Integrated Human Practice & Gold

"Human Practices is the study of how your work affects the world, and how the world affects your work." — Peter Carr, Director of Judging.

According to the definition of Human Practice from iGEM, each team should interact with the whole society, to figure out what the world lacks and to dedicate our ability to the needs. In our team, the concern of environment and health are the ultimate targets. The crisis triggered by Endocrine Disrupting Chemicals (EDCs) has not only be forgotten gradually by us after the Vietnam War since the contaminated regions are narrowed in certain places, few and few people pay attention to these dangerous chemicals.

Visit Experts

(1) Visiting to Institute of Environmental Engineering, NCTU

This summer, we visited researchers in Institute of Environmental Engineering, NCTU, whose study mainly focus on wastewater treatment. They reviewed our project and provided some suggestion for us.

1. Since enzyme producing technique is not yet mature enough to date, we should reinforce more on detection so that we can increase the efficiency of enzyme usage.

2. Agricultural wastewater has more than an imaginable amount of aerobic particles. Even if the water seems clean, it will still block the filter system in minutes. We should re-design our structure.

3.Activated carbon can only act well under the good water condition that is, containing only ions or extremely few molecules.

[ Figure. 1.1.3-1 ] The researcher in IEE of NCTU( right one) and us.

(2) Meet up with advisors, professors and iGEM NCTU

In May 2017, we invited Assistant Professor Warren C. Ruder, PITT, Professor Wen-Liang Chen, NCTU and Professor Chao-Min Cheng, NTHU, to review our project. Meanwhile, we also shared our project with “NCTU iGEM” mutually. This meeting was held before we could start our plan, which halted us from rushing forward. We stopped, reflected and then adjusted our orientation and strategy:

1. Our project contains too many high techniques or skills like EIS, Monobody application, frozen cell technique, gold plating, IoT integrate, etc. Combining all of these together is somewhat complicated and never was there a team who successfully did so. However, it would be a standout if our team managed to pull it off. We should reconsider simplifying our project. On the other hand, every technique needs a lot of tests to fit new working environment or for a different application. With a limited time, it is hard to achieve.

2. The condition of wastewater is always harsh. To put an exquisite device to dispose of it with such a great amount remains problems to be solved. We should better consider some other more valuable target.

[ Figure. 1.2.2-1 ] Meetup and presentation for Prof. Rudder, Prof. Chen and Prof. Cheng. They gave us lots of advices and suggestions which help us very much.

Institution meetup

(1) The Wastewater treatment plant of Science Park

When we talk about water disposal, the first thing comes into our mind would be wastewater treatment plant (WTP) since most water that is contaminated or used by humanity would all eventually go to WTP. Thus, WTP becomes our primary target for practicing and working out our idea. In September, we went to WTP of National Science Park for investigation and sampling. There were three engineers in WTP who helped us realize the whole plant including monitoring station. We learned much about how WTP dispose of the wastewater step by step and also how they control the system:

1. Before entering the plant, nearly most wastewater has undergone treatment by each company. Actually, the inlet water is not that dirty as what we supposed but it still contains lots of metal ions and molecules that need to be rid of. And in these years, the main issue in WTP is ammonia nitrogen degradation. Targets like EDCs are not what WTP concern, engineer Chang said. EDCs’ concentration in wastewater is too low since the water coming in from all sorts of factories dilute it. The main harmful substances left are still a lot of ammonia nitrites and heavy metals added by Chang.

[ Figure. 2.1.1-1 ] Flow chart of WTP of National Science Park. Cited from Hsinchu Science Park Bureau, Ministry of Science and Technology

2. The visit to the monitoring station helped us a lot in dry lab design. This plant is one of the most novel plants which applies testing Ammonia nitrides disposal plant and an alto control system. This testing plant is built because of the rising attention of Ammonia nitrides and the alto control system installed for the purpose of reduction of complicated control steps. Unfortunately, the first renovation, again, implies that EDCs probably is not a priority WTP. However, the alto control system does make us realize the importance of automatic control system and IoT(internet of things). Since the engineers, all use the smartphone APP to receive first information of every disposal plant so it inspired us to develop an APP and we made it !!! On the other hand, Based on the prototype alto-control system we have seen there, we conceived an idea to combine alert, buzzer, e-mail, newsletter and a real-time website displayer etc., that is, the IoT concept, and we have finished the construction of e-mail and smartphone newsletter thanks to the techniques offered by the Ministry of Economic Affairs. The purposes of building IoT is simple - we can reduce the risk of mistake or omission. Also, we want to unify every controller, monitors, meter and everything that is involved all together so that it would be easier to manage and has a larger space to expand other functions; for example, adding varies sensors for different chemicals or even microbes.

[ Figure. 2.1.2-1 ] Visit to WTP in National Science Park. Orientation before field visit.

[ Figure. 2.1.2-2 ] Visit to WTP in National Science Park. Field visit to the treatment tanks.

[ Figure. 2.1.2-3 ] Visit to WTP in National Science Park. Monitor station guidance.

Field investigation

(1) Visit organic farmers

We had two interviews with organic farmers. The first interviewees were the owner of three organic farms, and the crops include gourds, fruits, mushroom, cereal grain and leaf vegetables. We investigate the source of water and the used degree of fertilizer of their farms. The result shows that the farms locate on high terrain or higher altitude than the factories. Plus, the irrigating water won’t flow out to another area, and the fertilizer they use is farming residue. As a result, there is no doubt of pollution.

After changing the direction of our project, we had another interview which focuses on the management of organic agriculture. We tried to figure out what predicament the farmers face and whether the statistics reflect the fact or not. And the result seems favorable to our project for the reason that the certification of organic agriculture needs at least three years and cost ＄5000 per year. Such threshold is unfriendly to normal farmers and inefficient. Since there are many bottlenecks in the process of organic agriculture, nearly no profit can be earned from it. First of all, there are many uncontrolled plant diseases and insect pests and natural disasters. Moreover, these agricultural products are not improved Breeds. They not only have low yield but also have bad appearances. Furthermore, labor costs are really high, so they are much more expensive than normal agricultural products. There are too many drawbacks that violate the principle of market competition, and it’s difficult to apply. In consequence, it’s tough to attract farmers to join the ranks of organic agriculture. According to farmers’ dictation, the reason why they want to transform is that the idea, interest, and stable economic ability.

[ Figure. 3.1-1 ] Visit to organic beekeeper, owner from Ying Hsang farming resort. We try to realize the surrounding environment of an organic bee farm, hoping that our device could help better it.

[ Figure. 3.1-2 ] Visit to A-Hsiung and A-Pu organic mushroom stand. Mushroom cultivation is a quality agriculture that every single drop of water matters. They need a extraordinary fine water monitor system, which is where we can cooperate with !

What we can do is to lower the threshold and the cost of an application so as to track for a long period and make transformation faster and easier. And this may attract many farmers to join the ranks of organic agriculture. Eventually, the farmers mentioned that it is hard to avoid contamination. As long as they use the water in the downstream of the river, it is impossible to get a license. Land in Taiwan is too small, so the farms are close to each other. Once there is a non-organic agriculture nearby, pesticide and fertilizer will pollute their own farm indirectly.

[ Figure. 3.1-3 ] We interviewed one of famous organic farmer, Ron Chi farm’s owner in HsinChu, who shared us many dilemma that most organic farmers faced nowadays.

(2) Aquacultural base investigation

Through the visit to the fish farm, we understand more about seem-to-be-easy fish aquaculture, which is actually connected with a lot of techniques; aside from the application of new tech concepts, there are more experience heritage and mutual cooperation from neighborhood; for example, judging the typhoon’s impact on the fish farm from the path of typhoon, the fishermen should adopt different kinds of precaution measurements depending on whether the typhoon comes from the Pacific Ocean or the Philippine Sea, or they have to apply the concepts of food chains in order to shunt the water stream to different fish pools for water cleaning; it can increase the water cycle and decrease the water waste, and moreover avoid the pollution caused by water purification chemicals. These techniques cannot be learned from school education or textbooks; this kind of experience inheritance combines with the development new technology is what we aim to move forward on our traditional agriculture. It’s a pleasure for me to learn this much about various industries in this visit. The selection of water origin The standard of water quality is not that high for common adult fish farming farms—the water source is mainly derived from the underground water mixing with seawater to a proper salinity. It controls the oxygen content through the cultivation of red and green algae, with a rare requirement of filtration. The control of water quality Generally speaking, the control of water quality is mainly the observation about the quantity of alga to judge the oxygen content; the green alga in water is excessive, which means the oxygen content is too high, while the red alga is too much, which indicates the oxygen is too low. When it rains, the rain would bring the air pollution or the frontal would take the germs from another area to the water, resulting in water contamination, requiring the pharmacy to cleanse the quality and sun-dried of the pond for sterilization. The newest methods of water condition maintenance is to exchange the pond waters to make both automatic depuration with a method of biological capture; for instance, the water for mullet farming swaps with the one for conch cultivation, using the conch to clean the excreta or food residue and then drain to the gutters so that the water would not cause eutrophication. The customer of fish farm The main customer group depends on the types of the fish variety. For the ordinary fish variety, it will be sold directly to market or market makers, but for the rare type, like eels, it will mostly send to market makers. For more special type—indoor fish farming, it’s mainly for the fish with supper commercial value, especially for fry, such as eel larvae. This fish variety requires higher technique and expenditure; the relatively larger-scale farmers would own the pond and there are specific sale accesses.

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