The social and environmental issues

We have a full investigation of the background of the project: the cause of the Enteromorpha outbreak, the current situation of Enteromorpha outbreak, the application and utilization, the monitoring and forcasting, as well as local people's understanding of Enteromorpha's outbreak. To learn more about its advanced study, we also went to the First Institute of Oceanography, IOCAS, Qingdao Seawin Biotech Group and other places like that to dig deeper of Enteromorpha. There in IOCAS, we acquired knowledge of the influencing factor and reason for Enteromorpha outbreak. In the Qingdao Seawin Group, we volunteered in the processing workshop of the Enteromorpha and learn about the physical pretreatment necessary for our Enteromorpha residue utilization.

Current Situation

Through the investigation, we know that the cause of Enteromorpha outbreak in Qingdao is mainly the excessive discharge of aquaculture waste water from coastal farms. At present, the amount of salvaged Enteromorpha annually is over 70000 tons, which fluctuates slightly on a high level over years. After drying, crushing and other physical pretreatment, Enteromorpha residue is grinded into powder. The polysaccharidesutilization is then extracted from the powder, leaving a second-round residue as fertilizer for farmland. In another word, the utilization rate of Enteromorpha is quite low, with only a little potential exploited.

Causes of outbreak

The huge amount of Enteromorpha in Qingdao's coastal area is mainly formed in the Shoal of northern Jiangsu where there is abundance of local aquaculture, and drifts from south to north into the coastline of Yellow Sea (about 10 kilometers a day).

The main reasons affecting the distribution of Enteromorpha include: the impact of other algae on its growth, the water temperature, the salinity and the nutrients in nearby sea.

Monitoring, forecasting and controling

The North Sea Forecast center of SOA monitors the distribution of Enteromorpha in the Yellow Sea and East China Sea by means of remote satellite sensing. Monitoring data on June 28, 2017 showed that the green tide distributed in over 20,000 square kilometers, covering an area of about 187 square kilometers.

After summarizing all the information collected, from the location of the green tide to theocean current that may affect this area, we can obtain the time-shift information of the green tide patches in the next 72 hours and draw a forecast warning map for the green tide with the support of supercomputer.

Utilization status

The annual salvage of floating algae begins in June and ends in August, during which the company will treat it with mature and complete processing system and produce different levels of Enteromorpha. The daily salvage of Enteromorpha must be treated in time and mustn’t be stored to avoid rotting.

The production is mainly used for foddering and extracting trehalose. Enteromorpha powder is also known to be used as soil conditioner, which improves soil quality by adjusting its pH value and advocating green agriculture.

Feasibility analysis and improvement

At first, we assumed to utilize a kind of engineered cells to degrade cellulose and hemicellulose to ethanol inside Enteromorpha, and to produce cellulase and hemicellulose with our surface display system. Therefore, in February, we came to Beijing University of Chemical Technology to consult Prof. Lihai Fan, an expert in the field of making good use of cellulose, about how to improve our design. Consequently, we found that the metabolic burden of the engineered yeast will be severe and that the degradation efficiency will be low if we only use one kind of cells.

Then, we made a decision that we divide the whole project into two procedures including using enzyme to pretreat the cellulose and hemicellulose into cellodextrin and xylose and using our engineered cells to produce ethanol. At last, we choose four enzyme used in pretreat β-1, 4-Nechemu, β-glycoside, β-dextran, inner β-dextran enzyme.

Combination with real production

We introduce our project, using cellulose and hemicellulose from algae residue to produce alcohol, to research staffs of Qingdao Seawin Biotech Group and the principle of the group present their main industry—exploitation of trehalose.

As volunteers, we came to the product workshop in their industrial base and knew about the whole process of utilizing the Enteromorpha. After that, the researchers assessed our project and gave out a suggestion that can industrialize our ideas: we need to create a complete biological treatment scheme—from residue to alcohol, explore fermentation condition and optimize our engineered cells.

We will stay in touch with Seawin Biotech over a long term, hoping that our project will be industrialized in the future.

Research and publicity work

To make more people aware of our project, we conduct a thorough investigation and science popularization!

(1)In the form of questionnaire
We submit questionnaire on the Internet and collect information from various stages of society. Our target includes residents near the seaside and tourists from other places. We wonder whether they know the cause of Enteromorpha outbreak and how they plan to make use of Enteromorpha residue. To our surprise, we received 658 copies of questionnaire in all and among most of our informants there is generally a poor understanding of Enteromorpha.

(2)In the form of science popularization brochure
Through our investigation, we believe there is an urgent need for science popularization. So we designed the brochure and held some lectures. By leading them to collect Enteromorpha from the seaside and explaining to them the cause, current situation and utilization of Enteromorpha, we called on citizens to protect water environment and reduce the amount of outbreaking algae from the source. If everyone lend a hand, our city will certainly makes a better future! Meanwhile, along with our project, we show to the public the charming synthetic biology, which can be used as a useful tool to solve the problems around us!

The first three pictures is for us to all ages, each occupation's dissemination of science popularization brochure, carries on the propaganda science populariza-tion.

The last picture is about coastal intertidal zone of the collection of Enteromorpha.