Space Apps Challenge 2017

Have you ever thought of getting rid of your wastes in beneficial way? Do you like living in a clean green environment? Have you ever wanted to get extra profit from NOTHING !?

Here comes our project BACO2 to satisfy you!!

A smart device with an application (especially developed for individual homes or compounds) to work on recycling CO2 and urine to give out a product of liquid fuel that is safe enough to be stored for later personal use or selling to get profit.

The challenge we are working on to solve is to:

Evaluate environmental, social, and economic data to design tools and plan blueprints for smart and connected rural and urban settlements.

Background:

Population dynamics, changes in climate, and diversity of available resources all influence the quality of life in urban and rural areas. Applying innovative techniques and using data creatively to research and plan urban and rural areas will help improve residents’ lives and help preserve social, economic, and environmental resources for future generations.

We should plan next-generation sustainable cities, towns, and villages that integrate data and smart/connected technologies in various domains, including energy, education, transportation, agriculture, environment, and health. Ensure that the benefits of smart planning are accessible to all populations.

Necessity truly is the mother of invention.

When innovation meets with creativity, imagine recycling useless wastes in the environment into useful fuel product as a considerable and proper solution that can be proceed for a more improved sustainability as well as providing a comfort and smart life for the citizen where that will afford him more clean green environment and provide him with a new source of energy.

The project addresses a widespread issue concerning about increasing the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere due to population growth, urbanization and industrial bases high dependence leading to emission to greenhouse gas as CO2 is one of them leading to air pollution resulting in public health issues and global warming as it was reported according to global emission database that CO2 has increased from 240 ppm into 406 ppm during the last decade and the temperature has increased by about 0.8 C which makes this issue a non-controversial, coherent and non-convoluted that has vexed scientists and opened a new horizon of researching and sophisticated inquiries about the nature of climate of our planet Earth and the dark allure of catastrophe climate change as there is no dominant single theory that could easily explain the causal determinism premise for this phenomenon neither a unified solution.

Idea in brief:

(Social) Smart home designs with device and its application that could 1) (Environmental) Recycle CO2 & urine through passing them by a genetic modified bacteria 2) (Economic) Give out a product of liquid fuel safe enough to be stored &sold to gain profit.

**The Device will depend on producing liquid fuel through efficient CO2 & urine recycling that will act as a double benefit in reducing the percent of carbon dioxide gas in the atmosphere, adjusting climate & temperature and thus reduce the global warming, on the other hand, we will encourage using biomass energy, reduce the dependent on fossil fuels and usage of non-renewable and non-green sources, get profit for the home or compound or company or country through selling the liquid fuel and thus solve the energy, environmental pollution and economic crisis. We decided to proceed the biochemistry field in constructing a bioreactor in a form of device that contains a specific type of soil lithoautotrophic bacteria after genetically modifying it by changing in chromosome 1 (4,052,032 bp) and 2 (2,912,490 bp) to give it the ability even under the critic conditions, to convert CO2 (captured from atmosphere through absorption by parts coated in resin chemicals) and Urine to liquid fuel that can act as an alternative for gasoline.

Impact:

After finishing project, conducting experiments and analyzing data collected, we concluded that our project will cause a great impact on our today's and also tomorrow's life as it met a lot of required design requirements which are:

1) Being efficient as the amount of electricity that goes out when burning the fuel is more than that entering to run the process of producing it, As for each 1 liter of liquid fuel we need about 1.35 KWH of electricity to produce it, then when burning the output of this 1 liter of liquid fuel we get about 8.7 KWH, so the ratio of input electricity to output electricity approximately is 1.35 : 8.7

2) Being green and Eco-friendly having a great effect on environment as it works on getting rid of useless wastes (urine & CO2) in a beneficial way to give out an energy source international required useful product, which is a net zero CO2 emitting process, giving an opportunity to adjust climate and overcome global warming.

3) Being affordable and low in cost that it could be bought by rich, intermediate and poor citizens, as the bacteria needed for the device is a soil bacteria which is available anywhere and could be extracted from soil in an easy non-expensive way.

4) Being profitable for its owner, whatever it's an individual home or a sewage station in a city or compound as it works on recycling cost-less wastes to give out a valuable product of liquid fuel that can be sold.

Our project's brand is "Everything from Nothing" as we are working on recycling "nothing" useless wastes (CO2 & urea) to give out a valuable international required product which is "everything" liquid fuel.

References:

https://worldview.earthdata.nasa.gov/

https://giovanni.gsfc.nasa.gov/giovanni/

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