igem2016:ShanghaiTech

Integrated Human Practice -- A Real Time Social Interactions

This year, our team applied the knowledge of synthetic biology to seek feasible solutions to the energy issue. Urgent as it is, the energy issue is more than a regional problem, but has raised global concerns. It is not just the difficulty we are now faced with, but the huge challenge that would greatly restrain the development of our future generations. Lots of researches and studies have been already devoted into the field. However, the challenge still remains, mainly due to the formidable gap between the research studies and the real industrial application. Thus, what our team wants to achieve is not only demonstrating our platform on the lab bench, but also gradually improving the system in the real social context. With this idea in minds, our team kept interacting with people from all walks of life, the industrial community, the academic experts, and the administrative governments, hearing their voice and learning from their comments.

At the very early stage, when we were still brainstorming the idea, our team members actively talked to several top research groups all over the world. It was their insightful words that continuously stimulated our inspirations and promoted our improvements. Some of those groups have closely worked with photovoltaic materials for long; some of them are the leaders in electron transferring in organisms. Also, some of the team members have relatives working in the energy-related industry, so we took the advantages of these connections, searching for advices from an industrial aspect. Through these social dialogues, we not only discussed about the relevant technological operations; besides the team also learnt about the biggest obscures dragging the real application and industrialization with regards of the energy issue. Three criteria for a feasible solution were figured in the conversations, which are reasonable cost, satisfying efficiency, and the most importantly sustainability. With these objectives in heart, we thought over and over again during the whole research process to keep modifying the idea and make it more and more adaptable to the real industrial application. In assistance of these social interactions, lots of progresses and breakthroughs occurred, including the ultimate application of biofilm, a self-assemble, high-resistant, adhesive bio-material, which realize the relative high conductivity as well as the regenerative ability of the system.

Then, soon after we finished the first version of the project, “Solar Hunter I”, we proposed and conducted a public questionnaire, where we further learnt about the public attitude towards the energy issue as well as our project. A serious of general and detailed topics was investigated. From the analysis of the questionnaire, we learnt the biggest two public concerns of the wide application of hydrogen, that was safety and expense. Also, further communications with the industrial community, the academic experts, and the responsible authority were suggested as well.

In response to the subsequent need for further field investigation from various angles, our team then carried out a series of interviews with people working with the energy issue but from different points of view. Not only did we continue to be connected with more and more field experts academically, but also we spared plenty of time and efforts to be in touch with people in the industrial community as well as the government. Through the talks and discussions, we further developed the understanding on the mainstream opinions with regards of the safety concern for hydrogen application both academically and industrially. As those field experts replied, benefiting from some of the characteristics hydrogen possessed, including low density nontoxicity, and zero pollutant emission, hydrogen demonstrated terrific potential as an ideal energy source. Also, with those mature techniques in hydrogen transport and storage, the safety concern is not necessary. However, in terms of the industrial application, most of them laid strong emphasis on the applicability, efficiency, expense and the sustainability about our platform. Reminded by these conversations, our team further considered our system in the context of real industrial use. After a series of brainstorming, we planned to try another co-culture approach where the anaerobic condition was not necessary, instead of the original strategy that extracted the target protein directly. With this improvement, our platform was able to operate under normal aerobic environment, where the manufacture would be much easier and also obviously cost less. Moreover, attracted by our passion as well as the feasible idea, future collaboration with these industrial companies and the local authority would be very likely to be put into real actions later on. Later on, when we demonstrated the project to some of these field experts again, they were pretty impressed by our soon improvements. As they commented, our new system demonstrated huge potential in massive industrial application. For the next step, they suggested us to work more on the efficiency. Since the electron transfer operated as key step in our system, we then tried to cultivate the biofilm on some small beads, increasing the contact area to achieve a better efficiency. Also, with the application of these small beads, the NRs attached on the biofilm were more easily to be collected and recycled, simply by spinning down the beads.

Further Intergration & Real-time Interaction

To bridge the gap between academic research and the industrial application as well as further develop our project in the real social context, our team raised a social investigation with regards of the global energy issue as early as we started the project. By doing so, our team kept a real-time interaction with the society, promoting our project to be applied into real use to yield social benefits. This social research generally consisted of two main parts, the public questionnaire and field interviews.

Through the public questioner, we were able to hear from the public attitudes with regards of the energy issue. Also, mainstream concerns were addressed and critical comments were learnt. You can click here to learn more about the analysis on the questionnaire.

Meanwhile, in response to the strong necessity to get connected with the industrial, the academics, and the authority, so as to better promote and prepare for the real industrialization, a series of interviews from various aspects were carried out. Our interviewees included scientists exploring in energy field, industrial representatives dedicating to the energy conservation, as well as administrative officers from the relevant governmental departments. Some of the representative interviews were displayed on the page.

Interview

In response to the strong necessity to get connected with the industrial, the academics, and the authority, so as to better promote and prepare for the real application and integration of our energy conversion platform and sever the mankind, a series of interviews with the industrial community, academic scientists, and administration and supervision departments were carried out. Taking the chance here, our team would like to extend our sincere gratitude to all those individuals and groups for their assistance and cooperation.

Industrial Community

Established in 1985, Shanghai Energy Conservation Association (SECA) is a membership non-profitable organization that works on the sustainable energy development on behalf of the industrial firms. Most of the local industrial companies, including those very influential ones like Bao Steel, are the members of the association. The SECA is set for the potential industrial collaborations with regards of the energy issue, whose main duties include the industrialization of new energy technologies as well as the propagation of the idea of energy conservation. Most employees working at SECA, including the interviewee, previously worked in the real industry. With their sufficient experience in the field, and also benefits from their daily cooperation with industrial partners, the SECA is undoubtedly an excellent place for our team to seek more insights from the industrial point of view. Also, the comments from the SECA would be of great importance for the industrialization and scale application of our project to yield more social interests.

Our delegation visited the SECA in August, 2016, where we also organized an interview with Mr. Lan (Yujun Lan), director of the expert committee at SECA, and Ms. Chen (Meijuan Chen), vise director of the expert committee at SECA.

At the beginning of the meeting, team member Haolong delivered a brief introduction to our project first. Both Mr. Lan and Ms. Chen were deeply impressed by our dauntless but creative idea. As they commented, they had served for the energy industry for decades, but this was the very first time they heard about using biological platform to provide new energy source as hydrogen gas. From an industrial point of view, they could tell the great future potential and feasibility our project suggested to be further developed into real industrial application in a big scale, meanwhile they also point out that some modifications especially with regards of the working conditions as well as an adaptation to the flow line production would be necessary. Besides, as Mr. Lan further said, the mission of the SECA included the promotion and industrialization of new technology; with their abundant experience in the field, they were willing to assist our team to continuously modify the project and try to put it into industrial application.

Then, Mr. Lan and Ms. Chen briefly talked about the daily operation of the SECA. Additional to the modulation of the membership industrial companies that resulted in a series of collaborations, socially popularizing and promoting the idea of energy conservation was also one of their core objectives. Through their efforts, they were looking for a gradual improvement of social awareness of the energy issues, especially among the young age group. Annually, a variety of theme activities were held by the SECA to achieve the goal. Every year, there is an Energy Awareness Week took place in Shanghai where the representative industrial delegates were invited to introduce their cutting edge energy technologies to the public, in communities, schools, or exhibitions. Mr. Lan warmly welcomed and invited our team to participate in the next year’s theme week. We were so much sure that this special chance would be an awesome opportunity for our team to not only further socialize and industrialize the project, but also integrate our own efforts into real social needs.

Finally, Mr. Lan. And Ms. Chen again emphasized the creativity and huge potential of our project from an industrial aspect. They encouraged us to modulate in details and step further. They were willing to provide any necessary assistance from the industrial community.

Academic Scientists

On the 11st Oct., we met Professor Mi (Qixi Mi), assistant professor from the school of physical science and technology at ShanghaiTech University. Prof. Mi earned his B.S. degree from Peking University in applied chemistry in 2003 and his Ph.D. degree from Northwestern University in chemistry in 2009. Later he performed postdoctoral research on new souse energy at California Institute of Technology, taking advantage of a fellowship of the NSF Center for Chemical Innovation (CCI Solar), and then briefly at the Argonne–Northwestern Solar Energy Research (ANSER) Center.

Firstly, team delegation asked about the reasons that guided Pro. Mi to devote himself to the energy research field. As Pro. Mi responded, without any doubt, the energy issue was one of the biggest global challenges we mankind were facing and urgently needed to be solved. The significance of the relevant researches and studies were emphasized in terms of the sustainable development for the whole industry, because the energy source was the very fundamental matters of all sorts of industrial productions. Then, speaking of the possible solutions to the energy issue, Pro. Mi emphasized the importance of the utilization of the solar energy for the sun was the ultimate way that we human beings could get sustainable source of energy. As he further stated, thanks to the development of the modern technologies, for now lots of simi-conductive materials people had discovered showed a relative high efficiency to collect sun light. However the central problems laid on how to efficiently utilize that solar energy we collected. Similar to what we applied in our project, Pro. Mi considered hydrogen gas as a good choice for the solar energy conversion. With its high molecular energy density as well as the simple chemical constituents, hydrogen demonstrated ideal characteristics to be an energy source. Also, without the participation of the carbon, the only product of the combustion of hydrogen was only water which had no side effect to the environment. This made hydrogen the complete clean energy source.

Then, in response to public concerns towards hydrogen application that we found in the previous questionnaire, Pro. Mi also gave some words to dispel the misgivings. For the very top concern, the safety problem, Pro.Mi said, actually for each of the efficient energy source, there would be a hidden danger. Since the matter could provide huge amount of energy supply, dangerous disaster happened when the source was out of control and huge amount of energy was released in an extreme shout period of time. However, this would never be the reason preventing people from using this high-density energy source. Academically speaking, hydrogen gas was similar to nature gas or coal gas that was widely used in every family; as long as people followed the safety instructions and properly used them, and then the usage of hydrogen was very safe. Due to its low density, hydrogen gas was more likely to self-flow away to higher space; therefore it was less like to reach its explosion limits. Moreover, since people could deal with the carbon monoxide which was even toxic besides its possible explosion, why could not people handle hydrogen gas? With regards of the transport and storage of hydrogen, modern technologies were pretty mature in the field. So people could just benefit from those advanced technologies, and there was no need to worry about this as well.

Finally, we discussed our project with Pro Mi in detail. Pro. Mi was very excited and showed a positive attitude about our project. As he commented, a good solar energy platform that could be put into mass production should meet all of the three criteria which were 1.high efficiency, 2.low cost, and 3.sustainable. Usually, most of the research results could only meet two of the requirements at most, which greatly limited the industrialization and further development of the research results. However, in our project, the application of bio-enzymes ensured the relative high efficiency to produce hydrogen; with the application of biofilm, the system became recyclable to maintain a reasonable cost; and finally for the same reason, the system could be used for a long time showing its sustainability. Speaking of the future application into real industrial production, Pro. Mi thought our project demonstrated a very promising application potential, but he still suggested us to further modify the system to ensure a steady product quality and to find the best reaction conditions to undergo a better efficiency. And our team will going to further work from these aspects in the near future.

Administrative Authority

In August, 2016, our team delegation paid a visit to the Shanghai Environment and Energy Exchange CO., LTD. On the interview day, we had a meeting with Ms. Yu Huang and Dr. Shengbo Chen from the department of Research & Development Center there. As one of the most important parts of implement by Chinese Authority, lots of policy are set and then implemented here, in response to the United Nations Climate Conference. Due to its special characteristics it possesses, the Energy Exchange Center is an ideal place for us to know more about the energy issue from a governmental aspect.

First of all, Dr. Wu carried out a brief introduction about the Energy Exchange Center. Shanghai Environment and Energy Exchange CO., LTD is a platform directly built by the Shanghai Central Government, where carbon emission permit is allowed to be traded. Since people are still trying to figure out a sustainable solution to the energy issue, temporarily one of the feasible ideas is to use the power of the market where carbon emission is controlled by the invisible hand of the free market. Due to the reason, the energy exchange platform was established. However, to realize the ultimate goal to solve the energy issue as well as prevent the heavy pollution caused by the combustion of fossil fuel, Dr. Chen viewed the development of technology as the only way to achieve that. As he added, some of the policies were designed to encourage the industrial companies to conduct self-dependent technological innovation by increasing the cost of using those old polluting manufacture methods. In another words, Enterprises were encouraged to take actions to weed out outdated manufacturing techniques. Meanwhile, supportive policy to assist technological innovations was established as well, including some tax benefits.

Then, delegate from our iGEM team briefly introduced our energy conversion project. Ms. Huang and Dr. Chen were surprised by our newly-designed platform. They greatly praised our desire to contribute to the energy issue as well as the persistence in scientific research. Ms. Yu said, indeed our society as well as the government very much looked forward to the technology breakthroughs like ours to serve the energy issue. Lots of encouragement policies had been set up to encourage project both financially and politically. They suggested us to do a brief background search, and apply to some of the supportive programs to further develop and modify our system. From the authority aspect, they were pretty sure that we would get many privileges and supports in developing the project, when we step further.

Finally, a free discussion was held where our team members further exchanged ideas and thoughts with two guests. Future collaborations are very likely to occur when our technology become more mature and are put into real life use.

Moive