Team:NRP-UEA-Norwich/Practices/Hethel
HUMAN PRACTICES
Hethel Innovation is a non-profit operating in our local region of Norfolk. The organisation focuses on incubating start-ups in the engineering sector, and their primary focus is on low carbon technology and renewable energy. They have lots of contacts within the renewable industry and a good knowledge of the challenges it faces. We approached Hethel Innovation to discuss our project; we wanted to get the perspective of engineers and to try to gauge where a project like ours could fit within the industry. We also hoped they could put us in touch with renewable energy firms and businesses specialising in energy storage so we could discuss our project with a wider range of industry experts. We also wanted to show people the potential role synthetic biology could have within the renewable energy industry & also try to build lasting links between industry and the researchers at UEA and the NRP working on similar research.
The engineers were intrigued by the idea behind our project, we discussed how currently there is no economically scalable method of storing electricity. For example, lithium ion batteries (currently the most popular storage method) have significant limitations. After several uses they can lose 40% of their storage capacity and on a large scale the expensive metal becomes prohibitively expensive.
Other emerging methods include pumped hydropower and flywheel technology. For pumped hydropower the electricity is used to pump electricity to reservoir up a hill, storing it as gravity potential energy. You literally need a lake and a mountain for this idea so it is difficult to service the whole globes electricity storage in this way. Importantly we learned from our discussion with Hethel that currently there is no economically viable method of storing energy. Scientific creativity and proof of concept research is needed to find new methods of power storage, and this is where our project sits within the grander scheme of things; a proof of concept experiment attempting to use bacteria as a biocatalyst for the conversion of electricity to hydrogen gas.
We also discussed the ethics and practicalities of using GMO’s on an industrial scale. For example, they asked us whether our intention would be for this to be applied small scale production in the home. Alternately microbial fuel cells could be used on a large scale in centralised facilities, feeding into the grid. We decided that the latter would be more realistic due to the complications with GMO disposal and the maintenance of bacterial cultures. Another complication to democratising this technology is that it involved the storage of hydrogen gas. It might not be wise to have a high pressure tank of flammable gas strapped to the side of every home. Taking into consideration safety, practicality and ethics we landed with the concept we are working towards. Our vision is that large scale wind or solar farms would feed electricity to a facility where Shewanella oneidensis microbial fuel cells can use this to catalyse the reduction of protons to diatomic hydrogen. In this way we propose to use a bacterial system as a biocatalyst for the conversion of electricity into fuel.
Hethel innovation were key in helping us develop our ideas to this stage. With their expertise and experience in the renewable energy industry they were able to advise us how, realistically, this technology could be applied and they helped us develop a coherent technological concept to work towards.
One challenge we faced when discussing our project with hethel is that it can be quite difficult for people such as engineers with no background in molecular biology to understand exactly what we’re talking about, and to comprehend how an electron can be passed inside a cell to an enzyme, or even why this is a challenge. This fed into our human practices strategy as to remedy this we decided to create a molecular VR experience, and really utilise the power of VR technology to transport people inside the cell and show them first hand what is is we’re trying to achieve. In this way we hope to remedy the barrier that can exist between molecular engineering and conventional engineering by making the fundamentals of what is happening much more accessible to the laiman.
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