Team:Slovenia HS
iGEM HIGH SCHOOL
team Slovenia
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"One team. One dream. One goal. One journey to a solution for a global problem."
- iGEM HS Slovenia -
Abstract
Did you know that between 1850s and today we have spent as much as 135 billion tons of oil and our demands are only increasing? Oil is of tremendous importance in our everyday life, but it is difficult to obtain and multinationals that assume the risks and responsibilities associated with that also gain the ability to monopolize it, making it unequally accessible. More importantly, oil is a non renewable source and some projections say we only have enough for the next 40 years! But we use it in connection to transportation, energy, pharmacy, artificial materials and it has many, many other implications. Life as we know it today is simply not possible without it. So what can we do? It is necessary to find an ecologically friendly, self sustainable and globally accessible alternative for obtaining fuels. Here is where our idea comes in! Because of its chemical structure, butanol is very similar to conventional fuels and a perfect replacement for them, as it can be used in eternal combustion engines without modifying them. But how can we get biobutanol? Turns out we can produce it from organic waste! In anaerobic conditions we can transform organic waste to biogas (to be used as energy source on its own) and butanoic acid. We can then take the butanoic acid and transform it into biobutanol with the help of microorganisms. The method is completely safe to people and to the environment and the microorganisms are contained and carefully controlled. And thus instead of polluting the Earth we have produced a useful, easy and accessible method of obtaining biofuel from garbage!
Team photo
