Academic News

The Chemistry/Bioscience students are away this month, working hard at their respective co-op placements. We hope to soon bring you some news about the work our students are doing, but, in the interim and just for fun, here’s some interesting information that many people

Canada’s Black Brant rocket

don’t know about science in Manitoba.

Nestled among the canola fields of the Rockwood municipality a half hour north of Winnipeg is the Bristol Aerospace Propellant Plant. This plant is the only large scale commercial manufacturer of rockets in Canada. Opened in 1962, the plant makes a wide variety of solid propellant rockets, including the CRV7, the CL289 and the Black Brant. The Black Brant (pictured) is a so-called “sounding” rocket, used to explore atmospheric phenomena. It has been in production at the plant for decades and is still used by NASA. When combined with other stages, the Black Brant can reach altitudes of over 1000 km, allowing payloads to experience periods of microgravity or follow chemical reactions in the upper atmosphere.

As with the other Bristol rockets, the Black Brant is powered by the industry standard AP/HTPB propellant based on ammonium perchlorate mixed with polybutadiene. The Brant is particularly popular with researchers due to its very high reliability: over 800 have been launched over the years, with a 98% success rate!

Come see how AWESOME Scrum and Agile can be with Joe Justice and Robert Mohrbacher on June 10 or 11. Below are Rob and the carbon fibre wonder itself!

Click here to secure your spot now at WINNISPEED, the first ever build of a Team WIKISPEED car in Canada!

Do not come to WINNISPEED June 10-11 if you:

• are happy to let your competitors deliver faster by adopting Agile and Scrum
• do no need to adapt to changing market conditions
• do not need to be innovative
• do not need to stay competitive

Do come to WINNISPEED June 10-11 if you:

• want to supercharge innovation in your organization
• are ready to experience Extreme Manufacturing, Lean, Agile, and Scrum first hand
• want a low-cost, high-value Agile and Scrum learning opportunity
• are a technical professional, team leader, manager, executive, or organizational change leader
• are an Agile practitioner at any level of experience, including exploring Agile for the first time
• would like to meet and work with Joe Justice of Team WIKISPEED
• would love to learn by building a 100 mpg car in a single day
• like the idea of rapidly solving problems for social good

Joe Justice, founder of WIKISPEED, delivers ultra-efficient automobiles and social good projects and 60 times the rate of traditional businesses. Joe will be in Winnipeg for two days only. This is the first ever build of a Team WIKISPEED car in Canada.

• June 10 and 11 will be hands-on Extreme Manufacturing, Lean, Agile, and Scrum. Joe Justice will demonstrate these agile methodologies by leading two separate groups through the building of a 100 mpg Team WIKISPEED car. This is the first ever Team WIKISPEED build in Canada! Do not miss being one of the few able to participate.

We are electrified to welcome the Manitoba Electric Vehicle Association (MEVA) as proud sponsor and participant in the WINNISPEED Agile/Scrum Extreme Manufacturing (XM) workshops with Joe Justice on June 10 and 11.

It’s gas! No, it’s electric!

It’s both. The Awsomeness Factor of Agile/Scrum is only part of the WINNISPEED attraction. Because the car we are building with Joe is completely modular, MEVA is intrigued at the prospect of swapping the gas engine module for an electric one. How agile is that?.

Reserve your spot on either of the two days at https://blogs.rrc.ca/bit/event-registration/.

On June 6th, the local chapter of the AOAC (the Association of Official Analytical Communities) will hold its annual “AOAC Day” in Winnipeg, at the Victoria Inn on Wellington. The day will feature technical presentations, free training sessions, equipment displays, a buffet lunch and much more, including a fascinating talk by Dr. Ed Cloutis of the University of Winnipeg, entitled “Exploring Mars with the Curiosity rover: analytical capabilities and latest results.” Registration is only $25 at the door. For more information about the local AOAC and AOAC day, follow this link.

As well, you can find the latest (May 2013) AOAC newsletter here.

Joe Justice presented at Protegra’s Software Development and Evolution Conference in 2012. He introduced SDEC attendees – senior software professionals – to WIKISPEED’s real life experience of using Agile methods to change the world.

“At Protegra, we believe in creativity and innovation, and involving great people using agile and lean practices to solve tough problems.  Protegra fully supports this WINNISPEED event as a great opportunity to get our next generation of innovators and creators – RRC students – involved in bring Winnipeg closer to a broader mission of rapidly solving problems for social good.”

We are very excited to welcome Protegra as a Supporting Sponsor of WINNISPEED.

Reserve your spot on either of the two days at https://blogs.rrc.ca/bit/event-registration/.

We are delighted to welcome CIC as a Friend of WINNISPEED. The Composites Innovation Centre is a not-for-profit Manitoba corporation that is jointly sponsored by private industry and government. Its mandate is to support and stimulate economic growth through innovative research, development and application of composite materials and technologies for manufacturing industries.

“CIC is excited to be part of WINNISPEED’s broader mission related to solving problems for social good. If composites can assist with that in terms of being ‘greener’ or leaving less carbon footprint in terms of manufacturing processes than that’s what we are all about.”

Reserve your spot on either of the two days at https://blogs.rrc.ca/bit/event-registration/.

Students working on preparing samples for their HPLC analysis

One group of second year students from the Chemical and Biosciences Technology program continued the research started by faculty members Michael Judge and Curtis Aab using Ethyl Lactate (EL) as an HPLC solvent. This work was conducted as part of the new Research Project course recently added to the program. The students explored the use of EL with a new analyte which was methocarbamol , an over the counter (OTC) drug used to treat back pain.

As part of their work the students developed a research proposal, provided ongoing updates of their results, and prepared a final report and presentation. The research was successful as they were able to analyze a finished product, Robaxacet that contained both methocarbamol and acetaminophen. As a starting point the students modified an existing method from the USP (United States Pharmacopeia) for analyzing methocarbamol. They increased the efficiency of this method because the EL mobile phase yielded a shorter run time while still producing well resolved analyte peaks. This project also created the opportunity for future Chemical and Bioscience Technology students to continue this research next year.

The students have accepted the opportunity to present their research at the 2013 Mid-Canada AOAC day on Thursday, June 6^th, 2013.

The Optima 8000

The Chemical/Biosciences instrumental laboratory recently gained a valuable new tool: a Perkin Elmer Optima 8000 ICP-OES spectrometer. ICP is an acronym for “inductively coupled plasma,” while OES stands for “optical emission spectroscopy.” OES is a method of analyzing chemical mixtures or solutions to determine concentrations of trace elements. In this technique, a sample of the material being analyzed is energized to excite its atoms. Since the excited atoms of each element emit light at specific characteristic wavelengths, the presence and the amounts of various elements can be determined by monitoring the emitted light. Some instruments use the heat of a flame to excite the sample, but ICP uses a “plasma” made of ionized argon gas energized by an electromagnetic field.

One of the most important features of an ICP instrument is its very low detection limit. An ICP can typically detect the presence of analytes, such as arsenic or lead in drinking water, at concentrations below one part per billion. When you consider that one part per billion is the equivalent of one second out of a time span of 32 years, the amazing ability of this instrument becomes obvious.

The department is excited about having this new instrument on board and to be able to allow students to gain some valuable hands-on experience in this state-of-the-art analytical technology.

Solvatochromism was used to determine the polarity of ethyl lactate.

Red River College encourages instructional staff to undertake original research and, last year, faculty in the chemical and biosciences program spent some time looking at ways to improve a common analytical method. High performance liquid chromatography, or HPLC, is very widely used in chemical labs and processing facilities to separate and analyze chemical mixtures. However, most HPLC systems employ liquid solvents, such as methanol, which are often toxic.

Curtis Aab and Michael Judge were curious as to whether these toxic solvents could be replaced with a different, more environmentally-friendly liquid. They used ethyl lactate, a solvent which is so safe that it can be applied as an ingredient in cosmetics and foods. Research at the College demonstrated that ethyl lactate could indeed replace methanol when analyzing different pharmaceutical compounds using an officially approved HPLC method. Subsequent work by chemical/biosciences students extended the range of pharmaceuticals which can be analyzed using ethyl lactate. These findings could potentially allow at least some of the thousands of HPLC systems worldwide to transition to a “greener” process.

The research results were accepted for publication in the Canadian Journal of Chemistry and appeared in the May 2013 issue under the title “Ethyl lactate as an environmentally friendly HPLC mobile-phase modifier in the analysis of acetaminophen, caffeine, and ASA.” A link to the journal website is provided below.

http://www.nrcresearchpress.com/journal/cjc