Team:RDFZ-China/Hardware
Brainstorming
In the beginning, we want to make a drone to help us spray the solution that contain biosurfagctant made by our modified B.subtilis, however, lots of things needed to be taken into consideration when making a drone, such as how to program the drone, how to get the correct motor and gears to use. Therefore, it was apparent that we did not have extra time and money to make one on our own. Then we want to make a spray gun that is connected with a portable reservoir that can be carried on the back of a person. Inside the reservoir, purified solution containing surfactin that is produced by our modified B.subtilis wil be filled. People can use the gun to spray the biosurfagctant where there is a leakage of crude oil. However, this idea cannot be brought to real because the spray gun is very difficult for our selves to make and it will be too expensive if we want to purchase one online. Therefore we have to give up this brilliant idea. Finally, we came up with a very simple but realistic idea which is illustrated below.
Structure
Our device is simple but effective. It is made of simple equipments that we encounter in our chemistry or biology laboratory. As you can see in the pictures, the plastic bottle acts as a reservoir. The top of it is connected with an inflator through a rubber hose. In addition, we used a puncher to punch a hole on the sidewall which could fit a stopper which is linked with a glass tube that has a rubber hose on the other end which is assembled with a modified measuring cylinder. The cylinder is placed upside down and a stopper is used to seal the gap. On the sidewalls of the cylinder, we used a dissecting needle to make 18 holes with diameter about 1mm.
How does it work?
Our device is a simulation of a solution to the leakage of crude oil. The inflator is driven by hands, as the pressure in the plastic bottle increases, solution of biosurfactant will be pumped out through the holes on the cylinder. This is just a prototype of our idea, if we have had more fund and time, we would have made the inflator be electrical powered. Besides the cylinder would be replaced with a agricultural sprinkler and the rubber tube would be PVC tube.
