The problem

High-salt wastewater with divalent cadmium

High-salt wastewater usually refers to wastewater containing NaCl 30g/L. Wastewater that contains a large number of heavy metal ions, especially divalent cadmium will have a large impact on our lives and health

cadmium is a common industrial material, the soil around mining areas is often heavily polluted by heavy metals. And rice is a well-known aggregator of divalent cadmium, which cadmium may be enriched in rice and cause chronic poisoning of organisms. Besides, as the current passes, it carries these sediments into the water, wreaking havoc on aquatic life.

Our solution: Survive in salt & absorb heavy metal

After testing all physical, chemical and biological methods, our team selected the biological method. The biological method used by our team is activated sludge. Basically, we add our engineered bacteria in the activated sludge and use it to absorb Cd(II) in wastewater. And considering the high-salt environment in wastewater, we also add gene that address the high-salt toleration problem.

Design

Mainly, our engineered bacteria is added 4 parts and each plays an important role addressing the problem, the 4 parts are shown on the right side.

Hardware

How we apply the method in reality

To apply our method in real life and try to actually solve the problem of heavy metal in high-salt wastewater, we design a hardware that can run the process of using activated sludge to absorb heavy metal.

Human Practice

Connection with the society

Our team only focus on the experiment in the lab, but also treat the connection with the society as an important part. We had several visits with people from different fields including government, professors and researchers in science field, etc. We connected the science with daily lives and tried to make our project more practical and effective.