Difference between revisions of "Team:Lethbridge HS/Description"

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<h2>Background Research</h2>
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<p class="center">In deciding our project we thought that we should choose something that would apply to our community as well as the international community. THis idea led us to look into products that are used worldwide, and one of the things we found was ink. It is used in schools, homes and most commonly workplaces. We then decided to go to the public and explore the idea of an innovation for ink as a viable product. After some research, we discovered that the ink is made up of three main parts; the resin, the solvent, and the colorant. After a bit more research we found that the colorant makes up over 50% of the cost of ink. This led us to investigate why, and we found that the production of colorants and pigments creates some horrible byproducts.
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<h2>Deciding our Project</h2>
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<p class="center">After our initial research and our investigation of applicability we decided that we would do a project on ink. We were then forced to decide what part of ink we would tackle. The cost breakdown of ink led us to decide to create a colorant and the information regarding the harmful byproducts of pigment production led us to the environmental approach.
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Maybe we could have the image of pigment production here, the one that shows the harmful byproducts.
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<h2>Synthetink</h2>
 
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SynthetINK is our solution to the harmful byproducts of the ink production industry. We have created constructs that can be put into cells which will then use the DNA to produce enzymes which can make pigments. These pigments can then be used to create inks. We will be using these to create inks without the production of all of the harmful byproducts of the current manufacturing processes. We chose to work on this problem because it seemed relevant in all of our lives, as students we use ink frequently, and after communications with the general public we found out that it is almost universally used very often. After looking into ink manufacturing, we found that it is very harmful to the environment and the most serious part was the colorant and in our case the pigment. We decided to use synthetic biology to solve this problem because it will be effortless to continually produce the pigments as cells are self-replicating if provided with a food source. The use of synthetic biology also allows us to create the pigments without any of the harmful byproducts that current processes create.
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Revision as of 22:29, 6 October 2017




Background Research

In deciding our project we thought that we should choose something that would apply to our community as well as the international community. THis idea led us to look into products that are used worldwide, and one of the things we found was ink. It is used in schools, homes and most commonly workplaces. We then decided to go to the public and explore the idea of an innovation for ink as a viable product. After some research, we discovered that the ink is made up of three main parts; the resin, the solvent, and the colorant. After a bit more research we found that the colorant makes up over 50% of the cost of ink. This led us to investigate why, and we found that the production of colorants and pigments creates some horrible byproducts.


Deciding our Project

After our initial research and our investigation of applicability we decided that we would do a project on ink. We were then forced to decide what part of ink we would tackle. The cost breakdown of ink led us to decide to create a colorant and the information regarding the harmful byproducts of pigment production led us to the environmental approach.
Maybe we could have the image of pigment production here, the one that shows the harmful byproducts.


Synthetink