Team:ECUST/HP/Hp/Interview1
or the revelation?
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. It was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity. It was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness. It was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair. We had everything before us, we had nothing before us. We had never been stop reflecting on the environment we live, we had never been stop thinking about what can we do to make this world better.
Tangled problems
Will the traditional energy go to an end? Will that day be the end of the humanity? And till then, what will happen? We held these concerns and paid a visit to Doctor Xu Qingli, veteran professor in school of resources and environmental engineering also the expert in Production of bio oil and its biomass pyrolysis.
“China is not that urgent in coal, maybe because they can still support us, I mean, at least for our country, to use 100 years. The biggest problem we encountered is not the resource depletion, but the pollution ensuing.”
When we talked about the current environment and environmental protection in China, he shared different views. “Haze, for example, is the notorious criminal in China. To deal with it, our state has shut down a lot of manufacturers, but this will not solve the fundamental problem. What’s worse, this will lead to the bankruptcy of the small businesses especially those in villages. The economy has been greatly affected under this circumstance.”
New energy facing the dawn
We briefed our initial idea about the light harvester and asked him if he had any insights in the new energy development, and he showed great interest. He said:“ With the development of science and technology, if new energy goes more practical, it will certainly be able to solve this problem, but now the new energy itself faces more problems than the traditional energy does.”
“Today's new energy development trend is to use ethanol instead of gasoline, and there are series of new energy powers, such as water power generation, photovoltaic power generation, wind power, biomass power generation and so on. The state implemented the policy that by 2020, a new gasoline which consists of 10% ethanol with 90% gasoline mixed, must be used to replace the current pure gasoline.”
However, since China is a populous country, there is not so much food for ethanol production. Water power is the most stable and most practical new energy power, but the total generation is quite limited. Wind power is known as “garbage electricity”, because it is greatly impacted by the environment (for example, the wind itself). It is very unstable, and residents may face the awkward situation that “no wind, no electricity”. Photovoltaic power generation also has many problems, and what comes first is the low photoelectric conversion efficiency which only reaches about 10%, followed by its serious pollution. We need lots of lands to build up one, so it is not the idealistic one, either.
The advantage lies in environmental protection, but the power it generates can only be a period of time for some time. Because mostly the biomass power is generated by using straw, so if in the season when the straw is running out, you can only temporarily stop. So it is also difficult for businesses doing this to make profit, which can only rely on state subsidies, and sell carbon dioxide emissions to other enterprises.
Fantastic energy where to find
There are many reasons for us to choose the “light harvester” as our project, and we confirmed this thought after this conversation.
In the end, Professor Xu added, “your project is quite interesting, and the photosynthetic bacteria are favorable candidates for biological hydrogen production. It seems that all green energy has a bright future, but actually you young scientists still have a long way to go.”
