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Human Practices

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Human Practices

Due to the concern about waste sorting, especially food waste, our initial project goal is to treat food waste and use it. But when we discussed this idea with our instructor, we learned that the composition of food waste is very complex, and there is currently no way to dispose of all the ingredients at once.
• Sorting is first of all a very difficult aspect to implement. Inspired by the instructors, we paid attention to another type of food waste, stale grain. There is an old Chinese saying that people regard food as heaven, which shows the importance of grain.
• The composition of food crops is relatively simple, the storage time is long, and contains poisons such as aflatoxin.
• After a series of brainstorming as well as literature research, we decided to design a smart device to turn the waste grains to treasure.
• To confirm the operability of our project, we launched the human practice research carefully, including a general background investigation, public survey, and professional interview.

1. General Background Investigation

According to Chinese Food Safety Standards, stale grains are grains that are stored over three years, with aflatoxin concentration over 10ug/kg, and generally inedible for humans or animals.^[1]Thus it is necessary to find the appropriate treatment.


Currently, the most common way to deal with stale grains is alcohol production by fermentation that could significantly reduce the total CO2 emissions compared to that of fossil fuels. As referred to biofuel, we found that biodiesel is another most common examples. And the increasing biofuel production in China still falls short of the targets^[2].


By consulting the literature, we learned that Y. lipolytica, one of the oleaginous microorganisms, is rapidly emerging as a promising host for the production of biodiesel due to the fast growth rate, high precursor acetyl CoA content, and oil production capacity^[3]. However, Y. lipolytica lacks the capacity to degrade raw starch (the main content of stale grains), and thus, we want to construct engineered Y. lipolytica to use directly raw starch as the fermentation substrate, which was expected to simplify procedures and reduce energy consumption.



References:
1. Institute, B. F. Stale grains http://www.bfi.org.cn/art/2019/6/12/art_19920_406809.html.
2. Qin, Z.; Zhuang, Q.; Cai, X.; He, Y.; Huang, Y.; Jiang, D.; Lin, E.; Liu, Y.; Tang, Y.; Wang, M. Q. Biomass and Biofuels in China: Toward Bioenergy Resource Potentials and Their Impacts on the Environment. Renew. Sustain. Energy Rev. 2018, 82 (March), 2387–2400. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rser.2017.08.073.
3. Xie, D. Integrating Cellular and Bioprocess Engineering in the Non-Conventional Yeast Yarrowia Lipolytica for Biodiesel Production: A Review. Front. Bioeng. Biotechnol. 2017, 5 (OCT). https://doi.org/10.3389/fbioe.2017.00065.



2. Public Survey

Our survey serves to evaluate the extent to which the Chinese public recognize and care about stale grain problems and biodiesel to confirm the practical significance of our project to society. Because of the COVID-19 epidemic, to reduce offline gatherings, we mainly conduct surveys in the form of online questionnaires.


A total of 1066 questionnaires were collected and conducted anonymously. The results revealed that the majority of the public has general knowledge and growing concern about biodiesel, however, a relative lack of understanding of the problem of stale grains. So that the harm caused by eating stale grains seems not fully understood. A more detailed analysis would be displayed as followed.


Generally, 65.76% of the participants are not aware of stale grains issues before coming across this survey, which tells us that public awareness for stale grains is relatively low. Still, a respectable amount of 24.3% of participants considered stale grains edible, and 5.35% reflected that they “did not know” which of the given choices are characteristics of stale grains (Figure 1). These results revealed that it is necessary to improve people's awareness of stale food.



Results show that 63.41% of the participants have heard about biofuels before, which is demonstrating that the years of advocation of bio-fuel as a way to reduce air pollution are effective (Figure 2-A). Public awareness is high for the reduction of pollution and the use of more environmental fuels.



As for the thoughts on our project, 55% of participants expect our plan to be green and environmental, which, if carried out correctly, will be true. However, 35.18% and 28.83% of the participants also anticipate unrealistic costs and bio-pollution that comes with the method. This result reminds us of the good expectations and concerns of the public about new technologies. In our project design, these factors will also be fully considered.



3. Professional Interviews

Summary

We conducted online interviews with professors via Tencent Meeting and e-mail who focusing on grain and oil storage or biodiesel. Through the results of expert interviews, we have obtained many directional and technical suggestions and guidance related to the project, such as the correct name of the stale grain, the need to expand the range of raw materials, starch utilization and conversion efficiency improving, and so on.



Interviews with Dr. Sun

School of Food and Pharmaceutical Engineering of NNU



In the process of brainstorming, considering the current shortage of food in the world and the large number of food wastes generated every year, we began to research and design new methods to help recycle food wastes.
However, after preliminarily reading the literature, we became confused about the treatment technique and sorting method. Dr. Sun told us the kitchen food waste has a very complex composition, including starch, oil, sugar, cellulose, as well as broken bones, etc., which will cause great difficulties for our subsequent experimental design.
We get the suggestions of narrowing down our research goals and then make further designs. Through this conversation, we learned the problem of stale grains which we don’t pay much attention to before. So, we set our sights on stale grains with relatively simple ingredients after this interview.



Interview with one director of the granary (Anonymity)

To confirm our background investigation of the severity of the stale grain problem, we have honored to have an interview with the director of the granary. We learned that the problem of stale grain has been significantly improved by national policy control and upgrading of storage conditions, etc. in the past decade. So, the current domestic storage of stale grains is not as much as we initially estimated. From this expert, we realized the long-term problem of insufficient raw materials for the first time.



Interview with Prof. Shen

School of Food Science and Engineering of NUFE



We are honored to invite Professor Shen to accept our interview on Tencent Meeting Platform (Figure 3).
Grain and oil storage is one of the research topics of Prof. Shen. He pointed out that the current stale grains have been renamed as substandard grains, including the general term for grains that do not meet the standard, such as long-term stored grains, moldy grains, and excessive amounts of heavy metals involved.
Besides, Prof. Shen confirmed our project design and significance and suggested that we should expand the range of raw materials. From him, we learned that the current grains that are moldy or with heavy metal contamination exceeding the standard are only used as feed after being attenuated.
Besides, in this interview, we also found an interesting question, that is, how consumers deal with the deterioration of the circulation link. We realize that this may be another source of raw material collection.



Interview with Prof. Zhao

Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences



We found the e-mail of Prof. Zhao when reading the paper "How China Breaks Through the Raw Material Bottleneck of the Biodiesel Industry". Prof. Zhao said in his reply that our technical route is completely feasible.
However, in the long run, the current total resources of stale grains are not enough to support the overall development of the biofuel industry. This is a problem that cannot be ignored as well as economy and cost. Besides, Prof. Zhao pointed out that according to their research experience, non-biomass raw materials such as corn stalks are another alternative raw material.





Hangzhou science exhibition

In the social presentation at the Hangzhou Science and Technology Exhibition, we found that the most concerning issue for the public after listening to our project and experimental methods are whether the cost and benefit of the entire processing process are proportional. During the event, we also met an expert who studies biodiesel. He pointed out that insufficient raw materials are indeed the bottleneck encountered at present. At the same time, the conversion efficiency is also an issue we need to consider.