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Newsletters CONTACT (Vancouver) Technical Chapters Aerospace, Geoscience and Remote Sensing Engineering Management and Professional Communications Engineering in Medicine and Biology Product Safety and Reliability |
Vancouver Chapter (joint with IEEE Industrial Electronics Society) The IEEE Industry Applications Society is a world leader in the advancement of technology and dissemination of technical information to support professionals engaged in the applications of electrical and electronic engineering to industry. The IEEE Industrial Electronics Society encompasses a diverse range of technical activities devoted to the application of electronics and electrical sciences for the enhancement of industrial and manufacturing processes. These technical activities address the latest developments in intelligent and computer control systems, robotics, factory communications and automation, flexible manufacturing, data acquisition and signal processing, vision systems, and power electronics.
For more information, please contact our Chapter Chair, Aaron Ellis ().
Upcoming Events Minimizing Plant Interruption Caused by Line Disturbances Using Active Voltage Conditioners Bob Hanna, RPM Engineering Ltd David Ezer, Omni Power Date
and Time Location Refreshment & Parking Abstract Voltage anomalies, in particular voltage sags, can cause equipment loss and process upset. It is reported that in North American alone, voltage sags cost industry over U$200 billion per annum. Electrical utilities cannot readily prevent the occurrence of voltage sags, disturbances and momentary outages, which typically last for a fraction of a second. It is usually not practical for the utility to provide correction for their distribution system or even for an individual industrial customer as in most cases; these events are caused by inclement weather conditions or animals. Industry, which regularly invest millions in production equipment, often ignore, or greatly underestimate, the cost of their unplanned outages. Traditionally, a UPS is used to provide adequate protection for data processing centers, but this solution is impractical and uneconomical for critical processes or plant wide larger electrical equipment distributed throughout the plant. This presentation will cover the latest Active Voltage Conditioning solutions, which keep critical equipment running, avoid process upset and provide very attractive financial payback, typically in less than 18 months. It will also describe case studies covering installation for active voltage conditioners in Petro- Chemical and other industries for low voltage and medium voltage up to 36 KV. In addition, it will provide samples of actual field measurements of electrical power disturbances at various voltage levels. Biography Robert A. Hanna received the B.Sc. degree from the University of Basra, Iraq in 1971, M.Sc. Degree (with Distinction) from Queen Mary College, University of London, England in 1973 and Ph. D. degree from Imperial College of Science and Technology, University of London, England in 1977, all in electrical engineering. Following a short teaching career, in 1981 he joined Petro Canada (formerly Gulf Canada) as a central engineering specialist providing technical support to the refineries in implementing capital projects and equipment selection. In 1995, he founded RPM Engineering Ltd., a certified consulting company in Ontario, Canada specializing in Adjustable Speed Drive applications, power quality studies, emergency shutdown equipment and equipment failure investigations. Dr. Hanna is registered professional engineer in the provinces of Ontario, Alberta and British Columbia, Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (FIEEE), a Fellow of the Institution of Electrical Engineers (FIEE), UK and a Fellow of the Engineering Institute of Canada (FEIC). He was President of IEEE Canada and IEEE Director (Region 7) for 2006- 2007. www.rpm-eng.com David Ezer received the B.Sc. degree, specializing in power electronics as part of an electrical engineering degree, from the University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa, in 1984. He spent three years designing ac and traction drives and UPS systems. In 1985, he joined Exide Electronics and ran the Canadian Engineering Department for nine years. In 1995, he founded Omni Power Inc., Toronto, ON, Canada, a supplier of motor control and power quality solutions to heavy industry. Omni Power is now installing a minimum of 30MVA of Power Conditioning equipment into North American industry every year. Mr. Ezer is a member of IEEE. www.omniverter.com This is an IEEE Vancouver Section IAS/PES Joint Event Info: Sergio Bertani () or Jahangir Khan () Past Events Powerex - Trading Floor Tour Date
and Time Location Abstract Powerex Corp, a wholly-owned subsidiary of BC Hydro, is a leading marketer of physical wholesale energy products and services (power and gas) in western Canada, the Western US and other select markets across North America. Powerex has access to the flexibility of the BC Hydro hydroelectric system, allowing it to shape and deliver power to meet individual customers’ needs. BC Hydro has constructed a world-classintegrated hydroelectric system of close to 11,500 MW of generating capacity - over 10,000 of which are hydroelectric. Hydro’s backbone electric system is interconnected with the western US by two 500 kV transmission lines on the west coast between BC and Washington, one 230 kV line connecting BC and Washington on the east side, and a 500 KV line to the east, connecting BC with Alberta. Hydro’s transmission interconnections give us access to markets across the Western Electrical Coordinating Council region, east into the US mid-west and south as far as Mexico. Powerex provides utilities, power pools, large industrials and power marketers with the energy products and services they need when and where they need them. From energy and capacity sales to natural gas trading, Powerex has come to be known as a power marketing and trading company with the reliable supply, business flexibility and customer commitment to get the deal done. Powerex is now also working with “green” IPPs in BC to market not only energy from their plants, but Green Power Certificates (GPCs) as well. For more: www.powerex.com. This tour is limited in space and advance registration is necessary! Pre-registration is required for this event. The space is limited, so register early. For more information, please contact Mazana Armstrong ().
APC 2007 Tour of Powertech’s Hydrogen Vehicle Service Centre Date
and Time Location Abstract Powertech Labs is a world leader in the development and testing of hydrogen and CNG fuel industry infrastructure. They specialize in all testing and evaluating components of hydrogen and CNG fuel systems for vehicles, for fill stations, and for transport applications. Powertech has designed and built the world’s first 700 bar (10,000psi) hydrogen filling station. Since its completion in 2002, the station has been used to demonstrate the fast filling of compressed hydrogen vehicle cylinders to 700 bar in as little as 30 seconds. This station currently fuels Powertech’s hydrogen fleet, as well as visiting industry vehicles. Powertech operates various hydrogen fuel cell, 100% internal combustion (ICE) vehicles, 100% CNG and 30% hydrogen/70% CNG vehicles to support the development of a 700 bar Hydrogen Highway for the 2010 Winter Olympics. During the tour our guide will give us information on various testing activities as well as other exciting projects the Hydrogen Centre is developing at the moment. Pre-registration is required for this event. The space is limited, so register early. For more information, please contact Mazana Armstrong ().
The Security of Critical Automation Systems Real Risks and Tested Protection Strategies Eric J. Byres CEO – Byres Security Inc. Senior Partner – Byres Research Date and Time: January 12, 2007 Location: E04 Theatre Room, BC Hydro - Edmonds, 6911 Southpoint Drive, Burnaby Fee: $100 for IEEE members, $50 for student members and $150 for others. Group discounts available. The fee includes presentation material and light breakfast before the seminar.
joint with Power Engineering Society DIgSILENT PowerFactory® Tool for Power System Studies Dr. Khosro Kabiri, DigSilent GmbH, Germany Date
and Time Location Abstract Today’s power systems are an amalgam of conventional and modern features working in harmony to make the system function properly and reliably. The analyses done in relation to power system design, enhancement, and improvement are varied and require application of techniques from several different disciplines. PowerFactory is a software package developed with the aim of combing into one whole the tools that a power system engineer needs to do his job. Starting from loadflow and short-circuit to the more involved dynamical and transient analyses, PowerFactory is efficiently used to design new systems and to study the impact of new installations on the existing systems. The solid database of the program ensures consistency in data that are used for different studies. In this presentation, PowerFactory features are demonstrated by way of examples, and an overview of the projects that the Study Department in DigSilent is involved with is given. Biography Khosro Kabiri was born in 1972 in Iran. He obtained his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees from Sharif University of Technology, Tehran, Iran in 1995 and 1998, respectively. In 1999, he enrolled in the PhD program at the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department of the University of British Columbia where he worked on the modeling and analysis of subsynchronous resonance in turbo-generators in the presence of thyristor-controlled series capacitors. This research awarded him a one-year internship in the Power Transmission and Distribution Department of Siemens AG in Germany. He successfully defended his thesis in 2004. Dr. Kabiri has been with the Study Department of DigSilent GmbH in Germany since June 2005, where he works on the modeling and analysis of power systems using PowerFactory software.
joint with Control Systems Society Closing the Loop in Anesthesia: Bringing a Control Engineering Perspective to Clinical Research Stéphane Bibian, Cleveland Medical Devices Inc., Cleveland, OH, USA Date
and Time Location Abstract In 1940, British researchers observed that anesthetic agents create a dose-dependent change in electroencephalographic signals (EEG). Few years later, Bickford and co-workers proposed the idea of an automatic anesthetic delivery system which regulates the administration of an anesthetic agent, with respect to EEG activity. Closed-loop anesthesia was born, and in 1951 their research group closed the loop on 50 human patients … successfully! Since then, closed-loop systems have been shown to provide many advantages over manual titration: improved patient outcome, reduced drug usage, shorter stays in the post-operative care units, and added intra-operative safety (avoidance of under- and over-dosing), are usually cited as the main reasons why closed-loop anesthesia is a worthwhile endeavor. Yet, 60 years after Bickford, anesthetic agents are still delivered manually, even though dedi-cated research groups have been - and still are - actively engaged in the pursuit of an automatic anesthesia delivery system. There are a number of reasons behind the lack of industrial commitment for further develop-ing and commercializing such systems. First and foremost, current closed-loop systems are still largely unproven: clinical trials were undergone within strict limited protocols, often limited to a healthy group of patients. While results are largely positive, paradoxical behaviors (i.e., instabil-ity!) were observed, which cast doubts on the feasibility of such systems. Second, the EEG is usually interpreted by a monitor to output a feedback variable that represents drug effect. Many anesthesiologists do not feel comfortable titrating patients based on such an interpretative index: the lack of gold standard in measuring anesthetic drug effect has been a serious impediment in this field. Furthermore, patient pharmacological response to drug administration can differ greatly between individuals. A majority of pharmacologists cite pharmacological variability as the main reason why closed-loop control cannot be achieved. Finally, anesthetic drugs are particularly potent. Over-dosing can provoke serious injuries, even death. Anesthesiologists are responsible for their administration, and are at risk of malpractice lawsuits. In case of a closed-loop system, the liability may be shared with the manufacturer of such systems, an uncomfortable prospect to any medical device company! In recent years, clinical researchers have turned to engineers to help them bridge these technological difficulties. In 2000, Professor Guy Dumont (UBC – Elec. & Comp. Eng.) and Dr. Bernard MacLeod (UBC – Anesthesia) created a multidisciplinary research group in an effort to bring control technologies developed for industrial applications to the field of anesthesia. This talk summarizes some of our findings. The issues of sensor, models and controllers are covered. In particular, we will discuss how the engineering approach in tackling these issues differs from that of clinical researchers. Biography Stéphane Bibian (S’00) received his Diplôme d’Ingénieur degree from the Ecole Supérieure d’Ingénieurs en Electronique et Electrotechnique (France, 1997). In 1997, he enrolled in the M.A.Sc. program in electri-cal engineering at the University of British Columbia. His thesis concerned the design and implementation of digital control laws for dc switchmode power supplies, under the supervision of Dr. Hua Jin. After briefly holding a teaching position in France, Stéphane returned to UBC in 2001, where he is currently finishing his Ph.D. degree on the control of clinical anesthesia, under the supervision of Professor Guy A. Dumont. During the course of his Ph.D program, he became one of the listed inventors of two pending US patents on electroencephalography analysis. He is also one of the founders of Bionova Technologies Inc., a Vancouver-based bio-technology company which serves as interface between academia and industry. Since 2005, Stéphane has been working as a Control and Biomedical R&D Engineer at Cleveland Medical Devices Inc. (Cleveland, OH, USA). Together with Ms. Tatjana Zikov, a former graduate student of Professor Dumont, they are actively working on the development and commercialization of the Neu-roSENSETM, an anesthesia monitor whose principles are based on his and Ms. Zikov’s research work at UBC. His current field of research includes the modeling of anesthetic drugs, and the monitoring and closed-loop control of anesthesia. APC2006 -- Advanced Process Control Applications for Industry Workshop May
8-10, 2006 The workshop is a meeting of those interested in applying Advanced Process Control technology and Advanced Data Analysis technology to improve performance of the process industries. Practical installation experiences and results are presented for discussion. Plant operations today are faced with ever-increasing pressure to improve efficiency, quality and productivity. Without making fundamental changes to their production processes, improvement can usually be made with the application of advanced control technology. Using modern computer hardware, software and innovative techniques, application engineers are able to collect real time and historical data on their processes. Data analysis, modeling and simulation provide a better understanding of the dynamics of process behavior. Once the process characteristics are accurately identified, the options for applying suitable control methodology are no longer limited to conventional control techniques. For more information, visit http://ieee-ias.org/apc2006/
joint with Control Systems Society and Power Engineering Society invites you to attend a double-feature presentation Date
and Time Location
Design for Survival. A Systems Approach to Coping with Large Disaster Situations Dr. Jose R. Marti, The University of British Columbia
Abstract The recent Katrina disaster in New Orleans, which resulted in over 1,300 lives lost and 300,000 homes destroyed, is a dramatic example of the lack of quick coordinated response to mitigate the consequences of large disasters. Regardless of the particular reasons for this failure, it can be assumed, nonetheless, that there was a general lack of appreciation of the full magnitude of the problem and of the dynamics of its development. These dynamics, driven by hard-to-foresee events, would have required realistic preparation scenarios before the event and dynamically adjustable deployment responses commensurate with the real-time development of the events. In this talk we present a novel solution framework to analyze large disaster situations. Regardless of the particular resource (e.g., electric power or hospital beds), the system problem can be seen as one of transmission of the resources (tokens) from the location where the resources are available (generators) to the location where the resources are utilized (loads). Transportation channels carrying the tokens from sources to loads have limitations of capacity and time delays. These limitations become particularly critical during large emergencies when extensive damage can occur and multiple infrastructures (power grid, water system, hospitals, etc.) have to work together in a coordinated manner. The solution of the system of systems encompassing the multiple infrastructures can be set up in terms of difference equations with multiple time delays and multiple nonlinear constraints at the generation and load nodes. A constrained optimum dispatching problem can then be formulated at each time step of the system solution so that the direction of the unfolding system response matches the requirements of the unfolding load events. The system objective is to make sure that at any given moment in time, and under dynamically changing conditions of tokens availability, transportation system parameters, and victim needs, saving human lives is optimized. The solution framework of the OVNI real-time simulator, described in the companion presentation, provides a suitable platform to implement the proposed solution scheme. The OVNI Simulator for Simultaneous Solution of Multiple Large Systems in Real Time Dr. Jose R. Marti and Mazana Armstrong, The University of British Columbia Abstract The
power systems group at UBC has developed the OVNI real-time large systems
simulator. The MATE solution algorithm in OVNI can integrate in a unified
solution environment a diversity of solution techniques and multiple time
scales. In power systems simulation, for example, EMTP discrete-time solutions
with solution steps in the order of the microseconds to capture firing angles in
power electronic devices can be solved simultaneously with dynamic phasor
solutions that use time steps in the order of tens of milliseconds to capture
network dynamics around 60 Hz. This integration can be achieved while
maintaining real-time performance for large networks. In recent work, linear and
nonlinear control functions have been integrated into the MATE algorithm in such
a way that iterations for nonlinear functions are localized within the subsystem
they are acting on, thus maintaining very fast real-time overall system solution
speeds. On the hardware implementation, OVNI has been mapped into a multi-PC
architecture than allows for linear scaling of the solution speeds by simply
adding additional computational nodes. The speed and flexibility of the OVNI
solution and its very efficient handling of nonlinear control functions makes it
very well suited for the implementation of the new solutions that are being
developed for the simulation of large disaster scenarios discussed in the
preceding talk. José R. Martí is a Fellow Member of the IEEE. He has a Ph.D. degree from the University of British Columbia where he studied under the supervision of Prof. Hermann W. Dommel. Dr. Marti is known internationally for his work on transmission line modelling and on real time simulation. He is a Professor at the University of British Columbia where he leads the real-time power systems simulation group. At present, he is also the lead researcher on a $1.1 million dollar grant by the Government of Canada to develop innovative solutions to mitigate large disaster situations involving multiple infrastructure systems. Dr. Marti is the current Past-Chair of the IEEE Vancouver Section and a registered professional engineer in the Province of British Columbia. Mazana (Lukic) Armstrong (M'98) received her degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Zagreb, Croatia, in 1995. She obtained the Master of Applied Science degree from The University of British Columbia in 2000 and she is currently pursuing a Ph.D. degree at this institution. Her main research interests are development and implementation of new solution techniques for off-line and real-time simulations of large power system networks. She is an IEEE member and the Chair of the IEEE Vancouver Section Industry Applications Society.
Other Information
APC2005 -- Advanced Process Control Applications for Industry Workshop May
9-11, 2005 For more information, visit http://ieee-ias.org/apc2005/.
Tour of PowerTech Labs Organised by Vern Buchholz, P.Eng. Date
and Location: Space
is Limited!! Please RSVP to Roya Rahbari : The tour will begin with a short presentation from 6:00 to 6:15 p.m on PowerTech Labs. The organization and history of the company and the function of each Business Unit will be reviewed by Mr. Vern Buchholz, P.Eng. The tour will cover some of the main areas of the company. Toured areas include:
Vern Buchholz has over 25 years experience in the electric industry. He came to Powertech Labs in 1984 from the Transmission Engineering Group at BC Hydro. He has been the Director of the Electrical Technologies Business Unit at Powertech Labs since 1994. Vern's projects include work on medium and high voltage cables and accessories, grounding apparatus, electrical connectors, commercial electrical equipment and high impedance fault detection. He is a Senior Member of the IEEE, and very active in the Insulated Conductors Committee of the PES. He is presently the Chair of the IEEE Working Group P1617 "Guide for Detection, Mitigation and Control of Concentric Neutral Corrosion in Medium Voltage Underground Cables".
NRC - Micro Fuel Cell Project Kevin
Stanley and Hengbing Zhao Date
and Location: Please
RSVP to Roya Rahbari : Micro fuel cell topology and microvalves Below approximately 100 cubic centinetres the traditional plate and frame architecture for fuel cells is no longer appropriate. A novel fuel cell design stressing manufacturability and volume will be presented. The compromises between size, cost and performance will be discussed. To further reduce the overall size of a micro fuel cell system, the fluidic balance of plant must be minimized. A piezoceramic micro valve designed for micro fuel cell applications will be presented and discussed. Kevin Stanley is currently leading the Micro Fuel Cell project at the National Research Council Institute for Fuel Cell Innovation in Vancouver BC. He has received awards for innovation and leadership from the institute for this work. Mr. Stanley received his Masters degree from Simon Fraser University in 1999 and his Bachelors degree in 1997. He is currently completing his PhD at the same institution. Mr. Stanley's research interests include low cost micro fabrication techniques, micro sensing, micro fluidics and micro fuel cell systems. Hengbing Zhao received his Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from Zhejiang University, China, in 1999. He worked on electric vehicle control at the department of electrical and computer engineering of Yokohama National University in Japan for one year. Then he joined Myway Labs Co. Japan and worked on the distributed energy conversion systems until 2002. He is currently a research associate in Microtechnology and Sensing Group at the National Research Council Institute for Fuel Cell Innovation. His current research interests include micro fluidic control and micro fuel cell systems. APC2004 -- Advanced Process Control Applications for Industry Workshop April
26-28, 2004
For more information, visit http://www.ieee-ias.org/apc2004.
MU ANALYSIS BASED CONTROLLER ARCHITECTURE EVALUATION FOR THE FUEL PROCESSOR IN A FUEL CELL POWERPLANT Dr.
Mihai Huzmezan, PEng Date and Location Mon
Feb 23, 2004 (3:00pm) Please
RSVP to Roya Rahbari , Abstract The fuel processing system (FPS), a key subsystem in stationary fuel cell powerplants, converts hydrocarbon based fuel into a hydrogen rich stream. The FPS consists of a reforming stage producing hydrogen and followed by water-gas shift and preferential oxidation reactors for CO cleanup. Catalytic partial oxidation (CPO) is a promising technology for fuel reforming due to the simplicity of the system and the energy efficiency. However, the reactions in a CPO reactor are highly exothermic and hence tight regulation of fuel and air is required to prevent temperature excursions that can damage the catalyst. For this system, an advanced, low order, nonlinear, control architecture has been designed. A robustness analysis using the structured singular value (mu) is presented for both the baseline and the advanced controllers. The plant model is derived from linearization of a physics based system level dynamic model. Multiplicative uncertainty is assumed in the output channels. For the robust stability analysis, uncertainty is added in the fuel flow, the air flow and the CPO temperature. For robust performance analysis, uncertainty is added in the fuel and the air flows. The performance metric considered is disturbance rejection from the power plant load signal to the reformer air-to-fuel ratio.
Tests for robust stability and performance reveal the benefits of the advanced
controller in coping with uncertainty. The baseline controller has a peak mu value
greater than unity and does not guarantee the required robust performance. On
the other hand, the advanced controller satisfies the robust performance criterion.
System identification experiments using sineweep excitations have been conducted
on a full scale FPS system. Frequency responses for the relevant input-output
pairs were identified using a non-parametric method. The results were directly
used to perform robustness analysis with uncertainty models also extracted from
experimental data. Biography
Dr. Mihai Huzmezan, Project Leader with United Technologies Research Center and also Adjunct Professor with the Department of Anesthesia, University of British Columbia (UBC), Vancouver, Canada, received the B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees in 1991 and 1993, respectively, from the University "Politehnica", Bucharest, Romania in Aerospace Engineering. The Ph.D. was received in 1998 from University of Cambridge, UK in Aerospace Control Engineering. A Postdoctoral position was held between 1998 and 2000 with the Pulp and Paper Research Center, UBC followed by an Assistant Professor position between 2000 and 2003 with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, UBC. His current research includes adaptive control, closed loop identification, constrained predictive control, uncertainty propagation through dynamic systems, automatic drug delivery, process control, pulp and paper applications, and aerospace reconfigurable control. IEEE Senior, Canadian Space Institute (CASI), American Institute of Aeronautics and Aerospace (AIAA) and the Instrumentation Society of America (ISA), Member
For more information, please contact our Chapter Chair, Roya Rahbari () APC 2003 Seventh Annual Advanced Process Control Workshop The seventh annual Industrial Applications Society workshop on Advanced Process Control Applications for Industry (APC) was held on April 28 to 30, 2003 in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. The workshop was well attended by advanced control practitioners from across Canada, the United Sates, Australia, Sweden, UK, and Germany. The workshop provides an excellent forum for users, developers and academic researchers in the field of advanced process control. This is a unique opportunity for engineers in a wide variety of industries to exchange experiences and lessons learned through the application of these emerging technologies in many different industrial environments. Lectures from recognized experts in academia and industry on new techniques are complemented with real world application issues and discussions from plant engineers that apply these technologies. A mini tradeshow concurrent to the workshop provides additional value by allowing participants a chance to see the latest developments in commercially available advanced control technology. The first day of the workshop was a full-day tutorial presented by IEEE Distinguished Speaker Dr. Jan Maciejowski of the University of Cambridge. The tutorial discussed Model Predictive Control (MPC) design, cost function alternatives, disturbance rejection schemes, and performance analysis. The workshop featured half-day tutorials by Dr. Lennart Ljung of the Linköping Institute of Technology in Sweden on system identification techniques and by Dr. Graham Goodwin of the University of Newcastle in Australia on control of constrained systems. Dr. Robert Kosut of SC Solutions in Sunnyvale, California gave a feature presentation on applications of advanced control technology in semiconductor manufacturing. Eight
papers rounded out the workshop program. Topics covered include industrial implementation
examples of model based predictive control designs, multivariate data analysis
and modeling, and process simulation.
Bill Gough, APC'03 Vice Chair
The
APC workshop committee did an excellent job organizing the event:
From Semi Fuel-Cells to Hybrid Electric Vehicles and Solid Oxide Fuel Cells Dr.
Nigel P. Fitzpatrick
Date and Location Dec
18, 2002 at 6:00 pm Please
RSVP to Roya Rahbari ,
Abstract In the 1980's Alcan International, supported by the National Research Council and Transport Canada, executed an aluminum semi fuel cell1 or aluminum-air battery program. This work launched important several products that are available today. Low and medium power density aluminum systems are compared against a background of power source market niches, including industrial and military applications, to arrive at general commercial conclusions on metal-air that may also be applicable to more conventional fuel cells. The metal-air work resulted in hybrid vehicle demonstrations and the benefits and challenges of a hybrid fuel cell battery approach are discussed. The on semi fuel cell hybrids widened the window for fuel cells as energy source start up time and power density concerns were eased while lower voltage stacks are enabled by the presence of a battery. Companies
that exist today as a result include UQM on AMEX, as well as FCT and AZD on the
TSX Venture exchange. The talk illustrates the aluminum and solid oxide fuel cell
products of FCT and includes results presented by
Biography
Nigel Fitzpatrick has thirty plus years of experience in advanced energy research and project management and twenty years of experience in advanced power sources. He was the founding CEO of Azure Dynamics. He also founded and served as vice president of Alupower Canada Ltd. (now Fuel Cell Technologies Ltd. FCT on TSX Venture Exchange), while being technical director of Alcan International Ltd. and board member of Alupower-Chloride Ltd., a joint venture with Hawker Battery Group. At
BC Research from 1994 to 1999, he led vehicle emissions testing, the analysis
of thermal efficiency, development of lean-burn fuel systems and lightweight vehicle
structures. Nigel obtained his doctorate in metallurgy from the Imperial College
where he was funded by the Admiralty. His interest in the rationale of energy
technologies and his hope that oil users will learn from their mistakes was sparked
long ago. As a boy, in 1956, he rode his renewably powered bicycle alongside a
column of armored vehicles as they were being embarked for Suez and ignominious
political failure when the UK and France went to war without the sanction of the
United Nations. The Advent of the Intelligent Machine Age Prof.John
A. Meech
Date and Location Tue
Jan 07, 2002 at 6:00 pm Please
RSVP to Roya Rahbari , print_mail_to_link("Roya.Rahbari","nrc.ca")">
Abstract The changes taking place in our industries and society as we enter into the 21st Century are extensive. Over 100 years ago, the generalist was the premier scientist or engineer. People like Edison, Tesla, Bell and others took a very broad approach to their research and delved into many different fields. During the 20th Century, the specialist became the dominant scientist and we have seen the proliferation of a myriad of unique, yet interconnected fields. As
our systems however are becoming more and more complex, as we demand more and
more for our software and hardware applications, it is increasingly difficult
to continue evolving such a specialty approach. Concern for the environment and
sustainable development are forcing a rethinking to how we engineer solutions
in the future. Technology today must incorporate many aspects of the "softer-sciences"
to be truly optimal. This presentation will describe some of the high-tech applications
taking place in a rather ancient and conservative industry - Mining. The use of
telerobotics, GPS systems, soft sensors, AI software and remote operation on a
continental basis will be described. The Machine Age has arrived and we will see
major transformations in our society and industries over the next 50 years.
Biography
John Meech is Professor of Mineral Processing in the Department of Mining and Mineral Process Engineering at the University of British Columbia. Dr. Meech began his career in 1969 working for Roan Consolidated Copper Mines in Zambia. After a 4 year stint in Africa, he returned to Canada and joined the Mining Engineering department at Queen's University where he taught courses and conducted research on flotation, precious metals processing, iron ore recovery processes, process control, simulation modeling and artificial intelligence applications in the mineral industry. In 1989, Dr. Meech joined the department of Mining Engineering at UBC where he has continued his research and teaching activities. Over the years he has also conducted research on a number of industrial environmental problems and he was recently appointed Director of CERM3 - The Centre for Environmental Research in Minerals, Metals and Materials. The Canadian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy selected Dr. Meech as a Distinguished Lecturer for the year 2000. A professional engineer, Dr. Meech is a CIM Fellow (1992), and a member of the Society of Manufacturing Engineers, the North American Fuzzy Information Processing Society, and IEEE Systems, Man and Cybernetics Society. In 1997, he was instrumental in founding IPMM - Intelligent Processing and Manufacturing of Materials - an international group of about 400 people with a common interest in intelligent methodologies. The fourth IPMM conference is scheduled for Sendai, Japan in May 2003. He has presented over 20 workshops for industry on Artificial Intelligence Methods since 1988.
For more
information, please contact our Chapter Chair, Roya Rahbari ()
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