This year, our project is related to carbon sequestration. Therefore, we grab the chance to discuss our idea with Professor Bieng-Zih Hsieh. Professor Bieng-Zih Hsieh is an associate professor from the Department of Resources Engineering. One of his research topics is about CO2 sequestration, which is a topic that related to our project, the difference is he employs a physical method in this aspect, while we use a biological method.

At first, we define our project as carbon capture. However, he introduced the idea of carbon utilization to us as he thought it is more suitable for our project. Professor Hsieh introduced some carbon capture or utilization strategies that implemented in the industry currently and suggest us to do more research on those methods. He also remind us to compare our system with other biological approach to figure out our strength and weakness.

Prof. Chao Chung, Peng is an assistant professor of Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics and International Bachelor Degree Program on Energy. He used to work in China steel corp. so he gave us a chance to contact CSC.

we met up with prof. Chung to get some suggestions which more proving our direction of our projects. Prof. Chung is proficient in energy field, different from giving us experimental technical advice, he gave us more about suggestion for action on device and idea.

He thinks that when we look for our advantages, we can take apart each of our research processes and experimental steps, and find every possible point that is more inefficient. The benefit of the whole project is very great. For example, what kind of way we can use to let every E.coli to eat most CO2, the way we replace our cultured E.coli. It is true that there are every existing way we can think more about how we can improve. Also, professor tell us we must be very understandable about our project, it includes our advantages, disadvantages, potential threat, our whole project process, and the most optimum environment we should provide for our E.coli. The more we realize our project, we can find more possibility of development. After talking with professor, we inspired more ideas and found direction about our project more clearly.

He gave us some advices in engineering pointview. Therefore, we tried to rewirte a big scope of our project and defined the points that we have to fulfill.

We had an opportunity to speak with Dr. Huang Chieh-Chen from National Chung Hsing University (NCHU) in the Asia Pacific Conference, whose work includes the reverse TCA cycle of engineered carbon capturing E. coli. Upon our discussion, Dr. Huang raised the issue of the low efficiency of one of our enzymes, Rubisco and suggested that we culture our engineered E.coli in an anaerobic condition. Since Rubisco, the ribulose-1,5-biphosphate carboxylase/oxygenase is an enzyme catalyzing the reaction of either carbon dioxide or oxygen with ribulose-1,5-biphosphate (RuBP) as the name itself suggests, putting our system in an aerobic condition would significantly lower the efficiency of capturing carbon dioxide due to the similarities between gaseous carbon dioxide and oxygen.

Prof. Jo-Shu Chang was under a lot of specialty of Biochemical Engineering, Microalgae Biotechnology, CO2 reutilization, Circular Economy; Biomass Energy, Environmental Biotechnology, Applied Microbiology. He complete a microalge carbon utilization system in ANAN Campus of NCKU which help the largest energy company in Taiwan (CPC, Taiwan) and Taiwan's No.2 CO2emission company (China Steel Co.) to develop the research platform of microalgae-based flue gas CO2 biofixation technology.Besides, Since2009, Prof. Chang served as the PI of National Energy Program (NEP) projects and focused on microalgae-based CO2 capture and utilization for biofuels production and biorefinery.

Our project is to reuse the carbon dioxide emitted form the industrial with a biological way. Although the pathway of carbon flow in E. coli and in microalge are quite different, it is really important for us to understand the current method of biological carbon utilization before we begin our research. We want to deeply understand the whole microalgae culture pool system including the position of CO2 pipeline, downstream process, pool cleaning and how is the progress of an research in lab turning into real application.What's more, we He subsequently proposed a 'zero emission' biohydrogen system integrating unit operation of cellulose hydrolysis, darkfermentation, photofermentation, microalgae CO2 fixation, microbial fuel cell and hydrogen fuel cell.

Prof. Chang let us visit how his project work in ANAN campus(link). Prof. Chang's team has been working with China Steel Co. and CPC, Taiwan to develop innovative microalgae-based flue gas CO2 reduction and biofuels production technologies. Therefore, they shared the progress of the whole technologies coming out. From the beginning, Prof. Chang was focus on the conversion of biomass feedstock and waste materials to energy. Large scale microalgae cultivation plants were constructed in China Steel Co. and on An-Nan campus of NCKU.

We visited Prof. Jo-Shu Chang discussing about our carbon capture system. We had a great time talk and he gave us three advises. One is to define the velocity of CO2 input in which scale of CO2 we want to solve with. Another one is to confirm a commercial product like proteins which can bring us some income to balance the cost. The last one is to calculate the whole carbon balance from the source of xylose to the process of waste. We were really appreciated that we can have a short meeting with prof. Chang.

We had an opportunity to speak with Dr. Huang Chieh-Chen from National Chung Hsing University (NCHU) in the Asia Pacific Conference, whose work includes the reverse TCA cycle of engineered carbon capturing E. coli. Upon our discussion, Dr. Huang raised the issue of the low efficiency of one of our enzymes, Rubisco and suggested that we culture our engineered E.coli in an anaerobic condition. Since Rubisco, the ribulose-1,5-biphosphate carboxylase/oxygenase is an enzyme catalyzing the reaction of either carbon dioxide or oxygen with ribulose-1,5-biphosphate (RuBP) as the name itself suggests, putting our system in an aerobic condition would significantly lower the efficiency of capturing carbon dioxide due to the similarities between gaseous carbon dioxide and oxygen.

During July 30 to August 3, our team attended the Asia Pacific Conference which is held by National Chung Hsing University, locates in Taichung city. Asia Pacific Conference is a platform that could let all of the iGEM teams in asia to communicate with others, receive feedback from others and generate new ideas. These can make iGEMers have a opportunity to expand their horizons instead of always cringing in your own corner and doing your own things. During the conference, several challenge has been occurred, including the cost of our material. While, after several time of discussion and interchange, we found that this is once of our critical problem. We are very appreciate for the suggestion of all the participant of Asia Pacific Conference.

In these 4 days, we exhibit our project for all the iGEMers to interchange our ideas and take suggestions from others. We also found that other teams possess unique projects that may advance our new ear of technologies. We really appreciate for what we have learn in these 4 days and we hope to see them in the Giant Jamboree!

We have a video meeting with Tec-Monterrey. After introducing our project to them, they had pointed out some aspects that we need to think more about. They remind us to think about our end product which can make our project more complete.

During the meeting, we came out with the idea to collaborate with each other. Their project has two part. The main part is E-coding, which use bacteria to record the data. Another part is to sense the pollutant in river of Mexico, which is the part that we could link our work. We had constructed a pH alert system for low pH sensing, they suggest us to incorporate our ph sensing construct in their pollutant sensing system, making it to become more complete.

On July 17, we have a meetup with National Chung Cheng University. We hope we can know more about each other's project deeply and give some suggestion to benefit each other's project.

In the beginning, we greeted and introduced ourselves to each other. Next, we entered our project presentation time. In this meetup, we had more familiar with each other's project. We gave our question and suggestion to CCU, and we also received great feedback from them. We discussed our construction in wet, design modeling in dry and activities communication in human practice. We also share future plan with each others to think about that is there a possibility of cooperation.

After finished our conversation in presentation, we toured them in NCKU and had lunch with them. In this less formal time, we could communicate more relaxing with each other and share our project in a more pleasant way.

During the meetup, we asked her some problem about our robot that we have met in this morning and she answered us that there are still some components being shipped so hopefully we could wait until those components to arrive. For the software problem, she build a forum for all the iGEM teams which got the robot so that we could discuss online or sharing all kinds of protocol with each other.

We also briefly introduce our project but since we don't have too much time so she can only suggested us to study more related topic of iGEM. She is willing to have next video meeting with us and expertly we could show her our device next time. We were so glad to have this talk that day .

We have a nice talk with members from Tec Chihuahua. First, we introduce our project to each other.

During our talk, we receive many useful recommendations and advices especially for our constructions and cost of our main device. The considering these aspects which also leads us to more focus on the value of our project to be applied on the industries sides. Eventually, as we are communicating for our main ideas and project, we found that Tec Chihuahua seems to have a great ideas on solving the problem of larvae-killing bacteria. According to researchers, the extinction of bee will also lead the human society to face the acute problem which is the shortage of food sources. By considering this knotty dilemma, team Tec Chihuahua have outcome this with the technologies of synthetic biology. In addition, we also give our suggestion such as constructing a control system on their project so that there will be an awareness on the shortage of material or overusing of their materials.

As part of iGEMers, our team wish to bridge the gap between laboratories and industry. In order to obtain more information about CO2 biofixation, we visited microalgae farm in An-Nan Campus of National Cheng-Kung University. The microalgae farm is owned by Professor Jo-Shu Chang, an expert in biofixation of CO2 from industry using marine algae. We toured their microalgae cultivation systems, and were impressed by their idea of converting microalgae into functional products. This inspired us to synthesis commercial products from CO2 in modified E. coli. They also provided us with a wealth of knowledge about the considerations needed to design a bioreactor for utilization of CO2 and evaluate cost effectiveness of our project. CO2 concentration in flue gas can be as high as 20~30%, thus it is necessary for us to lower the CO2 concentration level before entering bioreactor to increase carbon fixation efficiency. With the advices given, we modified our bioreactor design for practical application in industry.

China Steel Corporation (CSC), located at Kaohsiung, Taiwan, was founded in December 1971. With annual production (in terms of crude steel) around 10 million tonnes, CSC produces a range of products including plates, bars, wire rods, hot and cold rolled coils, electrogalvanized coils, electrical steel coils, hot-dip galvanized coils, and Ti/Ni-base alloy. The domestic market takes roughly 69% of CSC’s production and the exports take the remaining 31%. CSC is the largest steel company in Taiwan, enjoying more than 50% of the domestic market. Major export destinations are Mainland China (including HongKong), Japan and Southeast Asia.

After we participate in the Asia-Pacific conference, we organized some questions and made a report to china steel. We consider the implementation of industrial and make a present to CSC. We also got some feedback from them. Their point of concern is that the smoke emitted by the factory is not completely carbon dioxide, but will contain some impurities like SOx and NOx. So they asked more about whether E. coli can survive and react in this environment. In addition, they also praise our idea of removing carbon and solving the disadvantages of microalgae space. They even say that they are very supportive of young people’s ideas, and there are opportunities for cooperation in the future.

We started thinking about the growth environment that E. coli can tolerate, excess carbon dioxide concentration , SOx, NOx and even metal particles. Therefore, we want to design a system that processes metal particles and cooling gas beforehand in the factory, and recycle the used waste medium.