Team:Macquarie Australia/Practices/ImpOpinions
In order to gain professional industry perspectives and an objective critical evaluation of our project, Team Macquarie 2015 consulted key opinion leaders from a variety of relatable fields. This offered fruitful feedback and information on how to best design our project and tailor it as a potential business venture.
According to Dr. Stephen Schuck of Bioenergy Australia, most hydrogen production today is utilised in the production of ammonium nitrate and fertiliser. He further applauded the relative novelty of Team Macquarie’s usage of synthetically produced hydrogen as an alternative energy source. During an August 2015 tour of our laboratory and work-space (fig. 3), he discussed with our team various current and future prospects in bioenergy production methods in order to highlight our competitive market, and these methodologies were corroborated by other related professionals. He also highlighted that most biological hydrogen production is achieved via algae rather than E. coli, indicating that Macquarie iGEM is working towards filling a relative industry vacuum. However, it must be noted that the Hydrogen Hero does not seek to replace other fuel sources, but merely supplement them. Helena Nevalainen positively evaluated our use of a modular reactor consistent of isolated enzymes rather than live organisms, and any safety concerns that we were likely to face during our reactors development.
Dr. Stephen Schuck Manager, Bioenergy Australia. M. Sc. (Engineering), Grad. Dip. (Management), PHD and MBA (Technology Management)
Figure 1: Dr. Schuck alongside Team Macquarie students during a collaboration meeting.
Figure 2: Dr. Schuck presenting to the team about alternative bioenergy sources.
Professor Helena K. Nevalainen Biotechnology Industry Advisor
Gavin Hughes of the Biofuels Association of Australia assisted us in critically evaluating financial factors relevant to our project, outlining that pollution and any negative health impacts all contribute to final taxation calculation in fuel production, neither of which negatively impact the Hydrogen Hero. Financial practicality was then further assessed by Andrew Gilbert of Bioplatforms Australia who highlighted how to surpass the various risk points that may discourage product value inflation. According to Gavan Knox of Hydrogen Fuel Systems, our usage of an on site-generator would allow avoidance of numerous harsh Australian fuel storage taxation laws that may prevent achievable financial prospects.
Gavin Hughes CEO, Biofuels Association of Australia. Founder/ CEO Kingfisher Solutions Pty. Ltd.
Andrew Gilbert General Manager, Bioplatforms Australia. Operations Manager, Australian Proteome Analysis facility Key financial sponsor of Macquarie iGEM 2015.
Gavan Knox Managing Director, Hydrogen Fuel Systems Managing Director, Knox Scientific Pty. Ltd.
Dr. Trevor Davies (Allens: Patent Lawyers) and Dr. Andrew Jones (Foundry Intellectual) offered invaluable legal advice, particularly regarding patenting laws in Australia. These revealed that while our product, as a unique biological invention including synthetic DNA is certainly patentable, achieving this would require a functioning, complete E. coli capable of producing hydrogen gas. We acknowledge the fact that achieving this may be outside of reasonable scope of our Macquarie 2015 team’s research project. However we are optimistic of the commercial success of The Hydrogen Hero in future years. Furthermore Andrew Jones and Trevor Davies both noted that wide-scale disclosure about our project and its production methods would make securing a patent within Australia unlikely at this stage. However, it will be necessary to secure patents at a later stage to ensure the commercial viability of the project as an enterprise.
Dr Trevor Davies Partner, Allens Patent & Trademark Attorneys. BSc (Hons), PhD, GDIP, FIPTA.
Dr Andrew Jones Principal, Foundry Intellectual Property Patent and Trademark Attorney BSc (Hons), PhD, MIP, Dip, IPP.
Community Engagement
About 2 billion people worldwide do not have access to grid electricity (Karutz and Haque, 2013). As such remote communities and industries the world over are dependent on stand-alone power supply systems as a sole, or complimentary, source of electricity. In developing our business implementation strategy and prototype for on-site hydrogen production, we identified off-grid households and businesses as a potential target market for our project. Off grid energy production is of particular importance in Australia due to a low population density of 2.9 inhabitants/km2 and remote energy intensive industries such as farming and mining (Group, 2015). As such, rural and remote Australian’s that live or work off grid rely heavily on diesel and gas generators.
The extensive use of diesel generators began due to the relatively low cost and wide availability of fossil fuels, however price increases and concern over greenhouse gas emissions is causing a shift toward utilizing renewable sources of energy (Karutz and Haque, 2013). We set out to engage with regional Australian’s to find out first-hand how they’re currently sourcing their energy and what challenges they’re facing. Overall our respondents indicated use of diesel fuel was still a major source of energy, although some had branched out into solar power. A main concern with renewable energy systems was maintenance and the efficient repair of faults by a technician given their location. When presented with our prototype the upfront cost of the system was also met with apprehension. Our respondents indicated one of the main barriers into renewable energy is the uncertainty of upfront and ongoing costs, with a comprehensive comparison off the cost efficiency between diesel and renewable energies relying on a lot of assumptions and a variable market.
Engaging with the community confirmed to us that regional Australians are interested in shifting from diesel to renewable energy. However when living remotely, concerns about technical reliability are paramount and new technologies carry a certain risk for the consumers that increases with isolation and inability to personally repair the system. As such, we endeavoured to design the system to withstand harsh Australian weather with the technical components shielded from the outside environment. Given the low cost of producing E. coli we’re also confident that running the system is cost effective in the long term.
Conclusions
In summary, the viability of our project was demonstrated and assessed by the optimistic comments and reviews made by the Key Opinion Leaders in industry and beyond.