September 18, 2024
Canadian Metal Working featured our research.
September 13, 2024
I.M3 featured our research.
July 21, 2024
Yahoo! Tech featured our research.
Copyright: Yahoo! Tech
July 23, 2024
INNOVATION NEWS NETWORK featured our research.
July 24, 2024
Recycling Today featured our research.
Copyright: Recycling Today
July 25, 2024
ANA News featured our research. New Way to Recycle Steel Developed
July 28, 2024
Recycling International featured our research. Green steel next stop for Canadian researchers
Copyright: Recycling International
June 25, 2024
Professor Azimi is among 14 Candidates who received the Connaught Innovation Awards.
June 23, 2024
List 23 featured our research: A new approach to recycling steel has been developed to improve the industry's sustainability
June 19, 2024
Science Blog featured our research: New Steel Recycling Method Could Help Decarbonize Manufacturing, Create A Circular Economy
June 18, 2024
Tech Xplore featured our research: A new way to recycle steel could reduce the industry's carbon footprint
June 12, 2024
UofT Engineering New featured Professor Azimi and Jay Paeng in an interview titled This new way to recycle steel could reduce the industry’s carbon footprint.
July 2023
Canadian Light Source, featured Professor Azimi in an interview titled Recycling precious metals from electronic waste with captured CO2.
July 2023
CJWW Radio featured Professor Azimi in an article titled Canadian researcher developed method to recover critical minerals from recycled electronic waste.
July 2023
TECH EXPLORIST featured Professor Azimi in an article titled Using captured CO2 to recycle precious metals from electronic waste.
April 2023
August 2022
October 2021
Chemistry World, featured Professor Azimi and her research group in an interview titled New process could turn scrap metal into hi-tech steel in demand for cars and alloys
April 2021
TVO featured Professor Azimi and her research group in an interview titled Can Ontario boost EV battery recycling before it’s too late?
December 2020
CBC News: The National featured Professor Azimi and her research group in an interview titled "Longer-lasting, repairable technology would be greener, experts say"
November 2020
Professor Azimi presented a Plenary talk at CCEC 2020 Plenary: Emerging Leaders in Chemical Engineering titled "Beyond Lithium Ion Batteries: Development of Next Generation of Aluminum Ion Batteries with Superior Performance".
July 2020
The University of Toronto Engineering News featured Professor Azimi in an article titled "New Canada Research Chairs boost research into clean air and sustainable resource extraction".
June 2020
The CIC NEWs featured Prof. Azimi in an article titled "Meeting a critical need in a supercritical way".
May 2020
The Wiley Network featured Prof. Azimi in an article titled Women in Engineering: An Interview With Gisele Azimi.
August 2019
National Post featured our research program in an article titled The forgotten factor in Donald Trump's quest to buy Greenland — rare-earth elements by Genna Buck.
Quotes from the article:
"That has to change, says Gisele Azimi, principal investigator at the University of Toronto’s laboratory for strategic materials — because disused devices are a vast, untapped source of relatively pure rare-earth elements that could be extracted and re-used.
If all the rare-earths currently locked up in old devices could be recycled, “We would be good for a long time,” she said.
Even if you take your old iPad to a reputable recycler, most likely only the glass and plastic parts will be extracted, Azimi said. The “powder” containing rare-earth elements is simply discarded.
Azimi’s lab has developed a way to extract rare earths from devices. It uses carbon dioxide to dissolve them, while other processes use acids that generate a lot of nasty waste products. However, the process has yet not been scaled up, though she hopes that see that within a decade. In the meantime, it’s much cheaper to continue sourcing rare earths from China.
Azimi is not holding out hope for Greenland as an alternative solution. The environmental impact of mining for rare earths is profound, and even if it was to happen, the process to get new mining operations off the ground takes decades — and that’s time we don’t have.
With her research team, Azimi has run several calculations looking at different possible future scenarios with respect to rare earths.
If, for instance, we actually increased our use of wind turbines globally, enough to achieve the environmental target of keeping carbon dioxide under 450 parts per million in the atmosphere, we’d be in danger of running out of some rare earths within just 10 years, rather than 100.
“It would be a significant challenge, and not a particularly strange thing to have happen,” she said. “Demand could be exponentially far from supply.”
Personally, Azimi holds on to her devices for as long as she can, and she’s keeping her old ones until there’s a recycling process in place that is able to extract rare earths.
Either that will have to happen, or a lot of new, and potentially environmentally damaging, mines will have to open or expand, or we’ll have to find some other solution. Without rare earths, our increasingly connected, technologically dependent world could face a sort of smartphone-ocalypse."
May 2019
Chatelaine featured our research program in an article titled The Real Environmental Toll of Your Smartphone by Takara Small.
Quotes from the article: "Excessive mining also threatens the future of local growth in developing countries by depleting natural reserves and curtailing local manufacturing growth, says Professor Gisele Azimi, a chemical engineering professor at the University of Toronto. “It’s not just the environmental damage,” she says. “If the materials aren’t being recycled, you’re generating high levels of new e-waste and the industry will face supply shortages in the next 10 years and costs will skyrocket.”
Azimi and her team at University of Toronto have created a process that allows companies to recycle elements found in electronics in as little as one hour. While not commercially available just yet, she sees it as the future of electronic waste and a way to lessen the pressure placed on the environment.
“If you can enable green technology it’s a big win for companies and the environment,” says Azimi."
November 2018
Professor Azimi received Dean's Spark Professorship.
Twenty-seven U of T Engineering assistant professors have been appointed to early-career professorships across three new programs for tenure- and teaching-stream faculty members. The professorships, created by Dean Cristina Amon, will enhance research in emerging areas and practices in engineering education across the Faculty.
Please read the full article here on UofT Engineering News.
November 2018
U of T Engineering recognized Tenova Goodfellow as one of the three key industry partners at its annual Industry Partners’ Reception on Wednesday, Nov. 14, 2018. Tenova Goodfellow is one of our partners to develop more energetically efficient techniques for the steelmaking industry.
Manager of Research and Design, Metals Division Mr. Vittorio Scipolo of Tenova describes the partnership as “very positive,” yielding promising results across all objectives.
“We’ve gained fundamental knowledge on high temperature materials and on the actual composition of steelmaking waste,” he says. “In particular the waste valorisation portion of the project has already provided few good insights on how to better transform the waste material into a valuable resource.” “[But] the most rewarding part of the collaboration has been to be able to create a very collaborative and friendly environment. Results and next steps are always discussed together driven by passion and a desire to do better.”
In her nomination of Tenova for the award, Professor Azimi wrote "Tenova’s team goes above and beyond the level of engagement that is expected in a collaborative research program. I strongly believe Tenova Goodfellow has demonstrated a great passion to fostering fruitful collaboration with my group that have positively impacted my group’s research excellence".
Please read the full article here on UofT Engineering News.
May 2018
Engineering Newsletter of the Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering featured our research program in an article titled Mining your phone: Recovering rare earth elements from e-waste, authored by Tyler Irving. In the same issue of the newsletter the topic of our research was also mentioned in a message from Dean Cristina Amon.
September 2017
“Valor Econômico”, the most prestigious newspaper in Brazil in the areas of economy and finance, interviewed Professor Gisele Azimi during the 17th Brazilian Mining Congress and EXPOSIBRAM 2017. You can find the full article here (in Portuguese).
August 2017
During the Rare Earth Research Conference, held in Ames, Iowa in June 2017, C&EN Magazine spoke with Professor Gisele Azimi on rare earth elements and their increasingly important role in our society today. You can read excerpts of the exchange here.
