• Question: what is your most exiting investigation?

    Asked by feed485tax on 19 Jun 2023.
    • Photo: Amy Stockwell

      Amy Stockwell answered on 19 Jun 2023: last edited 20 Jun 2023 7:47 am

      Coffee factories smell. I spent some time in a factory trying to keep the smell from escaping the coffee beans, so that the cup of coffee would smell stronger. We did lots of experiments.
      One idea was that the transport system in the factory was breaking the beans which released the smell. So we made coffee whilst avoiding the transport system. This meant that we had to carry the coffee beans carefully from one machine to another. 6 tonnes (6000 kg) of coffee beans. And we had to get the beans from the ground floor to the 7th floor without a lift – that was a lot of carrying buckets up the stairs. We got very fit that day.

    • Photo: John Grasmeder

      John Grasmeder answered on 20 Jun 2023:

      Most chemicals and plastic use fossil-based raw materials, usually coming from oil and gas. I am working on projects which look at making the same raw materials but making them from waste. In particular, waste from the forestry industry (all the bits of the tree that cannot be used), from the shellfish industry (shells from crabs, shrimps, prawns, lobsters) and from waste plastic.

    • Photo: Alexander De Bruin

      Alexander De Bruin answered on 20 Jun 2023:

      Mine was trying to figure out how to avoid having to put about 40kg of platinum back into the refinery. I got to help improve our production processes and prepare the company for making 1000x more product without messing up!

Comments