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

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.

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.

Institution meetup

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.

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.

Field investigation

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.

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