Integrated Human Practice

Overview

“Human Practice is the study of how your work affects the world, and how the work affects your work.”--Peter Carr, Director of Judging.

Our main achievements of integrated human practices were to get valuable feedback for our product improvement, as well as to raise the public awareness on the issue of indoor air quality. To upgrade our prototype, we discussed with experts in different fields in algae culturing, protocol design, and product application, etc. During the discussion, we received a lot of practical and useful advices from these experts, and we further integrated those into our project and made CAir^TM as our outstanding product to meet customers’ expectations.

Timeline of Integrated Human Practices

Motivation & Brainstorming

Measurements of CO2

We measured the air quality in many places with a sensor, Air Mentor. At the beginning, we took the sensor outdoor into those places, which the sensor was measuring constantly. Thus, we could see the data of all places are begin at the ppm around 400 to 700. Except for the gym, there are no people in those places at first, and then people flocked into rapidly. The following is the details and photos of those measurements:

1. Classroom: 40 people in one class, second class of senior second grade in Mingdao.
2. Outdoor: On the fence outside the biolab in MingDao.
3. TEDex Hall: 85 people in the TEDex Hall in MingDao.
4. SUV: 3 people in Mazda CX5 with closed circulation.
5. School Bus: 40 people in one school bus.
6. Table Tennis Room: 42 people in one table tennis room in Ming Hung department B1.
7. Gym: 30 to 40 people in civil sport center gym in Changhua county.

The CO2 concentration was over 3000 ppm after starting the measurement 30 mins in half the places we measured. It will make people feel uncomfortable with symptoms like headache and lethargy, but we usually don’t aware of the effects that CO2 cause to people. It is really a crucial problem for us to solve.

Project Design

Visiting department of environmental engineering in NCHU

Spot:Chung Hsing university environmental engineering department
Date:2019.01.11
After we aware of the indoor air quality of CO2, we searched for the current methods to solve the problems, which made us ask for professors of Chung Hsing university. They let us know several current ways to solve the problems by physics, chemistry and biology methods, respectively. There are absorbents like carbon or Zeolite in physics and chemistry ways to absorb CO2, but these methods take up a lot of energy and time. While the biology way, reducing the CO2 concentration by plants photosynthesis, have low efficiency. They also gave us ideas that we can use algae to reduce the CO2 indoors and the modeling of rising CO2 concentration while there are some people in closed places. Thanks to them, giving us more opinions to our project and made our solution come true !

Lecture by algae specialists, Ms.Huang

Spot:Mingdao High School
Date:2019.02.22
In order to have an in depth knowledge for algae,we invited algae specialist Ms.Huang to Mingdao high school. Ms.Huang gave us many practical suggestions,which made us understand more about what part of our device need to be improved. For example, the regulation of the photoperiod of algae will affect the growth efficiency.Ms.Huang said that the most appropriate day and night alternation is 12 hours of sunlight and 12 hours of darkness.She gave us ideas about how to control the illumination of our device.She also provided us with the requirements of keeping the algae. What's more,Ms.Huang explained the functions of different types of algae as well as the application of them.After listening to her introduction, we decided to choose cyanobacteria as our algae in our device.We really learned a lot from this lecture.We understand a lot more about algae. These can help our experiment and device become better.

Visiting Team Tunghai_TAPG

Spot:Tunghai University
Date:2019.5.17
For more further understanding in our project,we went to Department of Chemical Engineering of Tunghai University. They introduced the current methods of chemical absorption of carbon dioxide to us,such as their disadvantages,advantages and how the absorption works.We learned what function we need to reinforce to cover the shortages of the current methods and what advantages we have currently through their introduction. Apart from this, we also exchanged our ideas with them as well as having a look of their laboratory. This visit to Tunghai University gave us some ideas about how to strengthen our device.These surely have made our project more faultless.

Prototype Development

Asking questions about air stones from Central Environmental LTD.

Date: 2019.8.17
We met up with the employees from Central Environmental LTD., which was a company produced a variety of air stone. We demonstrated our project design to them while they introduced their product to us. They also gave us lots of useful suggestions. Because we had a problem of the blocking of air stones for a long time, they taught us to stop the water flow for a while and turn it on after a moment, then the trouble would be solved easily. Besides, they recommended us to filter the air ventilated through air stones.
Also, we appreciated that Central Environmental LTD. provided us with their own products in our device. We also got much knowledge about different types of air stones, not only the methods to use but also the respective characteristics. For instance, bobble disk could make finer bobble than air stone but it needed more space to place. Finally, we chose air stone in our project due to its efficiency and size, in addition to the trait of uneasy attachment of algae.

Taiwan indoor environment quality management association

Spot:Taiwan indoor environment quality management association
Date:2019.8.16
We met up with the Indoor Air Quality Association of Taiwan. As they are more familiar with the air cleaning field as well as customers' thoughts, we considered visiting them was the best way to solve our problems and improve our devices.
The Chairman of the Association, Mr.Zheng, told us that our idea had been developed for a long time but hardly put into practice, which meant what we did was quite challenging ;hence few people working on this succeeded. However, if the effect of our device was evident enough, this would have been a giant progress in the air quality field. Besides, the Chairman also mentioned the low efficiency of plant photosynthesis.What’s more, a normal-sized conference room needed at least three walls of pothos to get rid of the carbon dioxide produced by 5~6 adults.
Most importantly, the usage of algae was actually brilliant because the photosynthesis efficiency of algae was much more times better than normal plants.

Visiting Environmental Protection Administration

Spot: Environmental Protection Administration
Date: 2019.08.16
In order to comprehend the law of indoor air quality (IAQ) standards, we went to Environmental Protection Administration on August 16th in order to get information about law legislating and device feasibilities.
First of all, we inquiry about the reason why they set 1000 ppm as the highest standard and the difference between public place and labor’s work place. Environmental Protection Administration’s scientific researcher (Dr. HONG, MING-JUI)answered that according to the research, the maximum endurance of carbon dioxide for elders and children is 1000 ppm. Notwithstanding, due to some extraordinary workplace such as mines, they set 5000 ppm as the highest standard for special workplace. After that, we asked about the most efficient method of reducing indoor carbon dioxide. To our surprise, opening the windows is still the most eminent method, but everyone prefers to turn on the air conditioner instead of opening the window. What’s more, Dr. Hong invited an engineer (Ms. YE,HUI-FEN) to provide professional suggestions about our hardware device. He suggested the parameter should be clearer, such as rpm, as well as how many squares should contain one device to have the best efficiency.
In conclusion,we not only realize the meaning of indoor air quality (IAQ) standards but obtain a number of practical suggestions. All these will help us to make progress on our device.

Online discussion with Prof. TSAI,YAO-HSIEN of Taiwan Society of Indoor Environmental Quality

Date:2019.9.9
Because of the Professor Hong’s suggestion, we decided to contact Taiwan Society of Indoor Environmental Quality to ask some professional opinions. Professor Tsai is a secretary-general of Taiwan Society of Indoor Environmental Quality, which is the most professional and specific association related to indoor air quality. To know more about the actual applications of our product, we had an online discussion with Professor Tsai.
Professor Tsai first asked us the reasons why we chose this project theme, as most people do not have the awareness of carbon dioxide. Secondly,we ask how the most commercially available CO2 meters measure the concentration of carbon dioxide with constant accuracy? He answered that those meters utilize one trait of carbon dioxide that it absorbs infrared easily. Furthermore, we discuss the problem of whether it is important to develop the device setting in the low concentration of carbon dioxide . However, it’s the distinction that makes our product have development potential.

Algae plant of VEDAN Biotechnology

Spot:Algae plant of VEDAN Biotechnology
Date:2019.9.17
On September 17th, we visited VEDAN Enterprise Corporation, which are excel in algae cultivation field and has already sells algae caplest for a long period of time.
At first, the factory manager introduced the facilities of the factory, inclusive of the open-culture system and the high-temperature dryer. Then, we saw dried algae being made into numerous caplets. Factory manager told us that algae is high in nutrition, which can improve our metabolism and the peristalsis of our stomach. After realizing the process of making algae caplets, we discussed about the recycle method of the left algae in our product. Factory manager taught us that there will be no algae poison once we grow algae only in few days.
Moreover, without well-being drying process, algae is likely to be harmful to human beings. Thus, He suggested us to heat the algae on our own. Despite the uncertainty of food safety, it can still be good fertilizer or animal feed. After the visit and discussion with factory manager, we solved the recycle problem and learned a lot about the algae. We decided to adopt this recycle method, and improve our product with the new knowledge.

Conclusion

For integrated human practice, we visited lots of professional authorities from different fields, all of them gave us countless useful comments, which prevented many problems that might happen. We are all grateful for those people’s help, regardless of components providing or advice offering. We put those suggestions into practice and improve our project. In sum, without those support, CAirTM could definitely fail.