Concordia owns a multitude of manufacturing machines that employs a cutting fluid which is essential for the operation.  However, the cutting fluid that is widely used is Kerosene, also known as a hydrocarbon based oil.  Kerosene related costs and health concerns associated with exposure to cutting fluid mist and a growing desire to achieve environmental sustainability in manufacturing have caused industry and academia to re-examine the role of these fluids and quantify their benefits.

The idea is to provide an alternative to Concordia’s habits of employing harmful machining fluids for certain machining requirements and to raise awareness that green engineering should be their model.  In order to reinforce the incentive to construct this unit, our goal, with the supervision of our professor Dr. Rolf Wuthrich and his Electrocatalytic Green Engineering (EGE) group, is to design and manufacture a micro electric discharge machine which can manufacture micro structures using a harmless dielectric fluid, otherwise known as deionized water.  The process related to obtaining deionized water does not negatively affect the environment, as opposed to extracting Kerosene, and contains no substances which are hazardous to health according to its MSDS.