Introduction
Motivation
The natural resource exploitation of human is a severe problem. 3Rs (reduce, reuse and recycle) are the strategies of human reducing natural resources usage, by recycling the resources we can reduce the amount of resource exploitation. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations*, global forest area had decreased 129,135,000 ha from 1990 to 2015. Forest plays an important role in earth environment, trees are extremely important for temperature maintaining, oxygen providing, nitrogen cycle, carbon fixation and water cycle. Woods are one of the most important natural resources, they are necessary for building materials, furniture, food industry and paper. The decreasing of forest area is a critical problem for the Earth.
Woods are both important for human civilization and natural environment, reducing deforestation is one of the most important issue for protecting the Earth. In the wooden product supply chain, the woods were chopped down from the forest, then processed into products by the manufacturing chain and sold to the customers. In order to lower the speed of deforestation, the current business model must be changed. The technology must reduce waste of resources and increase the percentage of natural material. At the meantime, the purchase habit of the customers also influence the market, promotion for buying eco-friendly thoughts is the motivation of changing the whole market. To sum up, cutting edge technology and new ideas of marketing are the keys to change the manufacturing chain and bring us a better world.
Purpose
The ultimate goal of protecting the forest is when tree wouldn’t be cut down or limited. To achieve this goal, good recycling technology must provide the possibility to minimize the lost during each manufacturing process. Meanwhile, the promotion of buying eco-friendly product. Wood could be processed into variable products including building materials, furniture, paper, etc. Here we are providing of an imagination for the future world when deforestation remains stopped.
Paper is one of the most common seen product made from wood in daily life. According to the World Wide Fund for Nature, 40% of the annual industrial wood harvest is processed to make paper and paperboard*. Moreover, papers are everywhere in people’s life, this makes paper a good start for promoting and educating people the protection of forests. Paper industry is also one of the biggest manufactory category in the world, it would be hard to change the environment of this enormous manufacturing environment. The ultimate goal is to reduce the deforestation reasoned of paper making industry, the solution relies on two problems, first, the technology must allow a higher reuptake of all resources in each steps, and second, customers must accept a higher cost of products. The purchase habit of the public could change the environment while pushing the manufactures to produce a more eco-friendly products.
Solution
Brief Description
For improvement of the technology of the supply chain, we decided that reprocessed paper is the key point if the process needs to be brought to a new generation. In the reprocessed paper making process, recycled paper must first be chopped into pieces, so that the paper pulp could pass fast through the pipe line. Clean up processes would follow to detach the ink particles from the fibers and be removed from the paper pulp. Finally, the paper pulp would be made into new reprocessed paper. The manufacturing process of reprocessed paper can be roughly divided into pulping, cleaning, deinking, fiberizing, suspending, pressing, and drying. Among these processes, deinking process belongs to the most important section which carries out the removal of the adhered substances from paper surface, such as the color kernels of printing ink, and the adhesive agents. However, the currently existing deinking processes mainly adopt chemical deinking method by using chemical agents such as sodium hydroxide (NaOH), sodium silicates (Na2SiO3), sodium phosphates (Na2PO3), and potassium phosphates (KH2PO4) which is harmful to the environment.
Traditional process shortens the time and cost to make massive paper products. However, traditional process often cost high pollution and resource lost. The current reprocessed paper manufacturing breaks all the paper into paper pulp and treated with chemicals for cleaning up, but the entire treatment of all the paper fiber cause enormous paper fiber lost, especially the strength of paper fiber. For a better method the reduce the usage of chemical reagents and to preserve up to 80% of paper fibers. Here we present a model of our solution and a future imagination of the paper making industry.
Broaden perspective
In the current reprocessed paper manufacturing process, factories break all the paper into paper pulp, this cause enormous paper fiber lost. Our method increase the specificity of deinking process by a localizing deinking system (LDS). The LDS is made up of two input-output system, while one is biological and another is mechanical. The system combines the analytical power of modern technology and molecular biology. By using these cutting-edge technologies, we are able to solve environmental issues. In the future, the LDS system could change the environment of the paper making. The deinking enzymes that we had chosen from different organisms can be used in further application. An eco-friendly deinking process would we promote as a fashion, deinking device would be brought to not only factories but families. Education and commercial promotion must followed the development of technology.
Focus Problem
The current solution to the chemical pollution caused by deinking process is to replace chemicals like sodium hydroxide into biological enzymes. However this does not improve the recycle rate of the paper fiber. In order to improve the deinking process, we had built up a device to demonstrate how our method would work in large scale factories. The benefit of using the LDS would be saving paper fibers up to 80%, and also replaced the chemical reagents. Our design remains high costs and low efficiency, but the recycle rate of the paper fiber give the potential to this technique. We focus on the reprocessed paper fiber recycle rate of deinking process.
Design and Approach
Our deinking design goes through the following process, first, image taken from the camera of the target recycled paper, the image would go through analysis of identify the printed part of paper. The threshold of different kinds of paper could be monitored and changed for different condition. After the analysis, a signal will be sent to the LED board, the red light would shine only onto the area with ink. This Technology can be optimized and improve to a high resolution deinking system. The red light signal will then be accept by the engineered yeast, which had PhyB-PIF3 system. The light induced system will trigger the downstream protein expression, this leads to secretion of three deinking enzymes, xylanase, glucanase and lipase.This design allows yeast to secret enzymes to any target, in this case, deinking enzymes. Based on the previous research of bio-enzyme deinking by Prof. Su, Yu-Chang (2002), the project focus on three different kinds of deinking enzyme, such as glucanase, xylanase, and lipase. Glucanase and xylanase belong to cellulase and hemi-cellulase. In the deinking process, glucanase and xylanase bind with cellulose which is the main composition of paper fiber, while lipase bind with ink, so that the ink is able to be removed from paper fiber.
Different kinds of organisms produce same types of enzymes. To complete this project, we have to choose out the most suitable enzymes those are best fit to our need. To do so, computer simulation is the most effective and accurate way by testing for the binding affinity of enzymes and their ligand. Besides, we set up a hypothesis that the protein which produced by eukaryotic cells will perform better than the protein which produced by prokaryotic cells, because the protein post-translational modification has performed in the translation process of eukaryotic cells, so we think that the eukaryotic proteins are having higher binding affinity with their ligand, and we want to verify our hypothesis. Our selected protein came from protein docking, which test the binding affinity of enzymes to substrate. Discovery studio and AutoDuck was used for testing the energy of binging. In brief, we firstly use an original amino acid sequence of an enzyme as a template to find out the other proteins those have high similarity on their amino acid sequence from protein data bank, and then simulate the docking between proteins and their ligand by using protein docking software. Finally, the protein docking software will help to calculate the binding affinity of each protein, so that we can choose out the enzyme which is the most effective in performing deinking, and also increase the possibility of success of this project.
We had chosen the best enzymes that we could find to try to give a great performance of surface deinking. In our initiate test of deinking, we found that the enzyme secreted from our cloned yeast shows deinking effect in our built up paper making protocols. As summary, we wished to clone a yeast strain which could be activated by light and induces deinking enzyme secretion.
Cost, Efficiency and Future Work
Comparing to current method, our developing method costs high and has a relative low efficiency. However, the potential of preserving such big amount of paper fiber gives us the reason of developing it. In future world, natural resources would be restricted and cannot be made into new products. That is, reusing resources is a goal of technology development. To deal with cost and efficiency issues, we had designed a large scale factory model based on our modeling and small scale device. After the recycled paper was sent into the factory, classification was first done before all the process has started. Papers would be separated into different lines by the type of printed ink, the color of printed ink, dirtiness and the percentage of ink area. Then the paper would be pictured and sprayed with yeast using massive yeast spraying system. the paper would go onto conveyor and shine with red light. The paper would be fluently sent into the pulping step for further treatment. The design of the factory would lowered the cost and raise the specificity and efficiency. We wish to make a change of current reprocessed paper manufacturing process.
SWOT
Strength-Preserve high percentage of paper fiber. Up to 80% of paper fiber can be preserve theoretically by using this method.
Weakness-Relative high cost and low efficiency due to the treatment.
Opportunity-The politic restriction of deforestation and water pollution. This raise the cost and tax of the company. Developing eco-friendly technology gives the company good advertisement and image.
Threat-All coming up eco-friendly technologies that improves the deinking process. However, in short term plans, companies like enzymatic deinking companies promotes eco-friendly buying habit. This makes the threat a collaboration in short term.
Innovation
In the future world, we won’t just improve the deinking process, the whole paper-making industry would be changed. Printing and paper industry needs to change to a more eco-friendly way to make products.
Printing means to attach ink particles or complexes on to the paper fiber, the ink particles would bind to the paper fiber normally with van der waals force. Ink particles may be made of organic or inorganic compounds. This makes it difficult to find a general enzyme or chemical that could detach the ink and protects the paper fiber at the same time. Thus we think ink must be special designed for specific enzyme deinking, this would make the whole process easier and make higher profit to the ink company.
For one of the steps of reprocessed paper making “flotation’’, we had cooperate with team iGEM17_TAS_Taipei. They are currently working on building up a protocol to test whether biofilm can attract nano-gold particles. We had collaborate with them, we are trying to test whether the biofilm could attract ink particles. The results shows that the biofilm may have the potential of attracting ink particles. Which makes the biofilm a candidate material of replace the flotation step in the reprocessed paper making. Flotation is another step which would cause enormous fiber lost. We are trying to build up a new paper manufacturing line, from the printing and ink producer to the customers. This will give an enormous change to human civilization and the environment.
Business Model
By improving the key steps of reprocessed paper manufacturing, we are looking forward to improve the whole paper making environment. We are creating a new business model that has new deinking and flotation technology, and also the participation of upstream and downstream factories and retailers. The ultimate goal is to reduce the deforestation caused by paper industry. If all the paper fiber can be reuse, and all customers accept to pay at a higher price to maintain this eco-friendly industry, we can reach a world without deforestation. To reach this goal, commercial and education promotion is necessary. The society must accept products with a higher price to support the changing process, the solution is to make eco-friendly a fashion, this will gives the product more value than it was. So the advertisement and atmosphere could bring big changes due to the behavior of people’s purchasing habits.
Society
All company should have responsibility to make the society better. Companies should participate in different kinds of service like education, long-term care, public science, emergency rescue, etc. The education of public would increase the buying motivation of all eco-friendly products. Meanwhile, education isn’t limited in adults but also children, this would not only leads to a better world, but also create Sustainable development cycle.
For educational purpose, we are planning on publishing story books and animation about eco-friendly and nature. For different types of customers, the promotion and education plan should fit to each one’s life. Building up an environmental as a fashion is important, once the customers would spend a relative high payment to buy an environmental friendly product, it would be easier to motivate the manufactures to change their production line. Making “eco-friendly’’ a fashion is an important issue to protect the earth. That is, only when company interacts with the society, the society can be better and the company can be more powerful.
