Chapter 1988: Starch Manufacturing

Scientist Yu Hongbin's heartbeat slowed down a bit after he saw Gu Qing's location in the control room.

This time, among so many engineers and scientists in the company, he didn't have too many expectations for himself. After all, as far as he knew, Zhang Tianhao, the head of the company's Titanium Star Department, Ying Shu, the head of Jiuzhou Technology's 6G Communication Engineering Department, Li Cun... so many geniuses and people who were extremely loyal to the company, all applied for the moon stationing according to the process.

But it turned out to be me...

"Huh... Since I succeeded, keep working hard!"

Relying on Jiuzhou scholarships to live and study in college, and being promoted within the Jiuzhou Technology system after work, Yu Hongbin has been working hard to move forward towards his idol.

"I just don't know what the background of this friend who was also selected is. Even his name is codenamed 'X'. The boss of the think tank team is really unique."

With a sigh, Yu Hongbin began to work on the work at hand.

He needs to sort out the raw materials required for each project in the shortest possible time. After counting the materials, he will start exploring and transforming the environment around the cave, and try to complete the preliminary exploration work before his colleagues land on the moon next month, and expand the lunar base.

Gu Qing glanced at the picture in the lower right corner of his mask display area, and saw that the seed cultivated by his company was working actively, and nodded.

The company cannot rely solely on Zhang Tianhao, Yingshu, and Li You to take the lead. In addition to young people, more new faces are needed to take responsibility and authority.

After being distracted for a few seconds, Gu Qing quickly gathered his mind and concentrated on the experiment.

Next to the equipment in the physical storage cabin, he clicked on the operation screen, opened a pile of "waste gas" bottles in the warehouse, and transferred the gas inside to another device.

These waste gases are the waste gases produced by the breathing of every astronaut from the first moon landing to this moon landing. As precious materials, they were not abandoned, but collected and sorted into the warehouse by intelligent robots.

"The amount of carbon dioxide contained in these exhaust gases should be enough to eat a steamed bun."

With such a sigh, Gu Qing stretched out his right hand, clicked the conversion button, and then began to wait quietly.

Starch is the most important ingredient in all staple foods in the world, and it is also an extremely important industrial raw material. Today, the main source of starch in Blue Star is produced by corn, potatoes and other crops through natural photosynthesis to fix carbon dioxide. Although it looks very natural, you can get starch-rich staple foods by planting seeds, fertilizing, pest control, and harvesting.

But from a scientific point of view, the synthesis and accumulation of starch in plants involves more than 60 metabolic reactions and complex physiological regulation, and the theoretical energy conversion efficiency is only about 2%.

And this magical change still requires a long time, rich land, water resources, various fertilizers, and various pesticides for pests and diseases. Even hydroponics requires various nutrient solutions and a stable and controllable space to proceed.

The climate change crisis will lead to a food crisis. The most important thing for humans is still controlled by nature. Modern agronomy, agricultural machinery, agricultural equipment, and seed cultivation are only elevated among the factors that humans can control.

Although a few years ago, a team at Daxia Academy of Sciences had achieved the de novo synthesis of carbon dioxide to starch, it was only under laboratory conditions, costly, and produced little output.

The equipment that Gu Qing is currently operating has achieved a leapfrog improvement in conversion rate and energy saving.

On this equipment, first, there will be components that capture solar energy through a specific photosynthesis simulation system and convert it into chemical energy to provide energy for subsequent chemical reactions. In addition to solar energy, there is also base self-storage energy as a back-up.

After capturing the set quota energy, the equipment system will use this energy to fix the carbon dioxide in the air to form organic matter.

Then, through a series of enzymatic reactions, the fixed carbon dioxide molecules are gradually converted into longer carbon chains, and at the same time, there will be program equipment to modify them and eventually generate starch molecules.

By designing and calculating pathways, an artificial starch synthesis metabolic pathway consisting of 24 core reactions was constructed, and an artificial starch synthesis metabolic pathway was established through module assembly and substitution. In a chemical enzyme system with time and space separation, driven by hydrogen, carbon dioxide was converted into starch at a rate of 60 nanomoles of carbon dioxide per minute. The starch synthesis rate of this artificial pathway is more than ten times that of corn starch, and the speed can be increased when Gu Qing deliberately "adds materials".

When simulating some principles of natural photosynthesis, more human intervention is carried out on this basis. The combination of artificial intelligence programs and equipment programs makes the synthesis more efficient and is not restricted by the environment and seasonal weather.

A person releases about 1140g of carbon dioxide through breathing every day. The breathing frequency of Jiuzhou Technology astronauts is slightly lower than that of ordinary people, but the amount of air they breathe is not low. In fact, because their body development is higher and the amount of exercise every day is extremely large, more carbon dioxide is exhaled.

If calculated based on the average life expectancy of 75 years, a person's breathing produces about 31,200 kilograms of carbon dioxide in his lifetime, which can synthesize nearly a thousand kilograms of starch.

Although it cannot satisfy a person's starch needs for seventy-five years, it can meet the survival needs for at least several years. If eaten with other foods, it can extend the time.

Of course, this technology is not without other inputs, such as the various raw materials, energy, and equipment losses required for enzymatic reactions, which all require energy and materials.

As time passed, Gu Qing seemed to be fascinated, watching the operation of this equipment in the food storage cabin.

Occasionally, he would order an intelligent robot to come over for data connection, manually optimize the program for it, and eliminate some garbage data running in the system.

Yu Hongbin was very self-aware and knew that this big guy must have important work, so he did not take the initiative to ask Mr. "X" whether he had completed the work out of curiosity, but was very serious about his work.

[Xiezhi] and [Tiangong], the former is responsible for work records, and the latter is more concerned about the actual data changes in the process of various tasks. Only after both of them agree that the work is completed, Yu Hongbin can continue to complete the next task.

Although it looks cumbersome, it is not him who needs to actually work.

Every time Jiuzhou Xinghai Company's moon landing project mission, it will bring "laborers" to the moon.