Our Centre continues to attract interest and visitors from around the world, and this inevitably leads to exchanges of ideas and potential for future cooperation. During the last few weeks we have had visitors from China, Italy, and Los Angeles. The Chinese visit was organized by the Conference Board of Canada and included a group from the Chinese Executive Leadership Academy, Pudong. They were particularly interested in policy and programs for public education about environmental issues and Connie Boyce, Director of Community Relations for the City of Edmonton's Waste Management branch gave them a presentation on the City's very successful activities in this area.

Earlier that day Dr. Salim Abboud from the Alberta Research Council brought Dr. Maria Mastellone from the University of Naples, Italy to meet me. Dr. Mastellone has done a lot of work in gasification and was interested in meeting City of Edmonton people involved in their gasification project.

Regards,

Dr. Jerry Leonard, P.Eng., Executive Manager 

• The Centre would like to welcome two new staff members; Michelle Aunger as a Laboratory Technician and Joanna Klimowicz as a Technical & Business Writer.  
• Christian Felske, an active partner of the Centre, recently presented at the 30th SWANA LFG Symposium in USA in March 2007. The joint presentation was entitled "Biogenic Methane Oxidation of Landfill Gas: Pilot Plant Biofilter Evaluation and Initial Design Recommendations."

• Update and Calibration of the Gold Bar Wastewater Treatment Plant Activated Sludge Model
  Activated Sludge Models have been used widely in operation, optimization and diagnosis of wastewater treatment plant design. A model was established for the Gold Bar wastewater treatment plant in 2002. However, this model does not include the recent process upgrades. Therefore, this project will modify and recalibrate the plant model using a software program specifically designed for the modelling and simulation of municipal wastewater treatment plants.
• Aerated Grit Chamber Research Study
  This research study will investigate the design of existing aerated grit chambers at the Gold Bar wastewater treatment plant and ways of improving their removal efficiencies with the use of laser measurement techniques and computational fluid dynamics. The advantage of laser measurement systems is that these systems are non-intrusive measurement techniques that can be used to accurately investigate the hydrodynamic characteristics of a certain reactor.
• Secondary Clarifier Research Study
  This project will investigate the design of existing secondary clarifiers at the Gold Bar wastewater treatment plant and ways of improving their performance with the use of computational fluid dynamics. The study will include the development of a computational fluid dynamics model and a desktop study to evaluate the current sludge and sum removal mechanisms and operating conditions in rectangular secondary clarifiers. The best practical options will then be reported.

• Conversion Technologies - May 17/07
• Electronic Waste Management - Postponed until Fall 2007

SWANA Northern Lights Conference
May 30 - June 1, 2007   
Edmonton, Alberta

Climate Change Strategies and Environmental Communication
June 6 - 7, 2007
Boston, USA

EECO Environment and Energy Conference
June 19 - 20, 2007   
Toronto, Ontario