By Neale McDevitt, McGill Reporter
April 6, 2011

When Eyad Jamaleddine came to McGill as an Engineering undergrad four years ago, he wasn’t what you’d call a green warrior. “I had very little prior knowledge of the true severity of the environmental issues we faced,” he said.

Skip ahead to today, and Jamaleddine is the poster boy for ecological engineering, having just been named one of five recipients of the 2011 ECO Canada Student Awards recognizing the excellence in environment-related research being carried out by post-secondary students in Canada, and earning an invitation to present at the American Ecological Engineering Society’s annual conference in North Carolina in May.

The accolades are for Jamaleddine’s composting bioreactors project – a system he’s been working on for the past four years under the guidance of Grant Clark, a professor in the Department of Bioresource Engineering, and with the help of Cloé Rainville, another undergraduate student from the Department.

Efficient & cheap to build

Jamaleddine’s composting bioreactor is brilliant for its simplicity and efficiency – and its low cost. Comprised of a 200-litre plastic barrel, a heater core, copper tubing and a metal frame, the system is able to harness a compost bed’s natural heat – which can reach 70ºC in the thermophilic phase – and distribute it uniformly throughout the compost.

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