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.