Published by Senator Lorna Milne (retired) on 11 May 2009
In March I was able to spend a morning exploring this wonderful new educational, research and outreach facility, and I was amazed at what can be produced from waste products and from extremely inexpensive plant materials using nano-technology.
For those who do not know, as I did not, ‘nano’ means extremely small — in the order of one billionth of a meter (0.000,000,001 meters = 1 nanometer; one nm.) A human hair is 50,000 nanometers in diameter. A piece of paper is about 100,000 nanometers thick. Nano science deals with particles and strands that are only from 0.1 to 100 nanometers in width. At this size range ordinary substances develop novel and unexpected properties and can be used in many unconventional ways, such as to form ‘plastics’ and other space age materials without the need for petrochemicals. These are known as nano-engineered plastics.
I was shown nano-engineered bio-plastics (formed entirely from plant materials) that are suitable for making light-weight car parts that are stronger than steel; bio-materials such as soy oil and corn or hemp stalks that can be used to produce everything that we presently use traditional plastics for; lighter and stronger building materials from waste products such as lignin or distiller’s grains, even cow manure; and also hybrid materials formed from a combination of such things as waste plastic bags and recycled paper that are every bit as good if not better than the original oil based plastic, plus they are biodegradable. Everything from building panels, carpets, furniture and packaging materials to lubricants and paints can be made from natural products. It was an eye-opening tour.
Dr. Amar Mohanty, who is heading up this project and his wife, Dr. Manju Misra, through their reputations and expertise, have attracted some of the finest post-doctoral researchers in the area of nano-technology and bioresearch from around the world to take part in this exciting new venture. Use of this new nano-technology has a potential economic impact of up to one trillion dollars to the world’s economy over the next twenty years and industries using it will need to hire two million nano-tech workers. This is the green way of the future.
The facility at the University of Guelph was made possible partly through a three million dollar grant from the Province of Ontario that funded the “Premier’s Chair of Excellence” and enabled the University to attract the best research people in the world to this brand new laboratory that is allowing Canada to lead the world in this technology. The Canadian Foundation for Innovation also contributed $463, 796 to the development of the Centre. It opened in October, 2008.
Investing in research such as this is essential to learning how to lower our dependence on non-renewable resources and to building a better future for us all. Governments absolutely must fund such research. I will continue to lobby our Federal Government and my fellow politicians as to how important it is to fund such research endeavours, and I congratulate the Government of Ontario for looking forward in such a positive and productive way.