Team:Calgary/Project

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<p>The Calgary iGEM team chose to focus on the development on a duel system for the detection and remediation of toxic components from petroleum waste.  During the production of oil, gas, and many other natural products there is the production of numerous toxic components.  These have become a huge problem in our society resulting in land, water, and air contamination.  While efforts have been made in developing easy systems for the remediation of contaminated areas synthetic biology may provide a better methodology for being able to detect and remediate toxic environments.  Examples of land contamination include the tailing ponds, massive lakes of toxic components produced during the oil extraction process.  Tailing ponds are large lakes of toxic components produced as a result of bitumen extraction and the production of oil.  Bitumen is a complex mixture of oil components that is extracted to produce oil and gas products useful for society.  The raw bitumen is mixed with hydroxide and water to extract the useful hydrocarbon components.  After further processing, the useful, high pH, soluble fraction is separated and further processed, while the remaining materials are released into the tailing ponds.   
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<p>During the production of oil, gas, and many other natural products there is the production of numerous toxic components.  These have become a huge problem in our society resulting in land, water, and air contamination.  These consist of a variety different types of compounds.  Air contaminants consist of NO<sub>x</sub> (nitrogen containing compounds) and SO<sub>x</sub> (sulfur containing compounds) which contribute to a variety of environmental issues including green house gas accumulation and acid rain.  Similarly water contaminants often consist of complex mixtures of compounds including highly toxic phenols and aromatic compounds, corrosive and additionally toxic carboxylic acid containing compounds, sulfur, and nitrogen containing compounds.  These often have complicated structures and demonstrate acute toxicity to wild life.  Classical examples of water contamination include tailing ponds produced from the oil extraction process.  Finally, land areas can become contaminated as a result of these toxic compounds leaching into ground water sources, spills or accidental release of waste products into the environment, and other ways.   
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</html>[[Image:Calgary_EnviroToxins.jpg|thumb|600px|center|<b>Figure 3.</b>Figure 1: Environmental Toxins contaminate Air, Water, and Land ]]<html>
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</html>[[Image:Calgary_EnviroToxins.jpg|thumb|600px|center|Figure 1: Environmental toxins contaminate air, water, and land masses.  These can consist of various compounds which could be divided into sulfur, nitrogen, carboxylic acid, and phenolic based compounds.  What can we do to solve this problem?]]<html>
   
   
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Revision as of 07:44, 2 October 2012

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Project Overview

During the production of oil, gas, and many other natural products there is the production of numerous toxic components. These have become a huge problem in our society resulting in land, water, and air contamination. These consist of a variety different types of compounds. Air contaminants consist of NOx (nitrogen containing compounds) and SOx (sulfur containing compounds) which contribute to a variety of environmental issues including green house gas accumulation and acid rain. Similarly water contaminants often consist of complex mixtures of compounds including highly toxic phenols and aromatic compounds, corrosive and additionally toxic carboxylic acid containing compounds, sulfur, and nitrogen containing compounds. These often have complicated structures and demonstrate acute toxicity to wild life. Classical examples of water contamination include tailing ponds produced from the oil extraction process. Finally, land areas can become contaminated as a result of these toxic compounds leaching into ground water sources, spills or accidental release of waste products into the environment, and other ways.

Figure 1: Environmental toxins contaminate air, water, and land masses. These can consist of various compounds which could be divided into sulfur, nitrogen, carboxylic acid, and phenolic based compounds. What can we do to solve this problem?

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