Swinburne Magazine Issue 10, July 2010

www.swinburne.edu.au

ISSUE 10 | JULY 2010

Network

Electric cars start to rev P6

Vanishing plastics P12

People power from gran’s gift P16

manThe mathematics of consumer protection

ContentsISSUE 10 | JULY 2010

COVER STORY04 Switched-on scholar masters the power game The delivery, affordability and reliability of electricity is constantly challenged. Now comes the puzzle of also fitting in new ‘green’ technologies BRAD COLLIS

EDUCATION’S ROLE IN DRIVING SUSTAINABILITYSwinburne University of Technology’s sense of responsibility in preparing tomorrow’s leaders for the challenges of a rapidly changing, interconnected world means we are embracing a broad concept of sustainability, one that includes interrelated environmental, socio-cultural and financial dimensions. We recognise that students, businesses and our communities need to be equipped to embrace important issues as they emerge – and sustainability is one such issue. We are passionate about sustainability and believe that educational institutions are uniquely placed to contribute to the future. We are especially confident that as a dual-sector university we will have a significant role in the future of Australia through our graduates, staff, research, skills development and organisational effectiveness. In late 2009 we developed a university-wide Sustainability Strategy. This embraces and interlinks teaching and learning, research, people development, and the sustainability of our operations and communities. We did not develop this strategy lightly. It will fundamentally change our organisation. Swinburne has a strategic involvement in sustainability with government at all levels, for example through our National Centre for Sustainability’s involvement in implementing the (national) Green Skills Agreement, and with skilling and re-skilling Australia’s workforce to meet industry’s future requirements. Our relationships with industry and our research, which is highlighted in this edition, helps to transform businesses to work successfully in a low-carbon economy. We are making a real difference.We continue to build strong relationships with local government, community groups and schools through programs that support their emerging needs in knowledge, and sustainability skills. These groups are highly influential in changing households and communities, and in developing sustainability leaders and ambassadors for the future. More than 6000 students have already enrolled in sustainability training and more than three-quarters of our staff have key performance indicators based on sustainability. Behavioural change is critical to the success of our strategy; the high level of engagement and commitment across the university and with our partners reinforces the university’s international status as a leader in the sustainability agenda.This edition of Swinburne draws together some of the research and education developments that illustrate Swinburne’s commitment to sustainability and environmental practice. Join us in shaping a better future.

LINDA BROWNDeputy Vice-Chancellor and Director, TAFE

03 WEB TOOL TO GET US TANKED UP

KELLIE PENFOLD

06 CAR MAKERS HEAR AN ELECTRIC BUZZ Universities and other research bodies in Victoria are teaming up to put Australia at the forefront of electric car technology

BARRY PESTANA

08 FUTURE TRAVELS DOWN A GLASS HIGHWAY Mountains of waste glass that would otherwise go to landfill may soon find a home in Victoria’s roads and footpaths

KARIN DERKLEY

09 SLOW LIFTS A LESSON IN STEP-CHANGE

KARIN DERKLEY

11 SURPRISE FINDINGS IN BUSINESS CARBON CHASE TIM TREADGOLD

Published by SWINBURNE UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY

Editorial coordinator: Julianne Camerotto, Communications Manager (Research and Industry), Marketing Services, SWINBURNE UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY, Melbourne

The information in this publication was correct at the time of going to press, July 2010. The views expressed by contributors in this publication are not necessarily those of Swinburne University of Technology.

Written, edited, designed and produced on behalf of SWINBURNE UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY by CORETEXT, www.coretext.com.au, +61 3 9670 1168

FEATURES

swinburne JULY 2010

SWINBURNE UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY John Street (PO Box 218), Hawthorn, Victoria, 3122, Australia

CRICOS provider Code 00111D ISSN 1835-6516 (Print) ISSN 1835-6524 (Online)

Enquiries: +61 3 9214 8000 Website: www.swinburne.edu.au/magazineEmail: [email protected] eSubscribe to Swinburne magazine: www.swinburne.edu.au/magazine/subscribe

Cover photo: Paul Jones

12 HUMBLE SHELLFISH MAY GIVE US ‘VANISHING PLASTIC’ A truly biodegradable plastic made from a renewable resource, arguably one of the more practical waste-management goals being pursued around the world, is a step closer through the research of two Australian PhD students CLARISA COLLIS

14 INTERNET POWER MAY NEED COMPUTERS TO SLEEP

DAVID ADAMS

16 HOW GRAN’S GIFT TURNED SUNLIGHT INTO PEOPLE POWER This Swinburne student actually has a lot to teach, after interrupting his studies to build an energy company

TIM TREADGOLD

18 OUR CANNIBAL GALAXY In a fascinating new piece of ‘galactic archaeology’ astronomers have found that up to one-quarter of the Milky Way’s galactic clusters are intruders

JULIAN CRIBB

20 QUEEN TO VIRAL PAWN Mathematicians are attempting to develop algorithms to solve ‘master equations’ that could one day help biomedicine even the odds against infectious diseases

DR GIO BRAIDOTTI

22 AUSSIE AMBITIONS FOR GOURMET TREASURE A Swinburne horticulturalist has travelled to the horticultural and gastronomic home of truffles to help develop truffle growing in Australia

KELLIE PENFOLD

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Network

Electric cars start to rev P6Vanishing plastics P12People power from gran’s gift P16

manThe mathematics of consumer protection

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The International Association of Business Communicators awarded Swinburne magazine a 2010 Gold Quill Merit Award.

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DR MONZUR IMTEAZ is a glass-half-empty kind of chap. He’s not being unduly negative, he just sees wasted opportunity in not being able to fill to the top.In particular he recoils at the thought of

half-empty rainwater tanks, or worse, tanks that can’t hold any more water, just because there’s no simple tool to help people better match storage with catchment.Water is again becoming our most

precious resource – as it used to be when Australians better understood the realities of living on the world’s driest continent – and collecting urban water, in particular, is likely to become crucial for our fast-growing towns and cities.Dr Imteaz’s interest in the re-emerging

popularity of rainwater tanks – which for a period were actually banned by some municipalities – stems from his research at Swinburne University of Technology’s Centre for Sustainable Infrastructure, where he specialises in the development of stormwater as a resource.This under-used water source and the

commercial, rather than scientific, approach to capturing it is driving Dr Imteaz to develop a number of simple tools, building on the STORMKIT system he has already developed, to analyse and design stormwater systems.“House tanks are a good example. People

want to catch the stormwater collected on their own roofs, but tanks are often installed with little or no planning as to whether they are the right size. There are plenty of tanks that will never fill and there are plenty that are too small to capture all the water which is available,” Dr Imteaz says.He says engineers and managers dealing

generally with water and drainage matters either use tedious manual calculations or sophisticated, large, data-dependent programs to perform stormwater analysis and design. The advantages of a tool such as STORMKIT are its accuracy and simplicity.STORMKIT was presented and

demonstrated at the 32nd Hydrology and Water Resources Symposium, held in Newcastle in November 2009, and is now available to water managers and other users.Dr Imteaz is now developing an internet-

based tool to help householders establish

rainfall capture capacity which, with suitable funding to help develop the website, could also be available this year.Corporate and local government

stakeholders regularly employ consultants to analyse the potential water catchment in urban projects, but Dr Imteaz feels that this information – often obtained at a high price – is subsequently used by just a few people, whereas a web-based tool would be available to everyone and could be used over and over again.Using information such as contributing

catchment size, tank volume, geographic location, weather conditions and the water’s intended use, his proposed calculation tool will determine the volume of water likely to be captured each year according to different rainfall scenarios.He notes that historic rainfall figures are

not much help any more. “If you look at Melbourne, it was 650 millimetres for 70 or 80 years. Yet for the past 12 years it has been 360 to 630mm. Therefore, water storages are subject to high rainfall, average rainfall and below-average rainfall.”Near his office on the university’s

Hawthorn campus are two large rainwater tanks with which Dr Imteaz has put his

WEB TOOL TO GET US tanked upSTORY BY Kellie Penfold

theory into practice, establishing their effectiveness and payback period. Applying his calculations to the capture area, he was able to measure by how much one tank was too large to readily fill, and the extent to which the other was too small to capture all available rainfall.The point Dr Imteaz makes is that better

analysis and design before constructing such facilities would significantly improve their effectiveness and cost-benefit.Initially, the proposed tool is for

stormwater capturing analysis for impervious roofs only. But it can be extended for pervious surfaces (such as golf courses and playing fields) by incorporating soil loss parameters.While the complete development of

the proposed tool depends on the success of getting funds from relevant authorities, Dr Imteaz is moving his focus to fog water – to see what value there would be in harvesting moisture created during foggy weather conditions.

CONTACT. .Swinburne University of Technology1300 275 [email protected]

www.swinburne.edu.au/magazine

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Across Australia householders are installing rainwater tanks … without any handy way to calculate the optimum tank size. Swinburne researcher, Dr Monzur Imteaz, has set out to rectify this.

SUSTAINABILITY

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Key pointsSwinburne’s Dr Monzur

Imteaz is developing simple

tools to analyse and design

stormwater systems.

His proposed calculation

tool will determine the

volume of water likely to

be captured each year

according to different

rainfall scenarios.

PhD STUDENT Mohammad Hesamzadeh is already highly regarded as an electrical engineer. He is also building a reputation as an astute, albeit self-taught, energy market economist until he finds time for another degree. Add to that a genius for complex mathematical algorithms and you have a young Swinburne University of Technology researcher who soon may be directly responsible for keeping electricity prices down, vital energy-generation investment up, and the expansion of critical infrastructure such as transmission networks attuned to actual, not estimated, need. These are the sought, but rarely achieved,

outcomes from the entwined engineering and economic elements that underpin something we take for granted – electricity at the flick of a switch.But keeping electricity affordable, reliable

and sustainable in a deregulated and highly competitive national market, when pressure is also building to make room for new sources of ‘green’ electricity that are not yet economic, is a gargantuan task. In fact, finding the right balance within a system in which demand, supply and price are changing

every few minutes, almost amounts to guesswork. The consequence, not surprisingly, is a suspicion that millions of dollars are probably leaking from the economy through inefficient energy match-ups.One of the keys to balancing market

competition with sufficient profits to encourage continued industry investment, plus accommodate new resources such as wind and solar farms, is the transmission network that interconnects all players. In the wash-up of electricity market

deregulation which took place in the late 1990s, the transmission network remains a monopoly (government) infrastructure used by a spread of highly competitive private-sector generators, wholesalers and retailers.Management and the timely improvement

of the transmission network is potentially the best mechanism for ensuring fair, profitable electricity trading, but until Mohammad Hesamzadeh’s work there has been no formula or modelling tool for accurately exercising this control.For example, an issue for the market

regulator – the Australian Energy Regulator

(AER) – is the potential for a large generator to actually restrain supply when transmission networks are close to capacity (such as during a heat wave) to drive up spot prices. But how do authorities (who represent consumers) keep transmission capacity one step ahead of such an unpredictable demand-supply scenario?Transmission networks are also critical for

efficiently bringing new renewable energy online, but again there is no ready-made formula for accurately planning the capacity, location and timing of new transmission investments.

Key points Electricity market

deregulation has increased

the complexity of balancing

supply, reliability and stable

pricing.

Numerous engineering

and economic factors

have to be accommodated

in investment and

infrastructure planning.

All countries with

deregulated electricity

markets have struggled

to find a functional

management model.

Swinburne PhD student

Mohammad Hesamzadeh is

researching the economics

of energy markets.

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We mostly take electricity for granted, but its delivery, affordability and reliability are constantly challenged, and now comes the puzzle of how to also fit in new ‘green’ technologies BY BRAD COLLIS*

Switched-onscholar mastersthe power game

Power researchThe Swinburne Power Engineering Group, led by Dr Nasser Hosseinzadeh, focuses on two areas: renewable energy systems, and power system development and economics.

The group works closely with the Australian Power Institute, the Australian Energy Market Operator, the CIGRE Australian Panel on System Development and Economics, and the Australian Energy Regulator.

PHOTO: PAUL JONES

Swinburne PhD student Mohammad Hesamzadeh is researching the economics of energy markets.

JULY 2010 swinburne

Dr Darryl Biggar, consulting economist at the AER, says this is an issue for deregulated electricity markets around the world. What has been lacking is a tool with sufficient computational power to model all of the components of electricity generation, delivery and consumption and the ability to measure how investment in transmission capacity would affect marketplace competition. The variables that determine this are

numerous and require complex computer modelling that can integrate both engineering and economic factors – two quite disparate matrices.This is where Mohammad Hesamzadeh

steps in. Though still to formally complete his PhD (on the economics of energy markets) under his supervisor, Dr Nasser Hosseinzadeh, who leads Swinburne’s Power Engineering Research Group, Mr Hesamzadeh has already published 15 research papers, five journal papers and has three others under review, bringing international attention to his ground-breaking work. His achievement has been to develop the

first computer model, and future software tool, that can assimilate the engineering parameters of electricity generation, the economics of wholesale and retail electricity markets, and the scale of transmission networks needed to join them all together. The unique aspect of Mr Hesamzadeh’s

approach is that he has been able to conceptualise, intuitively, both the engineering and the economic variables and then undertake the painstaking process of developing a mathematical model that melds them into a functional management tool.A measure of just how difficult this has

been, and why it has never been previously achieved, is that Mr Hesamzadeh has been working 12 hours a day, seven days a week, for three years on this project, conceiving, writing, testing, reworking and retesting complex mathematical equations.He quips with a wry smile that it has been

“brain eating” and that he is exhausted … then adds that the model so far developed has actually really only brought him to another starting point. He feels the progressive introduction of renewable energy from a mix of generation sources will present more challenges for market regulators. He would also like to test his modelling on other complex, environment-dictated markets, such as water. To develop a model able to cope

with numerous, fluctuating scenarios Mr Hesamzadeh has drawn on advanced computer algorithms, which draw on ideas from genetics and gaming principles (such as those that allow optimisation based on a sequential-move game to operate

concurrently within a simultaneous-move game) to find the best strategies in a complex range of interactions.Electricity producers and sellers

effectively become dynamic ‘players’ in a giant multi-faceted market game. And in the real world there is also the unknown impact of the Australian Government’s proposed Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme and Renewable Energy Target.While building the model, Mr Hesamzadeh

has worked closely with industry specialists, particularly Dr Darryl Biggar at the AER, testing his model on real-world conditions.Dr Biggar says Mr Hesamzadeh has made

an important step towards giving regulators a tool for more accurate cost-benefit analyses of transmission investments and the impact on market competition.“The next step will be to see if what

has worked on a comparatively small-scale network of about 20 generators will still work with the added complexities posed by a real world network of 200 generators,” he says.It was the opportunity to work more

closely with the AER and Dr Biggar on actual scenarios that encouraged both Mr Hesamzadeh and Dr Hosseinzadeh to move to Swinburne. Both were previously at Central Queensland University, where Mr Hesamzadeh started his research in 2007. His co-supervisor there was Professor Peter Wolfs, now at Curtin University of Technology in Western Australia.Mr Hesamzadeh had earlier graduated

(top of class) at Shiraz University in Iran, with a diploma in mathematics, a degree in electrical engineering and a masters degree in science. He came to Australia under an International Postgraduate Research Award.Mr Hesamzadeh hopes the Australian

electricity market will soon be the first to benefit from what he has achieved, though Dr Hosseinzadeh points out that others, such as the Californian and European market regulators, are also interested.His long-term ambition is to stay in

research. “I have enjoyed the challenge of the past three years. What we have achieved will be good for Australia … and it is rewarding to have created the beginning – a new approach to modelling – that will be good for science,” he says.

* Brad Collis is author of Snowy – The Making of Modern Australia, the history of the Snowy Mountains Hydro-Electric Scheme.


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ADVANCED SOLAR FACILITY LAUNCHED The Victoria-Suntech Advanced Solar Facility (VSASF), launched in

Melbourne in June, aims to develop the next generation of solar cells. The facility, a collaborative venture between Swinburne University of Technology and Suntech Power Holdings, one of the world’s leading producers of solar panels, has been partially funded by a $3 million grant under the Victorian Science Agenda Investment Fund. The collaboration will provide a platform for the partners to commercialise NANOPLAS, a nanoplasmonic solar cell technology developed at Swinburne. The new cell technology will allow for the efficient collection of solar energy, which could make them twice as efficient as the current generation of cells and significantly less costly to produce and therefore use.

VOTERS AGAINST POPULATION GROWTHMore than two-thirds of Australian voters are against population growth

according to new data from the 2009-10 Australian Survey of Social Attitudes. The survey, held from December 2009 to February 2010 and administered by the Australian Social Science Data Archives at the Australian National University, drew on a random sample of 3142 voters. The data, analysed by Swinburne researcher Associate Professor Katharine Betts, shows that 69 per cent of voters believe Australia does not need more people, while 31 per cent believe it does. It also shows that: women are more likely to want a stable population than men (75 per cent compared to 62 per cent); voters living in Queensland are more likely to say no to growth (73 per cent) than voters in other areas; and voters living in the ACT are the least likely to say no to growth (50 per cent). Voters who wanted growth tended to give economic reasons, while those who wanted stability emphasised the need to train our own skilled workers and the need to protect the environment.

‘MISSION CO2’ GAME LAUNCHEDOnline energy and water-saving game ‘Mission CO2’ has been launched to

encourage people to reduce their impact on the environment. Swinburne and the savewater!® Alliance teamed up to create the interactive resource aimed at creating real-world behavioural changes in Australian teenagers. ‘Mission CO2’ covers the top 70 energy and water-saving ideas, giving teenagers practical tips to use around the house. The educational resource features seven characters, the ‘Carbon Tradies’, who guide players through a 3-D home setting, saving water and energy, reducing waste and choosing efficient transport. Through online play, users learn tips to help them in conserving resources in daily life. See www.missionco2.com

A MILLION WOMEN TO TAKE ACTION ON CLIMATE CHANGESwinburne is a major partner in the ‘1 Million Women’ campaign, a

national initiative created by the non-profit, non-partisan group Climate Coolers that aims to inspire one million Australian women to take practical action on climate change by cutting one million tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2), the main greenhouse pollutant causing global warming. Women, who make 70 per cent of purchasing decisions in the home, are encouraged to make changes to the way they live, shop, commute, travel and buy to enable them to reduce their emissions by at least one tonne of CO2 within a year. The website provides guidance on CO2 saving activities and enables participants to track their progress. Women can join the campaign at www.1millionwomen.com.au

Fast facts


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Universities and other research bodies in Victoria are teaming up to put Australia at the forefront of electric car technology BY BARRY PESTANA

PHOTO: PAUL JONES

Swinburne’s Professor Ajay Kapoor (left), Dr Clint Steele (second from left) and students are driving the university’s collaboration with China’s Hefei University of Technology on electric vehicle development.

advances are changing the face of the automotive industry worldwide, in particular giant strides in battery technology. (Researchers at the Imperial College in London may have developed devices that create their own power.)In Australia, the drive has been

championed by institutions such as Swinburne University of Technology, Deakin University, RMIT University, La Trobe University and CSIRO, which are collaborating with each other and with overseas universities to research and develop lightweight battery-charged electric cars.They are supported by several sponsors,

including the Cooperative Research Centre for Advanced Automotive Technology, the AutoCRC. The CRC was created in December 2005 to secure an Australian position in the global automotive industry. Its participants are eight leading vehicle and component

AS THE WORLD battles to keep a lid on carbon emissions and slow the tempo of climate change, electric cars are once more looking like the alternative to the petrol vehicles the world has come to rely on.All but stalling after an initial burst

of excitement a few years ago, research and development in electric cars is now humming in top gear, with several research institutions pouring talent and resources into producing prototypes of new-generation, and fast, electric cars.In its 2010 research paper on electric

vehicles, the Victorian Automotive Chamber of Commerce (VACC) says technological


largely plateaued due to increasing vehicle mass. “A key enabler for reductions in fuel consumption is reduced vehicle mass, which determines the mass of many other components including suspension and powertrain,” he says. Swinburne’s contribution to this work

is spearheaded by Dr Tracy Ruan, Dr Yat Choy Wong and Professor Chris Berndt. The research focuses on the structural response and energy-absorbing performance of sandwich structures – two composite skin sheets and aluminium foam/honeycomb cores – a technology used in the aircraft industry.Professor Berndt is optimistic that the

weight reductions will be dramatic without compromising road-worthiness or crash resistance, with associated benefits including fuel savings, reduced carbon ‘wheel print’ and materials recycling. But perhaps the most marketable of the

many projects has been the student electric car project, initiated by Professor Kapoor and Dr Ektesabi and supervised by Ambarish Kulkarni. Last year, 15 undergraduates produced an electric car that can reach a top speed of 100 kilometres an hour, with enough battery power to last two-and-a-half hours. Dr Steele, who joined Swinburne this

year and is a senior lecturer at the FEIS, is academic adviser for a project to design and build an electric Formula SAE (Society of Automotive Engineers) race car.Dr Steele is confident the team of students

and graduates will soon have an electric race car that is competitive with a petrol race car and which will also regenerate the energy that is recovered during braking. Construction of this car is about to start.Background gains to come from the

research will be increasing public awareness of advances in electric cars and a generation of university graduates able to supply the automotive industry with skills in electric car development.Dr Steele can already see the skill sets

required in the auto industry changing. “We will also see an increase in the need for qualifications in robotics and mechatronics. And we will need engineers who are part mechanical and part electrical.”Professor Kapoor says the team is

optimistic about its work and its future impact. “Road transport contributes an eighth of total carbon dioxide emissions in Australia. New and retrofitted electric cars will reduce those emissions and help the environment. We are very excited by these projects.”


Electric cars drive industry training opportunities Growing interest in electric cars has seen a wide range of small operations across Australia taking up the electric car slack and offering to switch petrol or diesel cars into electric models.

According to industry website GoAuto.com.au, the drive for electric cars is happening at the same time as a boom in electric scooters, and bicycles with electric motors, as city commuters look for green and cheap transport.

“When it comes to the electric car industry, some organisations trying their hand at the new technology are backyard outfits doing the odd conversion, while a handful of operations are planning serious production levels,” the website says.

All this opens up opportunities for institutions such as TAFEs to offer structured courses.

The Victorian Government, through its Department of Innovation, Industry and Regional Development (DIIRD), has recognised the benefits of developing a ‘green collar economy’ and has provided financial support to institutions such as Swinburne to develop training programs.

Swinburne TAFE’s Wantirna campus is collaborating with the Centre for Education and Research in Environmental Strategies (CERES) to develop two electric vehicle (EV) courses.

The project has attracted $140,000 in funding support from DIIRD, which includes $40,000 from Skills Victoria for course development.

The structure and content of these are based on work that students and staff at Swinburne Wantirna have done in ‘building’ a working electric vehicle from a Holden ‘Combo’ van using 100Ah lithium batteries and a water-cooled, three-phase 60kW motor. The courses are aimed at both professionals – mechanics and auto electricians – as well as passionate hobbyists.

Lecturer Martin Lewis, an electrician by training, became involved in the project after converting his own vehicle in 2008. “The idea is to smooth out the process by avoiding common mistakes and hazards. Being aware of the latest technology and methods not only saves time but produces a better result,” Mr Lewis says.

Two courses have been developed: Battery Electric Vehicle (BEV) Servicing and Maintaining and BEV Retrofitting. The first is currently being accredited and will be available later this year. The second is on hold until new Australian Design Rules regarding EV conversion are in place.

The courses will be driven by Swinburne’s National Centre for Sustainability and its TAFE School of Engineering, Technology and Trades, with involvement by CERES.

CERES researcher Rhys Freeman believes the growing interest in EVs opens up all sorts of opportunities for a range of participants. “The business opportunities for universities in training contractors is already looking very positive,” he says. – BARRY PESTANA

,,Background gains to come from the research will be increasing public awareness of advances in electric cars and a generation of university graduates able to supply the automotive industry with skills in electric car development.

manufacturers, two state governments and 10 research institutions, with a total investment in research and training of $100 million over seven years. Swinburne’s key electric vehicle (EV)

projects are principally funded by the AutoCRC, which in January this year signed a memorandum of understanding with Hefei University of Technology (HFUT) in Anhui, China, to establish a collaborative research project with Swinburne. HFUT is regarded as a leader in EV research in China, with extensive links to that country’s automotive industry.The collaboration will include specific

research in battery charging, control systems and retrofitting, and will see the exchange of PhD students and research staff between the universities.Professor Ajay Kapoor, Associate

Dean, Research, of Swinburne’s Faculty of Engineering and Industrial Sciences (FEIS), along with colleagues Professor Zhihong Man, Dr Mehran Ektesabi, Dr Clint Steele and Dr Weixiang Shen, are the drivers behind the collaboration. Dr Shen heads a group developing a

battery capacity indicator, similar to the petrol gauge in conventional cars, and a battery charger that can re-charge batteries in 30 to 60 minutes, while Professor Man and Dr Ektesabi are well known for their research on control systems for electric cars. Dr Steele and Professor Kapoor are working on retrofitting existing cars with battery and motor systems.Via Swinburne’s Electric Car Drive Train

group, Dr Ektesabi and Ambarish Kulkarni are refining the development of a prototype electro motor wheel design they believe will lower the cost of electric cars. They are collaborating with CSIRO, the Victorian Partnership for Advanced Computing (VPAC) and La Trobe University, with the focus being CSIRO’s switch reluctance motor within the wheel hub, which eliminates the need for a separate motor and drive-train assembly. The weight and energy savings gained could lead to greater efficiencies in terms of kilometres per electrons.For the researchers, the overarching

challenge is to develop a strong, but light electric car that can cover longer distances at acceptable speeds. To this end, via another AutoCRC project, Swinburne has joined with Deakin University, RMIT University and VPAC to investigate and produce a lighter car structure.The AutoCRC’s project leader on this study,

Dr Matthew Dingle, says although engine fuel efficiency has steadily improved over the past decade, fuel economy of typical vehicles has

JULY 2010 swinburne

Key pointsWith other universities

and CSIRO, Swinburne is

collaborating to research

and develop lightweight

battery-charged electric

cars.

The challenge is to develop

a strong, but light electric

car, which can cover longer

distances at acceptable

speeds.

New and retrofitted electric

cars will reduce emissions

and help the environment.

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Future travels down a GLASS HIGHWAYMountains of waste glass that would otherwise go to landfill may soon find a home in Victoria’s roads and footpaths BY KARIN DERKLEY

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ILLUSTRATION: KEN UCHIDA

AUSTRALIANS have become great recyclers of glass, even though not all glass is actually reusable. However, a purpose may just have been found for the growing stockpile of waste glass in many cities and towns.Research at Swinburne University

of Technology’s Centre for Sustainable Infrastructure is looking at ways to make this glass suitable for use in road construction. In Victoria alone, about 250,000 tonnes of non-recyclable glass ends up in landfill, so it represents a sizeable resource to supplement materials used in roads and footpaths.Recycled glass is already used in road

construction in Europe and the US, but each region needs to set its own standards according to local conditions, materials and climate.

In Victoria, VicRoads, which constructs state highways and freeways, and the Municipal Association of Victoria (MAV), which represents local councils that look after local roads, footpaths and bike paths, need to be confident that the new materials would not compromise quality and durability. Currently, crushed glass is allowed, but only up to a maximum proportion of three per cent.Roads generally have three levels: a sub-

base pavement, a base pavement and an asphalt top. The sub-base is the main load-bearing layer of the pavement;; its role is to spread the load evenly over the earth beneath. The quality of the sub-base is crucial – poor construction or use of the wrong materials can cause the upper surface to crack.Materials used in a sub-base must

comprise particles of a shape and size that interlock tightly when compacted to eliminate air gaps and movement.Traditionally quarry rock has been used.

Authorities such as VicRoads require proof that any new material like crushed glass can withstand at least 20 years of heavy traffic. This is where Swinburne comes in.

Dr Arul Arulrajah, an associate professor in Civil and Geotechnical Engineering at Swinburne’s Centre for Sustainable Infrastructure, has previously assessed the suitability of crushed brick as a road construction material.Last year, supported by a consortium of

government and industry groups including Sustainability Victoria, Visy, VicRoads, the MAV and the ARRB Group (formerly Australian Road Research Board), Dr Arulrajah led a team to compare different blends of recycled glass, crushed rock and concrete with traditional quarry materials. Laboratory tests by Dr Arulrajah and his

team, including Swinburne PhD students

Younus Ali and Mahdi Miri Disfani, assessed the mechanical properties of each blend, including the particle density, particle size, plasticity (ability to be shaped), compactability, permeability and load-bearing capacity.The finding – that all the blends with up

to 30 per cent glass matched or exceeded the VicRoads specifications – didn’t actually come as a surprise to Professor Arulrajah, “given that crushed glass is really just like coarse sand”. Even so, it is one thing for a material to

perform under the controlled conditions of a laboratory, and another for it to deal with real-world conditions. Associate Professor Binh Vuong, a senior research fellow with Swinburne’s Centre for Sustainable Infrastructure and a principal engineer at ARRB, has extensive experience in laboratory testing and field construction of recycled and quarry-produced materials. In his joint appointment with ARRB, Professor Vuong had already been involved in the laboratory testing process for recycled glass. His role now is to oversee the field-testing of the blends.

Key pointsAbout 250,000 tonnes of

waste glass are stockpiled

each year in Victoria.

Laboratory testing at

Swinburne has shown that

the glass has the right

qualities to be incorporated

into road base material.

If road trials currently being

conducted are successful,

road base materials could

in future include up to 30

per cent recycled glass,

absorbing all waste glass

produced in Victoria.

swinburne JULY 2010

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SUSTAINABILITYJULY 2010 swinburne

swinburne.edu.au/design

Can you see beyond colour, beyond form? Can you design tools and systems to better protect our environment? Can you design a culture of sustainability? Can you see beyond and realise design’s greater responsibilities? Question Everything.

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Materials recycler the Alex Fraser Group offered the entrance to its Western Metropolitan Recycling Facility in Laverton, Victoria, as the site for a road trial. The road carries a large volume of heavy vehicles. Nine sections of road, each 80 metres long, were laid in November 2009, each using a different blend of recycled glass and recycled concrete or crushed rock, and designed and constructed to the specifications required for arterial and local roads.After six months the test roads are showing

no visible signs of rutting or cracking, the symptoms of a weakening sub-base.In May 2011 the surface will be

scrutinised in minute detail using an ARRB laser profiler. If the study shows the glass blends are of comparable performance to virgin quarry rock, the consortium backing the research will submit a report to VicRoads for its consideration. This may potentially lead to an adjustment in VicRoads’ specifications, to allow higher percentages of crushed glass to be used in crushed roadmaking materials.David Birrell, General Manager Recycling

Industries at the Alex Fraser Group, believes glass mixes will be competitive options for road builders. “To take on a product it has to make both commercial as well as sustainable sense. We have no doubt that this product will be competitive with other road-building materials.”



STORY BY Karin Derkley

SLOW LIFTS A LESSON INstep-change

SUSTAINABILITY has become a buzzword for the early 21st century, evoking worthy ideals … but how are these transformed into reality when much about the way the world functions seems to make people inherently wasteful or destructive?The ideal of sustainability, and the reality

that confronts this, is the conundrum that Professor Frank Fisher is tackling after his appointment as Professor of Sustainability in the Faculty of Design at Swinburne University of Technology and as the convenor of a graduate sustainability program at Swinburne’s National Centre for Sustainability. An electrical engineer, Professor Fisher

was previously an associate professor in the School of Geography and Environmental Science at Monash University. In his new positions at Swinburne, ‘design’ takes on an added dimension – an instrument for modifying people’s behaviour. Good design, he says, makes it easier for

people to do the right thing, and harder to do the wrong thing. Design students are taught to understand

that whatever they design – products, services or systems – will have environmental, cultural and social consequences. These days, sustainability is often as essential to a design brief as economics, function and aesthetics.

Taking this a step further, Swinburne has become the first educational institution to adopt a recently created international Designers Accord set up to establish a new universal standard for sustainability in design and innovation.In parallel with this international

benchmark, Swinburne has launched its own university-wide Sustainability Strategy (see page 10). The strategy aims to make sustainability one of the key drivers in all future planning and service delivery at Swinburne itself. One of Professor Fisher’s jobs is to put this into practice.Once again, design of systems and structures

can lead the way to behavioural change, he argues. Take the way buildings are designed. If you are trying to reduce the use of lifts, for example, and make stair-climbing the social norm, the stairway should be at the centre of any lobby. Invariably though, lifts occupy the centre, with stairs tucked away in a corner. Although there is not much that can be done

about existing lifts at the university, Professor Fisher is doing his best to discourage their use in another structural way – by slowing them to the point where the average able-bodied person would find it more convenient to use the stairs, cutting energy use and increasing incidental

,,Good design makes it easier for people to do the right thing, and harder to do the wrong thing. Professor Frank Fisher CONTINUED PAGE 10

exercise among students and staff. Professor Fisher’s approach to waste

management is similarly direct. He says waste should be labelled for what it is: bad design. “If a product or package cannot be recycled or biodegraded, there is something wrong with its design.”Bins at the Design Centre are now

signposted: ‘Bad Design Disposed Here’.


Swinburne Sustainability Strategy: more than just another policy document

swinburne JULY 2010


New course embeds sustainability in educational practice

complex is a “fantastic opportunity for Swinburne to enhance its green training in critical trade sectors.

“It’s an opportunity to give young kids a wider variety of prospects, plus upskill existing tradespeople and retrain existing workers.”

The facility, funded via a $10 million Australian Government grant, is the first of its kind in Victoria and has strong industry support.

Swinburne’s National Centre for Sustainability has developed and is now teaching Australia’s first accredited course in education and training for sustainability.

The Vocational Graduate Certificate in Education and Training for Sustainability is principally a qualification for teachers, those in vocational education and training, higher education, and secondary and primary schools, who wish to embed sustainability in their curriculum, teaching and assessment, and use education for sustainability as a tool for change.

However, for others interested in making sustainability changes in their community groups, local councils, government agencies, industry and non-government organisations, the course will also enable them to design and implement effective learning and change programs.

Over three core competency units, graduates learn to:

teach, review and design learning strategies to embed sustainability practices within existing programs;plan and implement a learning-based change program for sustainability;conduct action research projects to transform sustainability practices;implement an education-for-sustainability learning strategy; facilitate a broad range of delivery and assessment strategies to support sustainability change; and review business missions and/or business plans, or educational objectives to incorporate sustainability principles.

More informationwww.swinburne.edu.au/ncs/edutrain.html

“ It’s an opportunity to give young kids a wider variety of prospects, plus upskill existing tradespeople and retrain existing workers.”

The Swinburne Sustainability Strategy – Swinburne’s commitment to sustainability – has a set of outcome measures that will ensure all Swinburne courses embed sustainability and that 50 per cent of staff are upskilled by 2015.

With these targets, Swinburne is a leader in the Australian university sector in embedding sustainability in its core business, its courses, its research and the skills of its staff.

For Swinburne, sustainable thinking represents an emerging mode of inquiry, one that questions and seeks to understand whether current products, processes or systems can be continued indefinitely into the future from ecological, social and economic viability perspectives.

Swinburne’s Sustainability Strategy focuses on six interdependent priority directions:

Culture and Stewardship To draw on the leadership, commitment and knowledge of the university and broader community to create a working, learning and research culture that is the benchmark in sustainability for all education providers globally.

Teaching and Learning To ensure that the design, delivery and promotion of education programs develops appropriate discipline-specific expertise, skills and attributes in graduates, which assists them to contribute to a sustainable future within the context of their particular career, profession or trade.Research To ensure that faculties and schools undertake research in a sustainable manner and establish research areas that contribute to sustainability globally.People Development To build a positive enabling culture that embraces sustainability in the curriculum, research and the workplace.Social and Community Sustainability To maximise its dual-sector strengths to create a transformational model for community and sustainable educational partnerships, which embraces social inclusion and diversity.Business and Environmental To be an efficient, effective and sustainable organisation.

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Key pointsGood design is the key to

changing people’s behaviour.

Sustainability is being

integrated into all design

disciplines at Swinburne.

Swinburne has joined a

global accord to encourage

sustainable design.

ILLUSTRATION: KEN UCHIDA

FROM PAGE 9

Tradies turn a greener shade Through ‘green’ training on water-wise plumbing and irrigation systems, recycled greywater and solar insulation Swinburne University of Technology is helping to prepare Australia for a more sustainable, low-carbon future.

Due to be completed in July 2010, Swinburne’s Green Trades Complex will upskill and re-skill builders, plumbers and other construction apprentices in ‘green’ trades, such as traditional plumbing courses in certificates II and III.

Built environment manager at Swinburne TAFE School of Engineering, Technology and Trades Stuart Hoxley says 250 plumbing students will go through the doors of the complex this year. “These are a mix of school-based Vocational Introductory Programs (VIPs) students, pre-apprenticeship and apprenticeship students,” he says.

Mr Hoxley, who manages Swinburne’s plumbing, carpentry, bricking and blocking, painting and decorating, advanced building studies, and fire technology courses says the new

and waste, which typically represent about 95 per cent of an SME’s carbon footprint.”Mr McKenry feels much of the debate

surrounding emissions trading, especially the potential cost involved, has been driven by a fear of the unknown, similar to points raised before the mid-2000 introduction of the Goods and Services Tax (GST).He doubts a carbon emissions trading

scheme will stay on the political backburner and when it does re-emerge the students’ research will be a valuable reference.

More informationTo read the full Swinburne research report visit

www.swinburne.edu.au/ncs/Innovation/climate_change_report.html


A GROUNDBREAKING STUDY by a team at Swinburne University of Technology has found that smaller companies would have little to fear from a Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS) … if or when Australia gets one.Instead of incurring the heavy costs that

some commentators have predicted, small-to-medium enterprises (SMEs) employing less than 200 people are likely to only face fees in the hundreds of dollars a year, which for many would be less than typical annual increases in existing electricity, water and other essential services.The study sheds a different light on

claims that an emissions trading scheme, such as the mothballed CPRS, would impose a significant cost burden on SMEs.Scott McKenry, who supervised the study,

says the cost of an emissions scheme is likely be lost against the background noise of other cost increases. “The research suggests there will not be a significant price incentive to drive investor and consumer behavioural change.”Mr McKenry, team leader in the business

and community services division of the National Centre for Sustainability, says that shelving the CPRS did not affect the importance of the results obtained by the survey.Despite policy backpedalling, he believes

businesses will continue to move ahead. “Early adaptors and innovators will continue to pursue carbon-constrained opportunities because there are clear market opportunities to do so. Energy and resource efficiency is good for business no matter which way you look at it.”The Swinburne study originated from

work undertaken by students as part of the Carbon Accounting course at Swinburne’s National Centre for Sustainability. Each participant in the course undertakes work in their own business (or another business) to develop a carbon inventory and report for the workplace.Until this information was gathered, most

of the data relating to carbon accounting applied to large organisations, such as that collected by the Carbon Disclosure Project. This Swinburne research was therefore

unique because it focused on the footprints

STORY BY Tim Treadgold

surprise findings IN BUSINESS CARBON CHASE

JULY 2010 swinburne

of small-to-medium-sized enterprises with less than 200 employees. “We complemented the data analysis by undertaking surveys to help us understand which businesses were being proactive in carbon reduction,” Mr McKenry says.Before the Swinburne research, most

studies on the cost of emissions trading had a macro-economic focus and examined the impacts on various (mostly carbon-intensive) sectors, such as power stations, aluminium production and mining. This was partly due to the lack of reliable data on small-to-medium-sized organisations.Discovering that an emissions trading

scheme would have minimal impact on most small-to-medium-sized organisations was a surprise to the researchers, Mr McKenry says.“You can chase carbon until you’re blue

in the face. So a boundary was drawn around the process to mainly look at major factors such as electricity, liquid fuels, gas, flights


11

ALUMNISUSTAINABILITY

Key pointsSmaller companies have

little to fear from a Carbon

Pollution Reduction

Scheme.

Taking a different approach

to carbon costs, Swinburne

research focused on

small-to-medium-sized

enterprises.

Researchers were surprised

to find that an emissions

trading scheme would have

minimal impact on most

small-to-medium-sized

organisations.

ILLUSTRATION: ARTVILLE

He says much of the excitement at the university has been generated by a composting machine (respirometer), which allows students to gauge how a project’s applications function in real time, over the course of an experiment.Anchored to a bench at Swinburne’s

Hawthorn campus with heavy chains, the jumble of glass jars and tubes that form the composting machine is used by Ms Chattopadhyay to test novel, chitin-based polymers.Chitin is the world’s second-most

abundant natural polymer and is mostly derived from shellfish waste, but also includes the exoskeletons of crustaceans, insects and spiders. In collaboration with an industry partner,

Ms Chattopadhyay has provided the first

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ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR Enzo Palombo fingers a plastic bag labelled as ‘degradable’: “… in 5000 years,” he quips, before shifting his focus to the slightly silkier texture of a true biodegradable plastic bag.It’s all in the rustle – one of the only

things that immediately distinguishes a biodegradable plastic bag from a regular plastic bag.Biodegradable plastic bags are still

a rarity and a long way from replacing the tough conventional plastic variety manufactured from non-renewable resources. It is this toughness, or durability, that still

makes conventional bags the norm and a worsening environmental headache. Plastic packaging accounts for up to 25 per cent of Australia’s municipal landfill.Researchers at Swinburne University of

Technology believe science might offer a solution.The university is supporting two research

projects investigating bioplastics: one into the use of ingredients from renewable sources, and another into the properties of biopolymers that determine their ‘compostability’.The two projects have brought together

Swinburne PhD students Suchetana Chattopadhyay and Cameron Way, who are examining the properties of bioplastics as part of their respective PhD studies.The Director of Swinburne’s Environment

and Biotechnology Centre, Associate Professor Palombo, is co-supervisor for both students and describes their work as among the most exciting applied projects he has encountered during his 20-year research career.

A truly biodegradable plastic made from a renewable resource, arguably one of the more practical waste-management goals being pursued around the world, is a step closer through the research of two Australian PhD students BY CLARISA COLLIS

HUMBLE SHELLFISHMAY GIVE US‘vanishing plastic’

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JULY 2010 swinburneSUSTAINABILITY

direct evidence of true biodegradability in novel, chitin-based polymers.“Fungi from compost have grown on the

chitin-based biopolymer, proving that this material is biodegradable,” she says.Fungi plays a key role in degrading the

most abundant biopolymers found in nature.Ms Chattopadhyay’s objective to reduce

inorganic landfill has the added aim of finding a biopolymer suitable for food packaging that is derived from raw materials that do not compete with food crops. Up to now, the most common source

of bioplastics has been starch from grains, but there is concern that food production is already under enough pressure from environmental stresses and the emergence of biofuels, without adding a new resource competitor.

External supervisor and the industry collaborator who developed the project’s bioplastic formula, Dr Myrna Nisperos from a specialty food business, says the research is driving the second generation of bioplastics, characterised by plastics biopolymers derived from non-food materials.“Finding a biopolymer that is not

derived from food production is especially significant in developing countries where people depend on starch as a staple food,” Dr Nisperos says.“And we can prove that this second-

generation bioplastics material will degrade in soil within six months or less, which means it can degrade anywhere in landfill conditions.”Dr Nisperos says the project’s future

direction and universal commercial www.swinburne.edu.au/magazine

,,We can prove that this second-generation bioplastics material will degrade in soil within six months or less, which means it can degrade anywhere in landfill conditions.”Dr Myrna Nisperos

PHOTO: PAUL JONES

potential are encouraging, with prototype biodegradable plastics possibly just months away. In a parallel project, Swinburne student

Cameron Way helped develop a sophisticated composting machine at CSIRO’s Materials Science and Engineering division in Clayton, Victoria, under the supervision of Dr Katherine Dean. Mr Way’s machine has allowed him to examine the composition, and mechanical and biodegradation relationships of polylactic acid (PLA)–lignocellulose biocomposites.Since completing the new respirometer

at CSIRO, Mr Way has been refining a technical balancing act between a biopolymer’s competing mechanical and biodegradability properties. In other words, ensuring the bioplastic is strong enough to be used in plastic packaging and then composts when discarded.His research has led him to use a corn-

starch-based biopolymer that is reinforced with lignocellulose fibres.Mr Way says the project exploring the

properties of biopolymers since mid-2006 focused on the larger biodegradable plastics picture.“Overall understanding of consequences

for the future design of biodegradable plastics is frontier science which improves understanding to encourage more direct applications.“An ideal balance of the competing

mechanical and biodegradable properties in the biocomposite would involve improvements in both areas and finding a key bacteria or enzyme that kicks off biodegradability,” he says.Mr Way says biodegradable plastics are

essential to reducing the mounting dilemma of plastics waste: “The petrochemicals used to create plastic packaging will run out one day and we need to find alternatives that are sustainable. “From an environmental perspective,

both the PLA and wood fibres are 100 per cent sustainable, so they reduce the need to use crude oils and conventional plastics, and potentially eliminate long-term waste issues with landfill.“With very strong uptake into the market

and demand outstripping supply in the US, the best use for polylactic plastics is food and beverage packaging because it can be simply thrown into the compost,” he says.


Key pointsA new formula is being

researched for improved

biodegradable plastics.

Shellfish waste is an

alternative to starch from

food crops for making the

bioplastics.

Researchers are close to

balancing the competing

needs of strength

and compostability in

bioplastics.

Associate Professor Enzo Palombo (centre) with PhD students Cameron Way (left) and Suchetana Chattopadhyay.

14

energy;; if you want to put the emphasis on saving energy, then you will run this much slower’. So we’re quantifying the trade-offs for the designers.”Other projects include one in which

Dr Andrew and his Swinburne colleague, Associate Professor Hai Vu are looking at how components of some switches located within routers used to provide internet connectivity can be shut down at certain periods to save energy.In a separate initiative, Dr Andrew is also

proposing to examine how putting computers used in commercial peer-to-peer file sharing networks into a ‘sleep state’ for a period of time will affect energy consumption and the network’s performance.Dr Kerry Hinton, a senior research

fellow at the Institute for a Broadband-Enabled Society (IBES) at the University of Melbourne, says Dr Andrew’s research is particularly needed given the looming ‘energy bottleneck’ – a term used to describe the problems many industry experts foresee developing as the amount of power the internet needs to function continues to grow.“It is essential that the internet and

the equipment it relies upon continuously become more energy efficient,” he says. “Without this, the internet’s growth will ultimately result in an energy bottleneck. If this is not resolved, future growth of the internet may be retarded. This could negatively impact on social and economic developments that rely on the internet.”Dr Hinton says one of the most important

aspects of the work surrounds working out how to use computer ‘sleep states’ to reduce energy consumption.“Get it right and we can make good gains

in energy efficiency. Get it wrong and the energy consumption may actually increase.”Dr Mung Chiang, an associate professor

of electrical engineering at Princeton University in the US and someone aware of Dr Andrew’s work, says that working out how to trade-off technology performance with energy consumption is a demanding challenge to researchers globally.“I believe Lachlan’s research work and

collaborations present one of the most promising efforts to meet that challenge,” he says, noting that it will complement work being done elsewhere around the world – in Asia, the US and the European Union – to ‘green’ the IT industry. “Lachlan’s research program on this topic will naturally form partnerships with some of these.”


ON ANY GIVEN DAY the amount of energy used to power Facebook pages, recipe searches, news sites and all that the internet entails is about 20 or 30 gigawatts – in terms of greenhouse gas emissions, this is roughly the same as the airline industry.That equates to two or three times as

much as Victoria’s total peak electricity generating capacity and although it only accounts for two or three per cent of the energy consumed around the world, the rate at which the internet is growing means this figure is starting to climb – and fast.Dr Lachlan Andrew, associate professor

at the Centre for Advanced Internet Architectures (CAIA) at Swinburne University of Technology, is researching ways in which the efficiency of the internet can be improved to lessen its environmental impact.He is motivated not only by the influence

the internet’s power use is already having on the environment but also by the finite nature of the world’s energy supply.“The total rate of extraction of oil is

approaching its peak and the total rate of energy generation will also reduce,” says Dr Andrew, who joined Swinburne in 2008 after spending three years at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in the US. “The current mindset of ‘x’ per cent growth per annum will have to change. We simply can’t keep increasing our activity because the rate at which we use one of our most

basic raw materials (oil) is going to have to decline.”Drawing on funding he will receive over

the next four years after being awarded an Australian Research Council Future Fellowship, Dr Andrew is proposing a number of projects to investigate ways in which the internet’s energy efficiency can be increased and what effects this has on its performance.One of the projects already underway

is looking at how a computer’s processing speed can be better regulated to minimise energy consumption.Computers can already slow down the

rate at which they process information to save energy, but it is generally only done in an ad-hoc fashion, according to parameters set by the manufacturer. Together with Caltech’s Dr Adam Wierman, Dr Andrew is examining how the mechanism within a computer responsible for controlling processing speed can be manipulated to make PCs’ energy use more efficient, while holding the time a computer takes to complete a job within reasonable limits.Dr Andrew says the point of the research

is not necessarily to encourage more people to adopt the most energy-efficient way of processing but to make them more aware of the trade-offs that are involved.“We’re saying ‘Here’s the trade-off: if

you want to be putting a lot of emphasis on going fast, then you will save this much less

swinburne JULY 2010


Key pointsWorldwide, the internet

currently draws as much

as 20 or 30 gigawatts of

power.

Swinburne researchers are

examining how internet

use can be made more

efficient, for example at

how improved regulation of

computer processing speed

could save energy.

Other investigations focus

on the effects on energy

use of shutting down

components of some

switches in routers and

placing computers used in

peer-to-peer file sharing

networks in sleep states.

SUST

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STORY BY David Adams

INTERNET POWER MAY NEED computers to sleep

PHOTO ILLUSTRATION: JUSTIN GARNSWORTHY

GOT A BETTER IDEA?

Swinburne University of Technology has the academic support, the facilities and the commitment to help realise great research ideas.

Applications close 31 October 2010.

A different tomorrow starts with aSwinburne research scholarship.

CRICOS Provider: 00111D

RESEARCH SCHOLARSHIPS

1800 794 673research.swinburne.edu.au/scholarships/

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swinburne JULY 2010

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Key pointsFormer Swinburne

student’s experiences in

business make for lessons

worth sharing.

Persistence is as necessary

as ideas for success in

business.

Banks and governments

can test entrepreneurial

nerves.

PAUL WILSON will not be the oldest student on campus if he goes through with plans to finish his engineering studies at Swinburne University of Technology, but he will be one of the more successful, and for that he can thank the community’s rush into sustainable energy – and his granny.Clear Solar, an Australian leader in roof-

top electricity production using photovoltaic technology, is 38-year-old Mr Wilson’s latest and biggest contribution to the environment. An earlier effort, when he was much younger, involved planting 10,000 gum trees to lower his personal carbon footprint.“I’ve always been passionate about the

environment,” he says. “What I’m doing now is part of a 20-year journey.”What he is also doing is creating a

business with an astonishing growth rate. As Australians embrace photovoltaic power production, and make use of generous government subsidies, Clear Solar’s sales have rocketed up from $3 million two years ago to $100 million this year.That success has encouraged Mr Wilson

to recruit a chief executive for the business to ease his workload, and to plan a return to Swinburne to complete what he started in 1990 before discovering opportunities in the business world while on an industry placement in Germany in 1992.“The challenge has been to find a chief

executive for Clear Solar who I could trust more than I trust myself,” he says. “Now that I’ve done that, I should have time to do things I want to do, rather than things I have to do, and one of those is to finish my degree. If asked, I might even have some useful knowledge to pass on in a lecture of my own.”If Swinburne takes Mr Wilson up on that

suggestion a lot will be heard about how

PHOTO: PAUL JONES

How gran’s gift turned sunlight into

people power

This Swinburne student actually has a lot to teach, after interrupting his studies to build an energy company BY TIM TREADGOLD

Clear Solar’s Paul Wilson.

JULY 2010 swinburne

a yet-to-graduate engineer has applied his knowledge to the business world, especially sustainable business, with some advice on dealing with banks and handling the cash-flow challenges of rapid growth.Mr Wilson’s shift into business started

in Germany when he saw two innovations: advanced video-surveillance systems and photovoltaic electricity production.On his return from the overseas industry

placement, Mr Wilson decided to pursue business opportunities rather than return immediately to Swinburne. The first venture was in video-surveillance systems with the creation of Clear Security, part-funded with a gift from his grandmother.“Granny gave me my $7000 inheritance

early to see what I would do with it,” he says.What he did was buy a second-hand

Toyota HiLux and a fax machine, before visiting a shopping centre and asking every shop owner whether they wanted video surveillance. None did, bar one. “He said he probably didn’t, but if I kept asking he’d buy, and he did.” His business was launched.For business students it is a priceless

lesson in how perseverance can be as important as a bright idea. While building his successful video-surveillance business Mr Wilson tried to find a way to do the same with solar electricity production, but “there was no way I could get the numbers to add up,” he says.That changed three years ago when the

Australian Government introduced its solar panel rebate scheme, which slashed the price of installing a photovoltaic power system, sparking a householder stampede that is getting stronger by the month.The reason for the rush is that more

people are seeking to make a personal renewable-energy contribution. There also is a sizeable financial incentive.

A photovoltaic system costs between $10,000 and $15,000 and is installed at a cost to the homeowner of between $2000 and $2500. Because the systems generate power for the home and sell surplus electricity into the grid, even the cost of the initial outlay can be recovered in about five years, and it will be less when a new generation of more efficient photovoltaic cells is introduced.


Understanding the financial intricacies of the renewable energy industry has been as important to Mr Wilson as the technology itself, starting with the way Renewable Energy Certificates (RECs) are created, acquired and traded.Then there is the challenge of finding a

bank that understands a renewable-energy business. The first bank he approached did not. “They told me pretty early on that the business wouldn’t work.” Fortunately, another bank had a different perspective and accepted his business ideas.Then came the challenge of dealing with

the Australian Government, a rhetorical supporter of renewable power, but inconsistent at putting up the money, creating cash-flow problems for companies like Clear Solar, which rely on government payment to cover their own bills, especially for the imported solar panels.“Slow government payments have been

a problem,” Mr Wilson says. “At one stage payments had blown out to 120 days. More recently it’s been around 90 days. They are promising to get back to 42 days.”When Mr Wilson makes his return to

Swinburne, students of sustainability might hear some unexpected observations from a man who has emerged as a clear leader in the field of renewable energy. In particular, he is not sad that the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS) has been deferred by the Australian Government.“The issue I had with the CPRS and the

Emissions Trading Scheme is that it puts all the responsibility into the hands of major producers and consumers,” Mr Wilson says. “There’s no reward for the end user.“What we have with our solar power

business is a way for people in the community to get a chance to be masters of their own energy use … make their own power, and feel good about their contribution. What we’re doing at Clear Solar is providing a sense of individual ownership of the sustainability issue.”



QUESTION EVERYTHING

1300 275 788 swinburne.edu.au/magazine

IMAGINE WITH

ACCOUNTANTS.How can calculators and balance sheets be used to combat crime?

Accounting Professor Suresh Cuganesan is a leading researcher in performance measurement who is helping Victoria Police and the Australian Crime Commission combat organised crime. Read all about it in the back issues of Swinburne Magazine, available when you subscribe online at swinburne.edu.au/magazine

For more fascinating Swinburne University of Technology discoveries, subscribe online for free.

Our cannibal galaxyIn a fascinating new piece of ‘galactic archaeology’ astronomers have found that up to one-quarter of the Milky Way’s galactic clusters are intruders BY JULIAN CRIBB

TO SEE ITS STARFIELDS hung in radiant splendour across the night sky, you would scarcely suspect the Milky Way of being a cannibal, a gigantic buzz-saw of a galaxy that has chopped its neighbours into bits and ingested their fragments into its own clouds of stars.But that is what a fascinating new piece

of ‘galactic archaeology’ by Swinburne astrophysicist Professor Duncan Forbes and his colleague Dr Terry Bridges, of Queen’s University, Canada, has revealed.*In a painstaking analysis of the age and

metallic composition of almost 100 galactic clusters – groups of one million or so stars – out of the 160 clusters that comprise our galaxy, the researchers conclude that up to a quarter are aliens … born elsewhere and at a different time to the majority of clusters in our own Milky Way.Astronomers have long suspected that

the galaxies we see today are accretions consisting of the remnants of other galaxies, but the true extent of this intergalactic churning and star-exchange has never before been quite so evident. In fact, say Professor Forbes and Dr Bridges, about a quarter of the galactic clusters in the Milky Way today may themselves be the remnants of between six and eight smaller galaxies which it has chewed up and partially absorbed over time.Investigating the age and iron abundance

of each cluster, the team detected two distinctive signatures – that of the main

group of star clusters, averaging about 12.8 billion years of age that make up the bulk of the Milky Way, and of a second group, which are significantly younger.Notable among the youngsters are clusters

with a strong family resemblance to the remnants of the dwarf galaxies Sagittarius and Canis Major, both of which appear to have been torn apart by the vast tidal forces of gravity in the past. It now seems they passed close enough to the Milky Way, the dominant local galaxy, for it to rob them of large clusters of their stars, some of which are only half the general age of the clusters in our galaxy.“A great circle in the sky connects

the Fornax, Leo (I and II) and Sculptor galaxies,” Professor Forbes says. “One possibility is that some clusters were tidally stripped from the Fornax galaxy as it crossed the orbit of the Milky Way. Another possibility is that these clusters came from the remains of a completely disrupted dwarf galaxy that was torn to pieces.”Another set of star clusters in our Milky

Way exhibit a contrary motion to most of the others, making it quite likely they have been drawn in from outside.The cluster known as Omega Centaurus

and another called M54, may indeed be the remnant nuclei of ruined dwarf galaxies which our own has devoured.Yet another group of star clusters has

signatures unusually rich in helium and other

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18 elements, pointing to formation processes somewhat different to those of clusters in our galaxy as a whole.The team found some galactic clusters

as young as a mere two billion years – less than half the age of the Earth – suggesting that the process of disruption and accretion is proceeding more or less continuously, as star clusters are born from gas clouds in dwarf galaxies past which the Milky Way hurtles, absorbing some of them on its journey.Similar star-stripping it appears is now

starting to befall the Magellanic Clouds, large and small, which have approached close enough to the Milky Way to be feeling the power of its gravitational hunger, Professor Forbes says. And a vast event, the collision of the Milky Way with the giant spiral galaxy Andromeda, is due to take place in five billion years from now.“The universe seems in some ways

to be a very violent place, with all these interactions, mergers and collisions taking place, as the giant galaxies cannibalise the smaller ones. But on the other hand, so vast are the distances that even when two galaxies collide the stars do not come into contact with one another, although they are subject to each other’s gravitational influence.”Instead, he says, astronomers speculate

these mergers may bring about the change from the classic spiral-shaped galaxy to the larger and more chaotic elliptical form – and

Key points Astronomers have long

suspected that galaxies

comprise remnants of other,

earlier galaxies.

New research has found

that a quarter of the Milky

Way’s galactic clusters

were ‘born’ elsewhere and

at a different time from the

majority of other clusters.

Some clusters are as young

as two billion years – less

than half the age of the

Earth.

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in some cases possibly back again.The team’s galactic archaeology has

yielded the largest high-quality database recording the age and chemical properties of each of the Milky Way star clusters, revealing ‘layer by layer’ the deep history of our own star system and its neighbours.“Using this data from the Hubble Space

Telescope we’ve been able to identify key signatures in many of the galactic clusters that differentiate them from the bulk of the population and point to an external

origin,” Professor Forbes says. “This led us to conclude that tens of millions of the stars we can see each night in our own galaxy are outsiders, drawn in from other galactic bodies.“Previously astronomers considered

our galaxy might have absorbed stars from a couple of others. These latest data provide evidence that the Milky Way may be far hungrier than we imagined, and has swallowed pieces of as many as six or eight.”

* Professor Forbes and Dr Bridges’ paper,

‘Accreted versus in situ Milky Way globular

clusters’, appears in a recent issue of the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. Professor Forbes’ research was carried out in Canada as part of an Australian

Research Council International Fellowship.


,,Previously astronomers considered our galaxy might have absorbed stars from a couple of others. These latest data provide evidence that the Milky Way may be far hungrier than we imagined, and has swallowed pieces of as many as six or eight.Professor Duncan Forbes


PHOTO: PAUL JONES

INFECTIOUS-DISEASE SPECIALISTS call it the ‘Red Queen strategy’ and viruses are particularly good at it. By constantly changing their molecular identity through genetic trickery, viruses keep the immune system perpetually running after an ever-elusive opponent … much like the Red Queen’s race in Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass, where the Red Queen and Alice run faster and faster just to remain in the same place. The human immunodeficiency virus, HIV,

which is responsible for AIDS, is a master practitioner of the strategy. So is influenza.Molecular biology has developed

the means to even the odds against the viruses, but to make the most of these biotechnologies there is a need to understand how infections unfold in human patients. At stake are the principles that determine how individual viruses infect, reproduce, mutate, spread – or better yet, become extinct – within diverse and unique human hosts. But while an infection’s predator/

prey-like dynamics matter when designing therapeutic counter-strategies to the Red

Queen, explaining these dynamics presents enormous problems to mathematicians.At Swinburne University of Technology,

Professor Peter Drummond and Dr Tim Vaughan from the Centre for Atom Optics and Ultrafast Spectroscopy (CAOUS) know first-hand what biomedicine researchers are up against. There are so many interacting health, lifestyle and genetic variables affecting immune systems and viruses across the human population, creating so many infection scenarios, that tracking them all is extraordinarily complex. Professor Drummond says the timeframes needed to run calculations could potentially exceed the lifespan of the universe. In other words, the calculations are solvable, but not in a realistic timeframe.The complexity is not just due to the

evolving, self-organising nature of living organisms. There are also reasons that relate to millennia-old mathematical conundrums posed by dynamic systems that change seemingly chaotically or unpredictably. “In natural populations humans respond

to infection differently, the viral population

can mutate as it increases, and this results in an astronomical number of possibilities,” Professor Drummond says. “That’s what we mean by ‘computational complexity’ – situations where the number of states that a calculation needs to track is astronomically high.”While statistics has solved some issues –

notably in the case of thermodynamics and quantum mechanics – Dr Vaughan wants to use new techniques never before applied to biology to efficiently solve population/infection. “Currently researchers are using

supercomputers to run simulations that track every cell death and birth, in a brute force calculation,” Dr Vaughan says. “These computations are driven by the ‘master equation’ – a raw mathematical description of how a probability distribution changes over time. So our goal is to find more efficient ways of solving the master equation, borrowing from techniques used in statistical physics.”To make the leap to a biological system,

however, the project needs data representative

swinburne JULY 2010

Mathematicians are attempting to develop algorithms to solve ‘master equations’ that could one day help biomedicine even the odds against infectious diseases BY DR GIO BRAIDOTTI

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of a virus infection. So the Swinburne team is collaborating with bioinformatics expert, Associate Professor Alexei Drummond at the University of Auckland in New Zealand. The analysis is based on blood sample data from real infections with the immunodeficiency virus in humans and cats. Efforts are also underway to develop a

way to model much larger virus numbers than currently possible. Extra mathematical wizardry is also needed to accommodate the mutating nature of real-world viruses. While the Swinburne campaign to

conquer computational complexity is just getting underway, cracks are already appearing in the Red Queen’s defence. Recently, some early theoretical

work done with Swinburne’s Dr Hui Hu (an Australian Research Council QEII Fellow) and Dr Xia-Ji Liu was confirmed experimentally by the prestigious French laboratory, the École Normale Supérieure in Paris. That work involved solving complex computational problems dealing with interacting ultra-cold atoms.

Publishing in the journals Nature and Science, the French team compared their results with Swinburne’s predictions and calculations that relied on huge supercomputers in the United States. The Australian theoretical work came through with flying colours: the French experiments were found to agree with Swinburne’s predictions to the last measured decimal place. The supercomputers were not as accurate.And there is also progress on the flip side

of the same problem. Dr Vaughan explains that while the viral project involves tracking infection scenarios into the future, once the new techniques are in place, it should be possible to run simulations into the past and do so over evolutionary amounts of time. That strategy could, for example, see the

Swinburne mathematicians use contemporary genome sequence data to learn more about humanity’s ancestry, and the ancestry of human disease.“We are making early first steps,”

Dr Vaughan says. “What we are aiming to do is take the master equation description of

the forward dynamics, fold in current data – such as DNA sequence – and infer earlier states. We have algorithms that in principle can do this. And we have tried it for simple problems. But there is a long way to go.”Despite the gargantuan scale of the

computations they are facing, Professor Drummond and Dr Vaughan think the problem of computational complexity is well worth their concerted attention. For the work stands to have applications wherever a system – be it chemical, physical or biological – is changing interactively in ways that produce remarkable behaviours. But rather than chase after the solution

with ever-faster computers, these scientists are learning to stop running after more powerful processors and instead solve the problem mathematically. With pencil and paper, in the first instance.



Key points Understanding change in

nature can be immensely

complex in the context of a

dynamic, evolving universe.

A daring new approach to

computational complexity

is being developed at

Swinburne.

New mathematical

techniques are being

used to target infectious

diseases.

(From left) Swinburne’s Professor Peter Drummond, Dr Xia-Ji Liu, Dr Hui Hu and Dr Tim Vaughan.

PHOTO: PAUL JONES

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IT WAS WHILE TRUFFLE hunting in an ancient oak forest in Bologna, Italy, (followed by a simple meal in the hunter’s home of fresh white truffle shaved over spaghetti) that Australian horticulturalist Colin Carter decided he had found nirvana.Colin, a Swinburne University of

Technology horticulture team leader, was far from the world of truffles as he knew it.With a year-old, one-hectare, 400-oak-tree

‘truffière’ on the outskirts of Melbourne and a nursery specialising in inoculated oak trees, which he runs with his son Nathan, Colin has witnessed the quite rapid development of the Australian truffle industry. It now produces

about 1.5 tonnes annually of the highly prized edible fungus.Awarded an International Specialised

Skills Institute (ISSI) TAFE Fellowship (Skills Victoria) in 2008 to study truffle production overseas, a journey to France, Italy and Spain at the end of 2009 unveiled to him an industry steeped in tradition and struggling to find its way in a modern world demanding consistent supply. Colin travelled with Nathan, who has

studied the industry as part of his university studies in agricultural science and commerce, to examine the truffle from its oak forest roots and hunter markets, to the latest

horticultural research at the University of Bologna in Italy and a specialist agricultural truffle school at La Montat in France.Although the pair saw the latest

developments at the university, it was time with the truffle hunter that inspired them. “We were taken right back to the foundations of the industry. At times we could hardly believe that we were right at the heart of the truffle world – something we are striving to emulate in Australia,” Colin says. Truffles are unique underground

‘mushrooms’ that grow on the roots of trees, which either naturally host the fungi (such as in the truffle forests of Italy and France) or

22

Key pointsTruffles are underground

‘mushrooms’ that grow on

the roots of trees in autumn

and winter.

Truffles were consumed

as early as 400 BC.

On a fact-finding overseas

mission to improve Australia’s

truffières, Swinburne’s Colin

Carter found the industry

steeped in tradition.

AUSSIE AMBITIONS

FOR GOURMET TREASURE

A Swinburne horticulturalist has travelled to the horticultural and gastronomic

home of truffles to help develop truffle growing in Australia

BY KELLIE PENFOLD

PHOTOS: COLIN CARTER

A greenhouse full of young truffle-infected trees at Agri-Truffe, near Bordeaux in France, visited by Colin on his study tour.

A natural oak forest near Bologna, Italy, produces the famed white Italian truffle (Tuber magnatum).

A truffle hunter and his dog seek out French black truffles at Cabó in Spain.

swinburne JULY 2010

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TOCK

PHOT

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have been inoculated with truffle spores (as with truffières in Australia). Highly sought-after for their pungent

flavour and aroma, which is easily imparted to other ingredients, such as oil and eggs, truffles were called “the diamond of the kitchen” by the 18th-century French gastronome Brillat-Savarin. Truffle consumption is recorded as far back as 400 BC and truffle hunting remains a mysterious occupation, with hunters seeking out the truffles using specially trained dogs. However, truffle harvests have declined

substantially during the past century. In France in 1900 truffle hunters harvested 1000 tonnes from the forests. “Now, the total harvest is down to about 20 tonnes a year. We went to an annual truffle auction, where hunters arrive with their truffles in little bamboo baskets, and at that auction last year there was only about 50 kilograms of truffles for sale. The year before at the same event there was 200 kilograms,” Colin says. In Italy and France, licensed truffle hunters

are allowed access to the forests. There are few cultivated truffières. However, in Spain – where truffles are not traditionally part of the local cuisine – Colin witnessed expanding plantation truffières, providing him with insights into horticultural techniques and the need for advanced farming techniques in Australia to produce truffles good enough for premium export markets.Truffles grow most

successfully in free-draining soils with a pH of 8. In Europe, low pH soils are not considered suitable. However, in Australia, Colin says growers have proven that the addition of lime to correct the pH of acidic soils can produce truffles successfully. “Only about eight per cent of trees in

Australia at the moment are producing truffles. In Spain, the lowest result in a plantation truffière would be 30 per cent. But one guy I met claimed he was getting 90 per cent, so we have to look at what techniques we are using – particularly pruning, cultivation and irrigation,” Colin says. He adds that in Europe the mycorrhiza (the fungus from which the truffle grows) prosper in “hungry” soils that regularly dry out at the base of trees that “never look luxuriant.” This is contrary to mainstream horticultural beliefs in Australia.Another message Colin brings back is

the need to ensure only superior varieties of truffles are produced in Australia – namely the French black truffle (Tuber melanosporum), the summer truffle


(T. aestivum) and two white truffles, Italian white (T. magnatum) and bianchetto (T. borchii). Inferior truffles, such as T. indicum, which originated in China, are being grown in Europe and are often buried in bags of French black truffles bought by unsuspecting buyers, with their true identity not revealed until they are cleaned.“Australian production is off-season to the

European truffles and our target markets are the high-end Asian consumers who already recognise Australia’s image for clean, green, high-quality food production, which only helps our industry,” Colin says.As the local industry grows, so will

demand for knowledgeable horticulturalists, Colin anticipates. This may provide potential training opportunities for Swinburne, with truffière owners – who often come to the industry after retiring from careers in other industries – looking for weekend and remote learning opportunities.Colin says he has always been fascinated

by the horticulture behind truffle growing. “I was teaching students about mycorrhiza on eucalypts and how it is needed to ensure good growth when, about five years ago, a colleague introduced me to truffles. It takes a while to

get your head around growing trees that don’t look the best and need hungry soils to prosper.”Wayne Haslam, president of

the 80-member Australian Truffle Grower’s Association, says the knowledge gathered by Colin in his travels will benefit all of Australia’s growers (estimated at 140) who tend the 600 hectares of truffières across Australia.“There is so much about

truffles we just don’t understand. One of the biggest unanswered questions is what triggers the

mycorrhiza to start the fruiting process. If we knew that, and the impact of Australian soils and climate, perhaps production could increase significantly,” he says.However, Wayne predicts the Australian

industry will continue to grow because of undersupply in Europe, and the best product should maintain a consistently high price of $1500 to $1800 a kilogram at the farm gate.A 2008 report by the Rural Industries

Research and Development Corporation says Australia’s truffle production could reach 10 tonnes by 2013 from more than 600 hectares of mature truffières.


INVEST INEDUCATION& RESEARCH

Sustainability, environment, biomedical engineering, astronomy, social inclusion: just some of the fields of research putting Swinburne, and Australia, on the map.

But many of our breakthroughs and education initiatives would not be possible without donations from our generous supporters.

Giving to Swinburne will further the teaching quality and cutting-edge research, not to mention help us establish scholarships, awards and prizes to support students in need.

And since Swinburne is firmly focused on professional outcomes, every cent you give goes directly to the people who are shaping our future for the better.

The Swinburne Alumni and Development team are ready to talk to you about how you can invest in education and research at Swinburne. You can reach us on 1300 275 788 or visit www.swinburne.edu.au/giving for further details.

Colin Carter

OPEN DAY 20101300 275 794 swinburne.edu.au/openday


SWINBURNE

15 AUGUST 2010

Open your mind to a different kind of learning at Swinburne University of Technology.When: 15 August 2010, 10am – 4pm Where: Hawthorn, Lilydale, Prahran campuses

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Documents

Swinburne Magazine Issue 10, July 2010