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My research project is founded in my curiosity of how we with modern technologies can make sustainable use of marine resources, including sustainable management of fisheries and aquaculture. Therefore, I will investigate how we, with the least environmental impact, utilize the sea’s benefits in the development of an efficient and sustainable aquaculture that will contribute to a sustainable development of the aquaculture sector in Denmark. The focus of my project is the development of an aquaculture system where different organisms such as mussels, algae and cultivated fish live in a nature-like ecological system as an alternative to traditional fishing and conventional fish farms.

One of the largest global contributors to rising sea levels is the water withdrawals, garnering a volume of 4 quadrillion liters annually, 72% of these withdrawals go directly to agricultural production. Therefore, this project aimed to examine the differences in water consumption in hydroponic- and traditional cultivations in order to determine if a transition into hydroponic cultivational methods could reduce the need for these withdrawals.

The study found that water savings as large as 55% could be made in hydroponic cultivation in comparison to traditional cultivation. It was concluded that water savings as large as 33% could be made without affecting the mass of the harvest in the hydroponic cultivation, which also produced 52% more mass per liter of water.

Oily-water problem is a rising problem with the rapid industrial and economic growth. Oily wastes are one of the major pollutants in the aquatic environment and are causing serious problems. The conventional methods such as skimming, siphoning, or burning, can be costly, take several days, and have less efficiency. Human hair can be utilized to deal with the oily water problem using the adsorption process. The purpose of this study was to introduce a system that could efficiently purify oily water by separating oil from the water.

Human hair can be modified into hair boom or mats to treat oily water. Animal furs or feathers which have the same properties as hair can also be used in this oily water treatment process along with the hair. In this study, the methods, efficiency, and mechanics of using human hair to clean up oil-contaminated water were reviewed. It was proved that human hair can adsorb more than 5 times its weight of oil. This method was able to successfully separate oil from the water by adsorption in a rapid time frame.

Water pollution constitutes a major set-back to the availability of safe water for consumption and other uses, especially in under developed countries.

In consonance with this year’s theme, “Seeing the unseen: The value of water”, I have the intention of solving this great menace. In this paper, we will have an insight into certain problems we all encounter in everyday life and how they affect us. SoCAC (Solar Cyanotoxins and Aromatic Contaminants) Water Purifier stands as the solution to these problems. This paper will also highlight the importance and applications of SoCAC Water Purifier over other methods of water purification.

There’s nothing fantastic about bottles made out of single-use plastic – yet, they are everywhere! 11 million metric tons of plastic are dumped in the ocean every year, and 8 million tons of that number constitutes of single-use plastic bottles. The safeguarding of oceans starts on land – it starts with each one of us. This is the pivotal belief that My Water Bottle Project rests on. My Water Bottle Project is a gamified platform meticulously designed to discourage the use of single-use plastic water bottles and strengthen water security. The project is focused on the places which groom future change makers and global citizens – schools. It aims to embed a deep sense of responsibility in young minds and inspire them to take action. I trialled My Water Bottle Project at my school and the results showed an impressive decrease in single-use plastic water bottle usage, thus validating the fact that it is small actions taken at the individual level which will lead to huge, impactful, cumulative results.

The implementation of Movement Control Order (MCO) during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020-2021 has affected the production process of agricultural produce due to labour shortage. Agricultural workers were unable to come to work to care for crops. At the same time, the MCO has also given opportunities for budding farmers who began to show interest in gardening and making profit.

Starting from mid-2020, our school has established a small farm using fertigation farming to generate income. Fertigation, formed by two words – fertilization and irrigation; is a concept that relies on using the present irrigation line operating in existing field to inject plants with the desired fertilizers. From this idea, we have designed and proposed an automatic plant watering system, an innovative technology to make farmers work more efficiently and yield more profit.

The irrigation technics currently applied in farms are inefficient and causing excessive volume of water wastage. Artificial intelligence system that is applied in agriculture; also known as precision farming, may help farmers to efficiently control water usage thus produce a profitable crop.

Our project on automatic plant watering system named Mechatronic Fertigation, is a device system that transmits data from soil-moisture sensor to inform decisions about watering schedules besides supporting the efficiency of fertilizers in mass production of agriculture.

If moisture in the soil is considered at the optimum amount, plants can wealthily absorb water. The data obtained from the Mechatronic Fertigation helps farmers to increase their profit by learning how to take care of their crops and determining the ideal amount of water and fertilizer to use. By allowing humans to grow food in urban areas, this technology may have the capacity to reduce deforestation. 

By 2050, if immediate action is not taken, 12 billion tons of plastic will end up in landfills or in the environment, especially in bodies of water, impacting the health and well-being of people and ecosystems.

Currently, traditional PET recycling and degradation technologies are slow and polluting. Given this, an alternative is the use of enzymes produced by microorganisms, however, their sensitivity to high temperatures limits their industrial application and in bioremediation.

By analyzing about a million protein sequences found in metagenomes from hydrothermal sites, this project discovered two thermostable PET-degrading enzymes that can be used in industry.

Algae have shown they are all-round problem solvers; they can be used as food, biofuel and a clean air source. The research ‘The Green Gold vs. Salt’ explored whether halophilic algae can selectively absorb sodium from the wastewater of the greenhouse horticulture, in order to make this sector 100% circular.

After conducting the experiment, analyzing algae-growth and microscopic examinations, the outcome of our experiment is rather positive. On one hand, algae are not suitable as a desalination method for the greenhouse horticulture. This is because the algae only absorb sodium when the salinity of the water is substantially higher.

On the other hand, this result does offer perspective for a promising future with algae as a desalination method for sodium rich water such as salty seawater. Using algae will substantially reduce the ecological footprint and financial costs of desalination and as a result the process will become more sustainable and a better contribution to our earth’s future. In other words: this green gold defeats the salt!

One of the most serious global problems of our age is water source scarcity. The sector where the available water resources are most consumed in the world and in Turkey (~ 70%) is agriculture. With smart irrigation technologies, better quality products can be grown using less water.

For this purpose, the Internet of Things software and electronic system have been developed, which determine the irrigation days and the daily water need of the product according to the agricultural product by using the weather data (with Penman Monteith Equation), and ensure the irrigation at the time when evaporation is the least, using solar energy.

Our study has achieved its purpose in our tests.

Growing durian seedlings using plastic nursery bag requires regular watering because it cannot retain water and moisture, resulting in significant water loss and bring a plastic waste problem in the community. This innovation can solve the problems in water/groundwater management, plastic waste, and agriculture that align with SDGs and Thailand’s Bio-Circular-Green agriculture model.

The innovation using rubber and coconut core fiber to process RBC bag can retain water and maintain soil moisture for durian seedling cultivation with 71 percent in 7 days before watering. The production cost was 0.19 USD/piece and it will degrade naturally. The use on farms during the summer can save groundwater 57.14 percent. User satisfaction satisfied with the maximum to high level approximately 5.0 – 4.7.

Development of an early detection tool to assess drought stress in plants is crucial in reducing irrigation water used to grow agricultural crops. The AIDA model was developed using field data and variables that are physiologic and direct indicators of drought stress. A custom-built Spectra-Rover was constructed with infrared (IR) and RGB cameras to capture radiometric IR and RGB plant canopy images. Radiometric IR temperature, red, green, and blue light reflectance values, and soil moisture readings were used to train the AIDA model.

Eighty percent (80%) of the data was used in the training dataset and the remaining 20% was used in the validation dataset. The AIDA model validation output was very close to the actual CWSI values with a low mean absolute error. A prediction output program was coded and appended to the AIDA model to output an AIDA score. This accurately approximated the manually calculated CWSI values. If this novel AIDA model with an AIDA score is used on all tomato farms in California, approximately 26 billion gallons of irrigation water can be saved each season. 

Wastewater is one of the main sources of pollution of aquatic ecosystems and the cause of disruption of self-regulation and self-restoration of water bodies. Therefore, the issue of improving wastewater treatment system is relevant for most settlements of Ukraine.

As a result of the study of the operation of treatment plants, a number of factors were identified: actual capacity of treatment plants is twice less than the designed one, it causes secondary water pollution; the supply of wastewater to treatment plants is carried out unevenly during the day and year, it negatively affects the quality of wastewater treatment from nutrients. Technical solutions for stabilization of urban wastewater treatment processes in order to reduce the content of nitrogen and phosphorus compounds in treated wastewater are proposed.