Christmas and P in Singapore with Nanyang Technological and Singapore Management Universities

"I cannot overemphasize the importance of phosphorus not only to agriculture and soil conservation but also to the physical health and economic security of the people of the Nation. "
-Franklin D. Roosevelt (May 20, 1938)

Central Business District (CBD) in Singapore

​Before leaving for Barcelona from France, I met two young entrepreneurs from an non-governmental organization (NGO) called GK Enchanted Farm in the Philippines. Louis Faure and Vincent Tatel are using sustainable farming as a means to assist impoverished Filipino communities. 

​My plan was to visit their farm in the Philippines during my trip to South East Asia; however, due to scheduling conflicts I was not able to visit. Instead, I ended up traveling to Singapore twice! You may notice that the timeline on the Schedule page does not quite line up with the timeline for the blog. That’s because I visited Singapore for Christmas, then spent New Year’s in Malaysia, then my birthday in Vietnam, before ultimately returning to Singapore to visit Enrico Marsili and present to his lab group at Nanyang Technological University. I have made the executive decision to publish the blogs in order of time based on major holidays rather than the order of my presentations since I think it gives the blog better flow. You can always read half of this blog, leave, and then come back later, after I publish my blog about Malaysia and Vietnam, if you prefer to read things in order of presentation.

From left to right: Vincent Tatel and Louis Faure of GK Enchanted Farm

GK Enchanted Farm mission statement is:
"The GK Enchanted Farm is Gawad Kalinga’s platform to raise social entrepreneurs, help our local farmers and create wealth in the countryside. As we learned that the road out of poverty is a continuing journey and therefore, providing homes is merely the beginning, we also realized that our country is abundant with resources (land included) that we can harness for every Filipino to continuously lead a life with dignity."

Gut Feeling from Van Patterson on Vimeo.

​They are very interested in harnessing the power of soil microbes to enhance the farming practices of the local communities. Actively working with the local communities has enabled the people who live there to develop the economy and elevate their standard of living. Vincent, an eighteen year old member of the community and board member of GK Enchanted Farm is an example of how sustainable farming can assist in lifting a community out of extreme poverty. 

(Meeting these two reminded me of one of the first major public presentations I ever gave (Food, Microbes, and Human Health) in April of 2012 which was about the relationship between our gut microbes and our health at a Phoenix Event called Ignite Food.)

Peter and I at a Sustainability Solutions Festival at Arizona State University (April 2016)

​At Arizona State University, two filmographers named Peter Byck and Van Patterson are looking at how they can incorporate similar sustainable farming methods into agriculture in the United States. You may know Peter Byck as the director of Carbon Nation – a 2010 documentary on sustainable energy solutions. Peter and Van are acquaintances that I met at a Sustainability Solutions Festival in April, ~one and a half months before my departure for #ScienceTheEarth. You can learn more about the importance of soil microbes by watching these three short features.  
Gut Feeling (embeded above)
Soil Carbon Cowboys 
Soil Carbon Curious 

Nanyang Technological University

​I am visiting the lab of Enrico Marsili at Nanyang Technological University based on advice from Alain Bergel (from Toulouse). He told me that I should stop by and pay Enrico a visit because he is involved in similar research and looking for post-docs. Up until this moment, Singapore was not really on my radar; however, it is on the way to Australia from Vietnam, so I figured why not shoot Enrico an email. 

Enrico is looking at a large range of environmental issues related to wastewater and wastewater sludge. To name a few, Enrico is interested in nitrogen capture and removal using annamox bacteria, at how chemicals impact microbes and/or wastewater treatment performance, how wastewater treatment plant sludge can be used to assess the health of a community (wastewater epidemiology: do certain biomarkers indicate usage of illegal narcotics?), and phosphorous recovery. For this, Enrico’s lab collects 50 L of wastewater per sample from a local wastewater treatment plant in order to construct bioreactors as large as 5 l in capacity.   

Phosphorous (P) is a very important element which is present in large quantities in wastewater and sludge. Historically, most wastewater treatment processes have looked at P as a contaminant in wastewater that needs to be removed. Having large amounts of it in our streams, estuaries, and drinking water means that large amounts of microorganisms and pathogens can grow in these water sources- leading to eutrophication. As you may remember from EAWAG is Switzerland, eutrophication is the result of microbial populations depleting oxygen in water, leading to the development of dead zones. 

At 15:56 you can watch a clip fromBruce Rittmann talking about P recycling. 

In addition, P is a key component in fertilizer which, as discussed previously, is highly overused in agriculture. This is because P is a key component to every living thing on planet Earth since we need it for everything from the generation of energy for our cells (Adenosine Triphosphate or ATP), to the sugar-phosphate backbone that makes up the structure of our DNA, to a principle component of our cell membranes, the phospholipid bilayer (the stuff that keeps your cell together)! However, unlike nitrogen, another key component of fertilizer, we cannot make it by fixing an atmospheric gas. Rather, P is a finite resource which must be mined, extracted using acids, and then shipped to plants for addition to fertilizer.

~100 km (~62 mile) phosphorous conveyor belt from Bou Craa mine (bottom right square) to the Port El Aaiun (top left square) (Bing.com).

The imminent P shortage is the unknown crisis of the 21st century despite the fact that it was a major concern to the office of Franklin D. Roosevelt over 80 years ago. Although many people do not consider P in their day to day lives, P shortages and limitations will have a deleterious effect on world nutrition and food supply in the imminent future. Most independent reports agree that world peak phosphorous will occur by the year 2035. At our current rate of P consumption (2-3% annual growth), the total world P supply will run out between 2075 and 2100. To perplex the issue further, with the current rate of human population growth, the global population will reach ~9.5 billion by the year 2050. So, we will have increased demand for a depleting resource. The last, and perhaps most troubling issue, is that 72-85% of the world’s phosphorous supply held by Morocco. And of this percentage, 10% is locked up in a dispute between Western Sahara and Morocco over the Bou Craa mine that has sparked a human rights crisis. Even more concerning is that this mine is connected to the largest conveyor belt in the world-visible from space, the ~62 mile conveyor belt that ships over two million tonnes of phosphorous per year from the Bou Craa mine to the Port El Aaiun is highly susceptible to sabotage as occurred in 1975-1982 when the mine shut down for seven years due to attacks by guerillas.

​But of course, for every problem, there is a rational solution! First: the current agricultural infrastructure, particularly in the developed world, wastes 85% of all the phosphorus currently mined and processed into fertilizer and wastes approximately 50% of all the food grown in agriculture. The result is a large influx of phosphorous into our streams and water sources which encourages eutrophication and the development of blue algae. By readjusting our phosphorous and food supply usage, we can reduce the current and future demand for phosphorous by ~90% merely by correcting our supply chain. Second: by decreasing our demand, we also decrease our dependence on imported phosphorous making us less susceptible to the monopoly on phosphorous that Morocco has forcefully acquired. Third: we can develop technologies which effectively capture phosphorous from the wastewater treatment and other processes. Rather merely removing P from our water, we can look for ways to capture and reuse the P. Most P that enters wastewater treatment plants ends up locked in biomass or shipped out into the environment. 

In the lab Rogelio Zuniga's main project focuses on phosphate recovery from wastewater and wastewater sludge. Wastewater sludge is the collection of microorganisms and organic matter that remain after the wastewater treatment process. In order to maximize recovery from the wastewater treatment process, Rogelio is growing microorganisms that are good at retaining phosphorous inside of their cells. In other words, by enriching his reactors for polyphosphate accumulating microorganisms, Rogelio is effectively capturing the phosphorous that enters the wastewater treatment plant in the cells of the microorganisms. This is accomplished by cycling his reactors between aerobic (O2 present) and anaerobic (no O2) conditions. When O2 is present, his microbes uptake phosphorous and when O2 is depleted, the microorganisms release phosphorous which is captured and recovered in the reactor. The results of his experiments have not yet been published; however, preliminary results indicate that his bioreactors can capture ~4X more phosphorous than traditional wastewater treatment processes (~12% vs 3%)

Nandini Shome is interested in wastewater epidemiology, but more specifically, she is interested in monitoring the dispersal of pathogens  into freshwater. More information, and a review on pathogens in urban storm-water systems can be downloaded here.

Chinatown and Little India

Coincidentally, the time at which I was going to be in the vicinity of Singapore was the same time that my high school friend Carly Inkpen was going to be in Singapore. You may remember Carly from my blog about Northampton in Massachusetts, USA. Her family had decided to spend a holiday in Singapore this year. She invited me to have dinner with her family and I accepted. 

Christmas Celebration

​Since the plans for the holiday meal were a few days away, I decided to walk around the town with some friends I had met at the hostel. We were wandering the streets aimlessly until one of them decided that we should make a trip to Little India. Why not? We walked over to little India and visited some temples. After traveling to ‘Big India’ the temples were very family and kind of ‘old news.’ The markets reminded me of India because they had very bright lights and lots of colorful attire. Then it happened- while walking around the streets of Singapore- I randomly ran into Carly and her sister Anne.

​Much like the students at TERI in New Delhi, India which I first met in Busan, South Korea- the world had shrunk to the size of the palm of my hand. This person with whom I had studied in high school in Phoenix, Arizona, whom had moved to Northampton, Massachusetts and I had coincidentally crossed paths on a street in Little India, Singapore. Mind=blown. A few days later we drank some coffee and enjoyed dinner with the family. From there, she was traveling to Egypt to visit her boyfriend and I was on my way to Australia.

Singapore Management University

Left to right: Kathy Zhou Shiya (SMBC), Ian Chong, me, Lam Kok Wai (Senoko)

​But wait, the fun doesn’t stop there! Lam, the person I met on a hot air balloon in Luxor, Egypt- he lives in Singapore too! I visited him at thealumni association meeting for the Singapore Management University (SMU) where I also met Kathy Zhou Shiya and Ian Chong. Lam is now an Executive Engineer at Senoko Energy- a local utility company that draws its power primarily from natural gas and crude oil. The oil industry in Singapore is big business- accounting for 5% of Singapore’s gross domestic product (GDP). Singapore is one of the world’s largest crude oil refining centers and is Asia’s leading oil trading hub. Singapore is responsible for the pricing of oil in the Asia and refined over 1% of the world’s oil in 2015. 

Global Oil Trade Flows (2016: BP statistical review of world energy)

Singapore primarily refines crude oil from the middle east- making up over 37% of its total crude oil imports. However, only about 1% of the oil refined in Singapore makes it to the USA, most of it (~61%) ends up in the Asian Pacific market outside of China (~10%), Japan (~1%), and Australia (~9%). There is a ton of cool data about crude oil, refined oil, and natural gas in this handy study from BP, so I’ll leave it here for you to download and investigate yourself. ​

Sentosa

The chemical industry, next to the electronics industry, is the major economic driving force in Singapore- making up 10-11% of its GDP (US$ 81 billion). For example, Jurong Island (see Jurong Town Corporation) is an island of 12 square miles that started out as seven separate islands. Jurong Island is now home to several chemical and oil related companies including LANXESS, Afton Chemical, BASF, BP, Celanese, Evonik, ExxonMobil, DuPont, Mitsui Chemicals, Chevron Oronite, Shell, Singapore Petroleum Company and Sumitomo Chemical. Pulau Bukom is another island off of the coast of Singapore. Originally composed of three islands, Pulau Bokom now houses a Shell oil refinery and chemical manufacturing plant.   

Gardens by the Bay

The country of Singapore has developed in a very similar way to theNetherlands. As I talked about in an earlier blog, land can be ‘reclaimed’ from the sea by developing a polder- essentially a place where sand is added to the ocean and water is actively pumped away until new islands are formed. The tourist island of Sentosa, the Gardens by the Bay, and the luxury resort Marina Sands are all the result of reclaiming land from the sea. In fact, Singapore’s population has almost tripled from the 1960s, now serving 5.4 million residents. As a result, Singapore has expanded its land (see Urban Redevelopment Authority) by 22% since 1965- the year the city gained independence- and plans to expand an additional 7-8% by 2030. 

Marina Sands Rooftop Bar

​On top of the Marina Sands resort is a rooftop bar that, until 10PM has no dress code. Keep that in mind if you plan to stay out on the beach all day and then pay too much to take an elevator to the top of this thing. They literally will not let you in after 10PM if you are wearing shorts or flip flops. The rooftop bar overlooks the beautiful Marina Bay area. What most people may not realize is that this artificially constructed area is actually a reservoir for storing rainwater that can later be turned into drinking water. In addition, this area is also used for flood control in the city. The Marina Barrage which separates the reservoir from the Singapore Straight salt water can be used to enable overflow water to run out of the city.

Marina Bay Sands Rooftop Bar is highlighted by middle square. The Marina Barrage between the Marina Bay Reservoir and the Singapore Straight is highlighted by yellow box in the middle right. A clear distinction can be seen between the fresh water and the salt water (Google.com).

​Singapore has four major sources of water: 10% (~40 million gallons per day) catchment water (captured rainwater), 60% imported from places like Malaysia, up to 30% potential for NEWater (reclaimed wastewater), and 10-25% desalinated water. You can enjoy a water show at the Marina Sands, partially in celebration of this water system, every night starting at 9:30PM and it is free!

Singapore Skyline

Hanging out in Singapore was a lot of fun. At first, I was absolutely amazed by the thought and innovation that has gone into every single aspect of the city. From the sophisticated storm water system, to the incredibly efficient subway system (rivaled only by Japan and South Korea), and the development of several islands for oil, chemical, and tourism economies, Singapore really has their act together.

Holland Village

Of course, with these advantages come some setbacks. People in the city seem a little self-reserved and preoccupied with their electronic devices. Unlike some other countries, people on the streets did not seem very approachable since the culture here is similar to that of Japan in that people tend to keep to themselves. The laws here can also seem at times a little harsh and foreboding. For example, if an individual is caught eating a durian (a smelly fruit) on a train, the fine is $500, if an individual is caught with 100 g of cannabis resin they are sentenced to death! Selling gum? That can cost you $100,000 and two years in jail! Logging onto an open wifi account you do not own? $10,000, or three years in jail. Gay sex: two years in jail. Even forgetting to flush the toilet could cost you $150.

Food

Singapore is known for its exquisite street food, or Hawker food. Check out the picture above for some of my favorites!

ArtScience Museum

​To end the blog, I will highlight the ArtScience Museum in Singapore- or as I called it ‘that giant garlic!’

​June and I visited the ArtScience Museum partially because the architecture was so fascinating. I was intrigued by the idea of walking into a giant piece of garlic (which I later discovered is actually meant to look like a lotus flower). I was also interested because they had an MC Escher exhibit (more comprehensive than the one I visited in Milan, Italy). 

​This exhibit was really cool. It allowed participants to color in shapes and then upload their coloring to a computer. The computer then took your coloring and digitized it into a 3D structure which was then projected onto the wall. You could then interact with your colored 3D structure by touching it. Read the captions to see how June and I tricked the system into putting Santa Clause and a building in the ocean (which is probably punishable by death)!

​Lastly, it also featured a very intricate exhibit calledNASA a Human Adventure on the space race between the United States and the Soviet Union. Go through the pictures and check it out for yourself!

Experience the Sound of Future World! he ArtScience Museum also played Lo and Behold: Reveries of a Connected World in its entirety every day. This documentary by Werner Herzog talks about the interesting interplay between AI, humanity, and the future of things to come. I watched the entire film- I suggest you do the same!