Team:TecCEM HS/Design

Design

By talking about your design work on this page, there is one medal criterion that you can attempt to meet, and one award that you can apply for. If your team is going for a gold medal by building a functional prototype, you should tell us what you did on this page. If you are going for the Applied Design award, you should also complete this page and tell us what you did.

Note

In order to be considered for the Best Applied Design award and/or the functional prototype gold medal criterion, you must fill out this page.

This is a prize for the team that has developed a synthetic biology product to solve a real world problem in the most elegant way. The students will have considered how well the product addresses the problem versus other potential solutions, how the product integrates or disrupts other products and processes, and how its lifecycle can more broadly impact our lives and environments in positive and negative ways.

Please check more about the modeling process and drawing of the prototype here

In order to create a way in which our project would be used, we designed a biofilter, which contains the two enzymes involved in our project and its main function is to degrade SDS, a chemical common in household detergents in Mexico. That's the reason we created a scale model of this filter, this model is larger than the actual design (in order to fully display the characteristics of the filter). It is important to note that the current design only process SDS into 1-dodecanol, and the other pollutants are separated in further processes. The materials and function of this model is described on this document.
(Image prototype_overview)

Materials:

The materials used in this prototype are 3D printed or industrial-proceeded products easily found. On each module, it's body is made of PVC tubes, the covers are 3D printed (made of resin for 3D printer), the same as the interior components. The modules are interconnected through hoses (hoses are industrially produced and are designed for aquarium installations), and joined through valves (industrially produced and designed for aquarium installations. The main structure consist on metal sticks that maintain the structure together, and the main base and the cover are wood planks joined by wooden stick. All the 3D-printed components were designed using Rhinoseros and Autodesk 123D.

Function:

The structure is divided according to its functional parts in three modules, each one with a specific use.

Module 1:

The first module consists on a 3D-printed net, that inside contains a nitrocellulose membrane that has the immobilized enzyme ferritin, the main function of this module is to separate SDS molecules from the rest of the contaminants; in order to do this the first step consist when the polluted water enters in the middle of the membrane, then after the water doesn't find a direct exit, it is forced to cross the membrane, and as the water crosses the membrane the SDS molecules are trapped in the membrane, while the rest of the water is expelled from the filter. Then in order that the membrane release the SDS, water at 50°C enters in the side of the membrane, so the process goes in the other direction, and with the warm water the ferritin denatures, releasing SDS, which goes to the next module.
(Module_1)

Module 2:

The second module consists on a series of plates with only one exit and over them they have a sponge, that sponge contains nickel beads with the enzyme alkyl sulfatase, which degrades SDS into 1-dodecanol, this mechanism operates as the water with SDS enters to the module, is forced to pass through the sponges with alkyl sulfatase, and so the degradation of SDS increases, also because the water can only pass through one hole per plate, the water pass slower, letting the enzyme work for more time, maximizing the degradation.
(Module_2)

Module 3:

The third module is designed for the separation of 1-dodecanol from water, in order to do this, the internal structure consists of a net with a sponge on the inferior part, with a metal stick that facilitates its extraction. This module works based on the principle that 1-dodecanol is not soluble in water and that 1-dodecanol is solid at room temperature. So when the water with 1-dodecanol enters to the module, is necessary to let it cool down, in order that 1-dodecanol separates from water and solidifies, so water is absorbed by the sponge and 1-dodecanol is removed by removing the cover of the module.

(Module_3)
Video showing the function of our prototype: (https://youtu.be/8bXx85R1RMU)
Animation describing the function of our prototype: (YouTube video)



Impact

We built a scale prototype, to be able to observe hoy every step of the process works in bigger size, obviously because we are using enzymes and removing SDS in quantities of ppm or ppb, considering all variables, the real biofilter would be small, like the size of a column of nickel for affinity cromatography, since it follows the same principle. We would like to use biodegradable materials to avoid further environmental negative impact by doing a biofilter, but also we would like it to be implemented maybe in the final steps of a water treatment process or even be implemented in some households for tap water.