SOUSCC 42 @ UWindsor

The Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry at the University of Windsor welcomes undergraduate students from across Ontario to the 42nd Southern Ontario Undergraduate Student Chemistry Conference on Saturday, March 29, 2014.

This conference provides an opportunity for undergraduates to present and discuss their research, to meet other chem students from across the province, and to interact with academic and industrial researchers.

For more information, visit the SOUSCC web site:

http://souscc.cs.uwindsor.ca/

Pot Luck lunch: celebrating St. Patrick's Day and the arrival of spring!

Join us for Chemistry and Biochemistry’s

POT LUCK 2014

(A potluck is a gathering of people where each person or group of people may contribute a dish of food prepared by the person or the group of people, to be shared among the group.)

To celebrate: St. Patrick’s Day/Spring

When: Friday, March 21st, 2014, 12:00 noon-1:30 p.m.

Where: Conference Room, 273, Essex Hall

Students, Staff & Faculty Welcome

$2 DONATION AT DOOR

If you have a favourite dish you would like to bring, see Marlene or Cathy, or sign the sign up sheet in office!

Chemist discovers shellfish material that may help prevent algal blooms

Chemist discovers shellfish material may help prevent algal blooms 

Harmful algae blooms like the massive one that afflicted Lake Erie in 2011 are a serious threat to our waterways, but a chemistry researcher and his industrial partners are testing a new method of filtering agricultural wastewater with the help of an unexpected material: ground up shrimp and lobster shells.

Chitosan is a material made by treating crushed shellfish with sodium hydroxide, and professor Bulent Mutus is discovering that various forms are effective in lab tests at removing micronutrients, phosphates and metals like copper, zinc, and iron from greenhouse wastewater.

“There’s an inexpensive and plentiful supply of these materials, and we’ve been able to prove in concept that this can work,” said Dr. Mutus. “Now we’re just trying to scale it up in to an actual working filter that we can test in the field.”

Algal blooms are the result of an excess of nutrients, including nitrates and phosphates from household products and fertilizer used in agricultural and recreational settings, running off land into streams and rivers that drain in to warmer lakes. A large bloom could remove the water of oxygen fish and other aquatic wildlife need to survive.

To read more of this story, click here to see the full article on the Daily News.