Overview
When working in a lab, it is easy to have one's focus directed only towards the work involved. However, the motivation behind a project and its true significance only lie in the real world. Hence, when carrying out an idea, it is imperative to analyse the response of society and make a combined effort to predict the implications of the project outside the lab. A careful study into the need for the project and the consequences it will have should be carried out to confirm the contribution of the project to society. Our Human Practices work which is detailed below is our way of ensuring this.
However, yet another major part of bridging the gap between the lab and the world outside is to obtain feedback from the end-users of a project and to incorporate this into the existing idea. The necessity of this step lies behind the differences in perspective between a scientist, particularly a student team and that of an industry professional or a researcher. Our team took this into consideration, leading us to the work that we have explained in our
Integrated Human Practices page.
Co-cultures have several applications that could potentially involve our project. However, given the current trends of Bangalore’s increasing water pollution due to the discharge of untreated sewage, our team decided to focus on how SynShine can contribute towards resolving the problem.
Waste-water Treatment
The Problem
Since centralized sewage treatment facilities are made mandatory by the Government or protected by laws, local facilities are generally absent. Most of the local waste is discharged directly into water bodies. This deposition has led to the gradual contamination of a majority of water bodies in Bangalore, having an adverse effect on the health and environment.
Existing strategies:
Various methods such as CETPs (Common Effluent Treatment Plants), oxidation ponds in villages and sewage irrigated afforestation exist which manage and regulate the treatment of sewage from several small industries. A recent method available for wastewater treatment is the usage of MFCs (Microbial Fuel Cells). An MFC is a device where redox reactions by bacteria are harnessed to convert chemical energy to electrical energy. Our team has been focusing on this particular application since a regulated co-culture of E. coli and Geobacter sulfurreducens has the ability to improve its efficiency [1][2] . E. coli depletes the oxygen in the medium that is toxic to G. sulfurreducens , providing a pseudo-anaerobic environment for this obligate anaerobe bacteria to work in and produce electricity. E. coli also tends to limit the growth of Geobacter through the production of citrate.
Our approach
We believe that the incorporation of the optogenetic regulation method of SynShine into the co-culture in an MFC would increase efficiency as it ensures, with greater accuracy and ease of use, that the population ratio is maintained at an optimal value. Along with the production of electricity that an MFC facilitates, this would also minimize the quantity and improve the quality of sludge. We believe SynShine would encourage the use of MFCs resulting in a reduction of the adverse effects on the environment that sludge disposal causes. Considering the vast amounts of sludge produced and the lack of enough water bodies to accommodate their disposal, any reduction in sludge would have a considerable effect.
[1] Use of a Co-culture To Enable Current Production by Geobacter sulfurreducens .
[2] A defined co-culture of Geobacter sulfurreducens and Escherichia coli in a membrane-less microbial fuel cell.
Meeting Stakeholders
A Discussion with STP Engineers and a visit to a STP
In July, to sketch out in greater detail, the use of our project as a component in STPs, we visited a sewage treatment plant and conducted an email interview with Mr Gopalkrishnan who is an engineer working in Eco Protection Engineers Private Limited, a company that designs sewage treatment plants (STPs).
Aims of the interview:
- To observe the first-hand working of an STP, the logistics and the scale of the operation involved for better understanding of the process our project was centered around.
- To obtain a better idea about the microbes involved in STP to understand the scope for application of our project in this area
What we learnt:
- The absence of STPs in several small towns and villages in India who simply resort to disposing sewage into the nearest water bodies or open land, confirming the growing demand for efficient, low-cost systems
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Details on the bacteria involved in current systems and the use of an anaerobic sludge digester. To ensure that optimal growth of bacteria is maintained, food/micro-organism (f/m) ratio has to be monitored continually through a cumbersome process of checking return sludge, MLSS (Mixed liquor suspended solids), an assessment of waste sludge and sludge circulation and its compliance with the f/m ratio. Through this we realized that our project, by helping with the regulation of co-cultures, would contribute towards the ease and accuracy of sewage treatment through the real-time monitoring and dynamic ratio control it allows.
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The microbes involved have not changed over the years due to their efficiency which suggests that any modification we make to the regulation of these bacteria will be one that can be reproduced for years, having a long-term impact.
Dr. Harini Nagendra
She is a Professor of Sustainability at Azim Premji University. She has worked on lake conservation in the city of Bangalore. We held an interview over the phone in July to discuss our idea and get her feedback on it.
Aims of the discussion:
- To understand the depth of the problem of untreated sewage being dumped into lakes.
- To learn about the current strategies to combat water pollution due to sewage
- To find out if the solution we proposed would be a significant contribution towards solving this issue.
What we learnt
Contamination of Bangalore’s lakes has been increasing over the years. Most of it is due to sewage and industrial waste. Untreated sewage causes health problems in humans and animals that use its water, affects the aesthetic beauty of the landscape, causes a stink that people around the lake have to deal with. Waste reduction requires the use of decentralized systems and local treatment. Although she did find our project interesting, she raised concerns - the unintended effect the bacteria in our co-culture system would have on existing life in the waters they are dumped into. But to ensure that our project did not itself degrade the quality of the environment, we decided to look for other ways to overcome this limitation in our design.
Dr T.V. Ramachandra
He is the Coordinator of Energy and Wetlands Research Group (EWRG) and the Convener of Environmental Information System (ENVIS) at the Centre for Ecological Sciences (CES), IISc. He has worked hand-in-hand with the government of Karnataka and several NGOs to conserve lakes in Bangalore and we believed his experience and knowledge would be a valuable input to our project. So, in August, we interviewed him to understand his perspective on our project.
Aims of the discussion:
- To find out how much of the problem of water pollution due to sewage could be dealt through policy reforms and the extent of change our project could bring.
- To know how our project would be accepted and implemented by the government.
What we learnt
The major cause of lake pollution was the excessive human waste that was being dumped into them which disturbs the natural microbial composition of the waters. He suggested a method to keep this composition as close to the natural one as possible. Although we found this difficult to implement directly in lakes, it was interesting to see the similarities of our project (where we maintain the consortium naturally during the treatment process) with his ideology. He also suggested the role that policy reforms would play in solving the problem which set us on the course to do a legal review later in the course of our project.
Government Officials - an e-mail interview:
Although we were unable to establish direct contact with a representative from the Government, Mr. Selvaraj Perumal from Ecoprotection Engineers was someone who could. Thus, we sent out questions to him and he agreed to forward it the officials he knew. The reply we got is attached below.
Aims of the interview:
- To learn about the perspective of the government on the replacement of existing technology with newer ideas.
- To learn about the requirements of our project and the properties it must feature for this replacement.
What we learnt:
Although the current methods in place in STPs like the activated sludge and extended aeration processes have been conserved for more than 30 years and others for more than a decade, the Government is still open to employing new technology that is:
- Cost-effective to operate and maintain
- A method with a lower life-cycle cost than the existing setup
- A proven and reliable system
- Suitable for use in Indian local conditions
The lack of change in processes is mainly due to new technology being regulated by a patent or a single organization, making the government dependent on this business which results in higher payment for parts. The incorporation of imported parts in new systems is another reason as a failure in one component can halt sewage treatment. We also learnt the attention the Government pays to the problem of water pollution and its aims to focus on both the quantity of water and the quality it results in.
The e-mail that was received:
Impact on Society
Survey
A survey is one of the most efficient methods to reach out to a large population at once and our team designed one to learn about the general views on sewage treatment and water pollution in Bangalore. Since we were specifically studying the water pollution around our city, the survey which was sent in September was sent only to locals.
The survey that was sent out can be found here.
Aims of the survey:
- To gauge public awareness about the hazards of untreated sewage
- To see how satisfied people were with the water they received
- To identify the major contaminants present in water received
- To understand how willing people will be to accept our project
- To understand the eco-friendly behaviour of people. Do they segregate waste? Do they recycle water ?
- To find out how common waste water treatment is in Bangalore
- To gauge public awareness about the laws to counter irresponsible disposal of sewage
Meeting with Dr. Bitasta Das
Survey Design
- Our questions were designed to extract maximum information from the least number of questions to minimize the time it takes for a respondent to fill it to the best of his/her knowledge.
- We discussed the questions asked in our survey with Dr. Bitasta Das, who is a professor of Humanities at IISc. She suggested explaining some of the scientific terms in the survey so that it is easily understandable to the general population.
- To ensure the questions could be understood easily, we conducted a pre-test by sending the survey to a few potential respondents and used their feedback to make adjustments to the questionnaire. Whenever possible, we optimized our questions to give the essence of a Likert Scale type question which resulted in the average time required to fill the survey to drop down to 2 minutes.
- The survey was analyzed using the New Dale – Chall readability index [1][2], which gave the result as 9th to 10th Grade understanding. This indicated that to understand the questions of our survey, a person needs to have an education of a tenth grader. Given the target audience, this was a very reasonable requirement and ensures there is no bias due to poor understanding of the questions.
- We tried our best to keep the questions unbiased, understandable, fair and to the point, which ensured no frivolity to waste our respondents’ time. Names were not asked to ensure that the survey was completely anonymous and does not make use of any private details.
- To ensure that there was no gender-bias, the sex of the respondent was asked. Qualifications and profession were asked to find out how views change depending on the nature of the work of the respondent.
Survey Analysis
The results of our survey revealed that only 6.8% of our respondents were extremely satisfied with the quality of water they received and only 9.1% said that waste-water treatment was common in their area. For both of these, the mode was '3'. Another of our questions showed that a majority of people had been affected by a water-borne disease previously, particularly diarrhoea (45.5%). Although a good percentage of people reported not having been affected yet, given the large population of Bangalore, 45.5% is significant enough to suggest the need for improvement of water quality in our city. Through our survey, we learnt that the general public was aware of the dangers of untreated sewage as over 80% of respondents rated the importance of sewage treatment to be '5'. However, only 1.1% believed untreated sewage to spread disease - most thought untreated sewage to only disrupt aquatic life and soil quality.
From the survey, we concluded that the public did need further exposure to all the problems that ineffective sewage treatment can cause, the growing need for efficient systems and the solution we proposed - the incorporation of SynShine in an MFC. Awareness of the usage of MFCs in sewage treatment was particularly low. To remedy this, our team decided to educate the public on these issues. We arrived in some ways that we believed would be both interesting and engaging to our target audience.
[1] http://www.readabilityformulas.com/free-dale-chall-test.php
[2] http://www.readabilityformulas.com/free-readability-formula-tests.php
1-Bad Quality
5-Good Quality
1-Not Important
5-Very Important
1-Not common
5-Very common
Stop-Gap Animation
Our team created a video on the dangers of the release of untreated bacteria into the environment through a short story drawn in a cartoon design to be appealing to its viewers. It also explained briefly, the working of an MFC and how some of the bacterial species can be used to generate electricity from untreated sewage water.
Pamphlet Distribution
This was done to spread awareness so we could gauge the immediate responses of people on our project. This helped us to interact directly with the community our project would affect in the long run. As the idea of co-cultures is quite scientific and could be a new concept to some of the members of the population, we anticipated that distributing pamphlets would let us explain the idea better. We found that our presence did help ensure clearer understanding as we could answer questions that people had. We also translated the pamphlet to the local language Kannada.
Visiting Apartments
Bangalore is a city housing a large population, most of which live in large apartments. We anticipated that these were likely to face issues with their sewage treatment and water supply. Hence, we met some of the members of the management association in each apartment to hold a small discussion with them on the problems they meet, their demands of sewage and water treatment and explained our project to them. We learnt that they make use of a centralized STP in their area too but do face issues of water contamination and drain clogging occasionally. We also pinned some pamphlets onto their notice boards so people could learn more about our project.
Legal Review
The discussions we had with Govt. officials and Dr. T.V. Ramachandra spurred us on to look closely at the existing laws and regulations pertaining to sewage cleaning and treatment systems. Further research into this topic led us to the very real and ongoing exploitation of STP workers and the dangerous lack of enforcement to protect them from workplace hazards. The information we found and the reasons for this problem are summarized here.
In view of this, we decided to do a legal review to assess the situation and do our part to contribute towards a solution. This is currently in progress and we expect it to be completed by the end of the year.
