Reflection on The first Potluck ever in CHBE

Hosted by Ms. A, the CHBE grad club organized a potluck on 12:30PM, Friday, May 5, 2015 in the newly rennovated Tyler Lewis Graduate Lounge. Eight people brought 10 items of food (Persian, Indian, Kazakh and Asian), which was enough for more 20 people. I brought a noodle dish with Korean bean paste, which I jokingly called it "Haricot Noodles". Also, a thumb-up for A's excellent dish!

CHBE Graduate students takes their portion of food.

The event went very smoothly with all the attendees enjoying the food while chatting with friends. At first, we were worried that no one will show up as no email was sent out. But about 20 people showed up and it was fun. To my surprise, V. showed up with a guitar and played some songs. He is very good at it!
A complaint by A. is that people are not appreciative of the effort. A few people left their cup with some coke on the table without throwing them away. One solution is to ask people at the start of the event to be responsible with their waste and make sure to remove their leftover food into the garbage bin.
Also, when we were sending out invitation, many students are reluctant to bring some food to share Their excuse is that they are not good cooks. My advice was to buy some food.
All in all, I think the events are very very well run. I hope we will organize one next time. Maybe instead of a barbecue election, we can have a potluck election!

Abstract: Pellet durability in light rain condition

In the face of climate change, wood pellet is increasingly used as an replacement to coal or heating oil in residential heating and power generation. British Columbia is the Canadian biggest exporters of wood pellets with over one-million metric-tonnes produced in 2014. During the journey from the rainy BC coast to the consumers, pellets are exposed to weather element during loading at the port; pellet moisture content are increased from initial moisture content of 5%. Current loading protocol is to stop loading at any event of rain, regardless of the rain intensity, to prevent deterioration in pellet quality. However, some recent research observed that an increase from 5% to 8 or 9% in moisture content does not significantly decrease pellet durability, implying that pellet quality is acceptable at light rain conditions.

A robust experiment has to be conducted to confirm whether loading should be allowed under light rain conditions. With the financial support of the Pinnacle Renewable Energy Inc., my research simulated the different rain intensities by applying water on the pellets at different rates and time. It shows that at rain intensity less than 0.5 mm/hr, loading of pellets may continue for more than 1 hour, before mechanical durability of pellets drops below 96.5%. This result showed that loading of wood pellets during light rain conditions (rain intensity less than 0.5 mm/hr) may be continued for an extended amount of time.

The youtube video show a separate minor study on the swelling of wood pellets where the volume changes over time are measured. The objective of this test is to quantify the difference in the swelling volume between moist air wetting and spraying wetting. The pellets swell faster under moist air condition than spraying condition. This may be due to the slow adsorption of liquid water droplet through the pellet surface.

Reflective entry: Deep Cove Hiking Trip by CHBE GSC

Yesterday was an awesome day to go to Deep Cove Quarry Rock trail. It was perfectly sunny and the ambient temperature was about 16 degree celsius, as comfortable as the environment in an air conditioned room.

After the initial commotion regarding the limited vehicle seats, 14 of us in two car (one was driven by me, another was driven by Dr. Y.) and a mini van (driven by M, the main organizer of the hiking trip) to Deep Cove.

The trip to Deep Cove was surprisingly long. With the rush hour traffic at close to 5 PM, it took me about 1 and a half hour to arrive at the destination. Mine was the last one to arrive at Deep Cove. Anyhow, we took a group photo and move on to hike the trail to Quarry Rock.
Although some of us were first time hikers, everyone was able to reach Quarry Rock view point in less than 45 minutes. It was a great achievement!

At the Quarry Rock, we relaxed our body and took many pictures. We were joined by another group of friends. After staying at the Quarry Rock for about 30 minutes, we decided to descend, so that we can have dinner at Cazba Restaurant. It was about 7:30PM. M was making the seat reservation on the Quarry Rock. Cazba was a very nice place to have dinner. I got a lamb shank with some spiced rice and salad. I really enjoyed.

The thing that I least enjoyed was driving. I am very used to relax on the bus and read my ebook. When I was driving, I had to focus on driving and that was a bit boring.
As for the organization of the event, as the President of the CHBE Graduate Student Club, I wish to train the next generation of leaders in the CHBE graduate student community. M was one of the promising leaders. Although the way he handles fund is a bit chaotic (he refunded drive mileage to other one other driver without receipt), he and another grad student, F had successfully organized the trip and smoothened any issues that occurred. It was them who convinced Dr. Y to participate in this event.

My hope is that M, I and the rest of the CHBE GSC committee can come to an agreement regarding how to financial will work. I am hoping to keep some funds to build in-group incentive for the committee members themselves. For instance, the fund can be used to organize end of term hangouts with the executive and committee members, attend professional workshop, visit plants and also pay for the refreshment during the monthly meetings.
I sincerely hope that everything will go better this term. I know I, with the help of all the enthusiatic committee members, will be able to make the CHBE GSC more successful than past two years.

My Election Platform for UBC CHBE GSC Presidential Election

Dear friends,

My name is Jun. I am a 1st year PhD student in the Chemical & Biological Engineering department. I was a Master's student in the CHBE department from 2013 to 2014. I currently serve as the secretary of the CHBE Graduate Students Club and served as VP Communications in 2013/2014 committee.

I wish to announce my intention to be a candidate for president of the CHBE Graduate Students Club in the upcoming election on Monday, April 27, 2015 (Link of Event). I strongly hope to improve the structure of CHBE Graduate Students Club operations and to engage you (fellow grad students) in the organization of events.

My wish is to build a strong graduate student community in the CHBE department and to foster leadership among graduate students who will keep the graduate club activities running in the future.

My goals as the president of the CHBE Graduate Students Club:

• To create a guidebook, which will provide details on the roles of executive members, the annual budget and an agenda of events that will help steer the activities of the club; the guidebook shall be updated annually.
• To organize more social events, such as hiking trips and barbecues during the summer time, and special occasion events, such as Thanksgiving, Halloween and Christmas parties;
• To organize career and academic workshops throughout the winter/spring terms for personal development;
• To establish the weekly coffee break tradition as a forum for grad students to voice their concerns and feedback regarding their experience in the department;
• To help improve the working environment of the grad students by conveying their concerns to the department.

Qualifications:

• Have more than 2 years of experience working in the CHBE Graduate Students Club;
• Possess excellent administrative and organization skills;
• Served as the administrative coordinator for CHBE/APSC Research Day in 2013 and 2014;
• Am enthusiatic and reliable, as evident in the organization previous grad club events.

I hope that you will vote for me to build a better, more engaging community in the CHBE department.

Yours sincerely,
Jun Sian Lee

Improving my learning through reflective writing

From this article "Improving learning through reflection - part one" by Karen Hinett and my sustainability leadership CHBE 573 course, I have learnt that reflection is one of the best way to reinforce what you have learnt in reading and activities. It helps "individual learners to understand what, how and why they learn. It is also about developing the capacity to make judgements and evaluating where learning might take you.

The general steps for reflecting on what happened or what have one learnt are shown in the picture below.

Source: https://www.kent.ac.uk/learning/PDP-and-employability/pdp/reflective.html

Following my discussion with my dad, I am convinced to start reflecting on my experimental work by asking:

1.Why did I use this method? 

2. What has worked out? What has not? Why is that?

3. What is the best method to record my thinking? Personally I think the best way is to write it down on a piece of paper, which may get lost.

Also, when I am feeling down and unhappy, I should write down:
1. what happen? Who are the one involved?
2. why do I feel this way? Did I experience one of the ten mental distortions?
3. How can I improve my feeling? Should I accept the feelings and move on? Or, should I do something to improve the situation?

First hand experience with UBC Academic English Support (AES) Program

Today I had an appointment with my coach, Emily from UBC Academic English Support (AES) Program. She is an very attentive person and a great listener.
I am definitely happy that I joined the program. I am very grateful that Hasti, my colleague in my research group, introduced this program to me.
I really think that this program will improve in my writing skills and my note-taking skills, as well as my speaking skills.

Emily taught me an english idiom
You are preaching to the converted.
From idiom.thefreedictionary.com, it means: try to convince someone who is already convinced,
Emily said it eloquently: I agree 100% (before I tried to convince her on a matter)

Academic English Support (AES) Program Flyer