Difference between revisions of "Team:UESTC-China/Human Practices"

We conducted a survey for both farmers and other citizens to get their views of the current treatment of straw and clean energy. We found that the phenomenon of burning straw still exists and utilization rate of it is particularly low. Besides, citizen's attitude toward clean energy is friendly but they are still not willing to use it. After understanding the basic situation of straw treatment and clean energy, we have communicated with professionals from Biogas Institute of Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs to understand the current research progress in this field so as to improve our design. We got more information about obstacle in current research of reusing straw, as well as analysis of advantages and improvement in our project. After those above, we consulted biologist in our project to further optimize the pathway and experiment design in a more professional perspective.

This year, we released a series of questionnaires for farmers to get more information on production and treatment of straw. The total number of questionnaires collected by farmers reached 231, of which 214 were valid questionnaires; we collected the questionnaire in the way of face to face interview as well as internet etc.

We carried on a series of analysis to get more information from our questionnaires. It was found that the amount of corn straw is produced at most, so it is reasonable that we choose corn straw as our researching direction. Moreover, it is obvious that the situation of treating the straw is still not very optimistic although the amount of incineration shows a decreasing tendency. From all above we come to the conclusion that the utilization of straw is really a problem that draws attention and we hope that we can alleviate this dilemma through our work this year.

We conduct a questionnaire for citizens to investigate their attitude toward clean energy. The number of citizens reached 531, of which 516 were valid questionnaires.

According to the above survey, it can be seen that people have fully realized that burning straw will pollute the environment, and most people believe that converting straw into clean energy is the best way to deal with it. We find that citizens have a strong preference for clean energy, but their use intention is not high. Improving the convenience of the use of clean energy can increase the tendency of citizens to use clean energy. When asked if people would accept genetically engineered bacteria, more than half said they would, and most said it would improve the situation. These results led us to determine the use of bacteria to degrade straw and produce clean energy.

In order to investigate and understand more current status of agricultural waste treatment and clean energy, we visited the Biogas Institute of Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs and communicated with related experts.

They explained the situation of agricultural waste treatment and their current research progress to us. From our conversations with them, we learned more about current state in dealing with straw, as well as the development and problems in producing bioenergy. Based on our interview, we conducted a more comprehensive evaluation of our project and made improvements on it

We interviewed Dr. Liangwei Deng, a professor of biogas engineering. He explained the current status of agricultural residues in great detail to us, and told us that straw is the largest untapped carbon source at present. In the field of agricultural waste bioenergization, producing biogas is the most mature technology, but there are still some problems, such as the short life of biogas digesters, safety problem, high cost of centralized transportation of agricultural waste, and difficulty in handling waste liquids. At present, the most common use of biogas is to generate electricity, followed by fuel cells. We consulted him about the situation of agricultural waste treatment and introduced our project of this year.

We talked with Dr. Mingxiong He. He is mainly engaged in research work on biomass energy and microbial metabolism engineering. His current research is to produce ethanol from crop residues such as straw, and to explain the current status of ethanol production. At present, the process of fermenting straw with microorganisms is mainly divided into two steps: the first step is mainly for straw pretreatment, which mainly uses acid to destroy the chemical bonds in the straw; the treated straw is hydrolyzed and fermented with a strain to produce clean energy such as ethanol； the second step is to biodegrade the treated straw by biological methods. We think that our project is relevant much to the research of Mr. He, so we introduced our project to Dr. He and raised some questions. He also told us his views and suggestions.

We held a forum of biology and invited Dr. Junbiao Dai to give us a lecture on synthetic biology. We introduced our project to him and consulted him about our design and experiment to improve our project.

DBE, Anna visited the University of Electronic Science and technology. At the forum, members of UESTC-China discuss our project with her and receive her high praise.

We are very fortunate to welcome the Nobel Prize winner to give us a lecture on his research these years. We have a short conversation with him on his research and our work, receiving positive comments from him.