico-turbine provides power to an electrochemical cell appropriate for drinking water disinfection. The system is …
Oil-Contaminated Water Treatment System
Over the past 50 years, more than 40 million barrels of crude oil have been released into oceans in accidental oil spills. These spills can have significant impacts on the marine environment and local communities, and require a fast and efficient response method. The current methods of cleaning up an oil spill are either time …
Smart and Sustainable Aeration Technology for Aquaculture
Collecting a water sample from an aquaculture pond Aquaculture is a major food source in many low and middle-income countries (LMICs). Improving water quality for aquaculture can increase yields, improve food security, and reduce antibiotic use. In the developed world, aeration is used to significantly improve water quality. However, aeration is the third largest cost …
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Photovoltaic Reverse Osmosis Systems
Background For many remote off-grid communities, lack of access to clean water and reliable electricity are challenges for their economic development. Community owned and operated water systems powered by locally available renewable energy could be a step in overcoming these challenges. These systems need to be robust and cost effective in order to serve remote …