Difference between revisions of "Team:UANL/Human Practices"

INTEGRATED HUMAN PRACTICES

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Interview with José Alfredo Gutiérrez Constantino, from PromaPlast

We had an interview through the phone with José Alfredo Gutiérrez Constantino, sales chief at PromaPlast, whom we contacted through different phone calls we made to companies related to our project (fossil fuel derivatives and precursors producers).

PromaPlast is an international plastic and chemical distributor. It can be found from México up to South America.

Due to confidentiality petition made, we can't make the interview public. The feedback we received helped modify our project the following way:

• We noticed the need to publicize green production methods, beyond the concept of production from recycled materials, which are traditional "sustainable" processes.
• We made a video of diffusion in which, we explain that the substitution of oil as raw material for many of the products of daily use is one of the most important steps to be carried out in favor of the environment.

Advisory from Dr. Patricio Adrián Zapata Morín

Dr. Patricio Adrián Zapata Morín has a degree in Genomic Biotechnology from the Autonomous University of Nuevo León. He studied Genomic Biotechnology, M.C. Engineering and Biomedical Physics, Doctor of Engineering and Biomedical Physics, and his areas of knowledge are: Biophysics, Data Science, Computational Biology and Genomics also he is the Doctor in charge of the Data Science department of the FCB UANL

Due to his experience in the area of ​​molecular dynamics, we asked for his advice to start the mathematical model; He guided and validated our ideas regarding how to verify the stability of the modified protein, the calculation of the diffusion of the substrate through the pore and the computer tools to be used for these purposes.

Advisory from PhD. Mauricio Carillo-Tripp

Mauricio Carrillo Tripp has a degree in Physics from the Autonomous University of Baja California (UABC), he has a doctorate in Biophysics from the Autonomous University of the State of Morelos (UAEM). He has completed three postdoctoral degrees, in Chemistry Department, Wabash College, USA 2005, Molecular Biology Department, The Scripps Research Institute, USA 2008, Applied Physics, Cinvestav Mérida, 2009.

His participation as an advisor was in the area of ​​mathematical modelling, as he has experience in the field of ​​high-performance biomolecular modelling and dynamics. Our contact with him came from the Development of next-generation antiviral drugs with the help of molecular biophysics and high-performance computing conference, in which he gave us feedback on the realization of the molecular simulations carried out.

From this, the leader of the simulation area of ​​the physical model began working in his laboratory at the Center for Research and Advanced Studies (CINVESTAV) of the National Polytechnic Institute (IPN) in a scientific summer stay of the Mexican Academy of Science (AMC). There his cluster was used to run some molecular simulations, he also coached us for the use of a license of the supercomputer of the IPICYT of San Luis Potosí, which was obtained a month later.

Advisory from MsC. Miguel Loera

MsC. Miguel Loera is a PhD. student, at the Department of Environmental Systems Science We had a videoconference in order to ask him for advice in the area of math modeling; he helped us creating the model for analysis and prediction and delimiting it according to our needs. It is based on differential equations.

Advisory from Dr. María Mercedes Roca

She studied at Zamorano University, Honduras from 1997 - 2014. At Zamorano, She researched plant virology, diseases of tropical crops, contributing to regulatory issues and science communication for genetically modified crops and teaching and course design. She has a PhD in plant virology from UCL and Rothamsted Research (University of London), and a B.S. in microbiology from Kings College, London. She is currently the Executive Director with Consult MRS, (Multiple Risk Solutions) a consultancy company dedicated to risk analysis of biological organisms and biosafety.

She offered her time and experience by coaching us in the process of doing an extensive risk assessment on our project; mainly in the broader biocontainment measures, and also offered help from a legal perspective. She also helped to get familiar with the standardized procedures that should follow the development of our plan to achieve an appropriate level of safety for the environment and the people involved in the development of the project.

Advisory from MSc. Joel Ediner Fuentes Campos

MSc. Environmental Microbiology, BSc. Environmental Engineering. Areas of knowledge: Synthetic Biology, Gene Editing and Biotechnology Regulation.

He offered his knowledge in the area of biosafety to make improvements in the risk assessment of our project. He helped the safety team to polish specific aspects of the report, such as what were the particular things that should be stated to communicate that our organism is not dangerous, and how should we classify the organism in the base of its potential to do harm. In other words, he helped us to review the report that we started with PhD Maria Mercedes Roca, to make the technical aspects more friendly with non-expert audiences.

Changes We Made

HUMAN PRACTICES

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Our Project

The focus of our project is on the impact of the paper industry in Mexico, which is made up of small and large companies, both Mexican and foreign, mainly American [1]

In this industrial sector, a procedure known as Kraft Process is carried out to convert wood into pulp; which has a toxic byproduct known as Black Liquor (BL), which is a mixture of cellulose and lignin residues mainly, in addition to some inorganic chemicals.

BL is highly polluting due to its toxicity and, in addition, its stability makes it take many years to degrade, so it remains in the waters where it is discharged, causing chronic damage to ecosystems. [6]

To more clearly establish the impact of BL on an ecosystem, we made an Ishikawa diagram:

This diagram seeks to explain the main reasons why we consider the inefficient use of Black Liquor as a problem. Being that, it represents a risk for the workers who would be in contact with this substance. Once this substance goes through a process of "Delignification", it is discharged into bodies of water. The companies that produce this substance usually burns it for energy generation. However, this process is not as efficient compared to other forms of obtaining energy in addition to the environmental implications of its burning by the production of greenhouse gases such as Carbon Monoxide, Carbon Dioxide, Hydrogen, among others.

The process most commonly used to treat BL is gasification, which has some variants, such as the Black Liquor Gasification Combined Cycle (BLGCC). Another of the processes that are carried out is de-lignification, from which a mass with the requirements to be poured into rivers could be obtained.

The energy efficiency obtained when treating BL is very low concerning its optimum value, with which paper processing plants could produce the electricity they require [5].

Worldwide, the pulp and paper industry currently processes about 170 million tonnes of black liquor (measured as dry solids) per year, with a total energy content of about 2EJ (ExaJoules), making black liquor a very significant biomass source [4]. The process by which energy is usually obtained from BL is that of gasification, through which sulfur, CO2, CO and hydrogen gases are released, which are used as fuels [4].

Why we chose this aproach?

Pollution is a very important issue our city faces nowadays, therefore we wanted to focus our project to an important cause of this problem. As Nuevo Leon is a highly industrialized area, we searched for the most important and numerous industries. Finding that Paper producers were the principal industry in Nuevo León.

On a global scale, the activity of this industrial sector is concentrated in 100 companies, whose reported revenues were 357.6 billion dollars in 2013. Although Latin America represents only 6.7% of world paper production, two of The 100 leading companies are in Mexico: Kimberly-Clark México and Bio Pappel [1].

The states of Mexico that present a more significant contribution to Gross Value Added (VAB) are the State of Mexico and Nuevo León, the latter with a GVA of 6013.39 million pesos and an annual growth rate of 3.4% [1].

In 2016, at least 59 paper manufacturing and distribution plants were reported in Mexico, distributed in 20 states of the Mexican Republic, with a market value of USD 12,991 million annually [7].

And that is why we wanted to engage with industries/companies regarding paper production. On the other hand, we engaged with experts because they became our main source of information among with internet; this happened because companies did not want to share information about their processes with us.

Likewise, we engaged with young people through activities because one way or another, they will be the ones who forge the future, creating an impact in their lives can make a difference, and we know this first hand because some of our current team members were impacted by the activities performed by UANL iGEM team from 2014.

How we engaged with our community?

First of all, we identified paper producers as our main stakeholders, so we tried to contact them. Unfortunately, information about the environmental impact of those companies is not available, so we had to ask trough government transparency; we also tried to talk directly with them so we could interview them to know how they manage Black Liquor, but they apparently did not notice our attempts. (We sent e-mails, called them and even went in person, but some companies would just say “We will contact you”).

Thus, we decided to look for reported information about this issue, but then we had our next obstacle: there is not a study from Mexico. Then, we had to use everything we could find to make our analysis, using government information, environmental impact articles and scientific reports.

As we could not directly contact companies, we went to experts such as Doctors, and people who have been related to this industrial sector. We took their advices to change our project over time (you can find this information in our Integrated Human Practices section), and we noticed that the most important thing is the conception people have about how industrial processes impact the environment, and what can be made to decrease this impact.

Meanwhile, we started planning activities to raise awareness about this problem and by doing so we engaged with other stakeholders, in this case young people. The main activity we did to accomplish this goal was the “Túnel de la Biología Sintética” (TBS), information about this activity and how the use of this tool changed our project can be found at the Education Section.