At the prize presentation held at 10:00 am today (December 23rd) on 5F of the COA, Dr. Yuan-Tseh Le, President of Academia Sinica, was invited to present prizes and trophies to 8 creative elite students headed by Zhou Su-hong from National Taiwan University for their outstanding achievements in the creative use of rice straws. These prize-winning students also shared and introduced their award-winning works at the ceremony.

COA indicated, the name and school of winners of the recent creative competition are: Zhou Su-hong from the Department of Agronomy, National Taiwan University, won the first prize; the team formed by Hou Yong-de, Shu Qao-jie, Huang Wei-fan, Zhou Bo-shen and Yu Ming-jia from the Department of Bio-industrial Mechatronics Engineering, National Taiwan University, won the second prize; and Huang Guo-jian from the Department of Agronomy, National Taiwan University, won the third prize. Other winners of the excellent work prize included Zhao Do-jun from the Department of Life Science, National Dong Hwa University; the team formed by Wang Ren-zheng, Shu Zhong-da, Su Feng-qing from the Department of Biochemical Science and Technology, National Taiwan University; Chang Su-wei from the Department of Environment and Resource Management, Transworld Institute of Technology; Chang Yong-jen from the Department of Environmental Engineering, HongGuang University; and the team formed by Zhong Shih-yi and Gui Yu-jia from the Department of Environment and Resources Engineering, Diwan College of Management.

According to COA, to effectively use rice straws as a kind of biofuel, it invited this July the Yuan T. Lee Science Education For All to solicit new ideas for turning rice straws into fuel in hopes to stimulate new generation students to propose creative concepts in using rice straws as biofuel with creative, practical and environmental thoughts and to encourage related domestic research institutions to embark on the research of rice straw applications to solve problems relating to turning rice straws into fuel, to create new opportunities for over 1 million tons of rice straw output a year in Taiwan. More importantly, it is to turn rice straws into marketable agricultural resource in order to increase the incomes of farmers.

COA pointed out, the judging focus and criteria of the recent creative competition include creativity, practicality, theoretical references, energy conversion rate, and environmental performance. The jury of the competition was formed by scholars from the areas of agriculture, engineering and bio-industrial mechantronics of universities. After fair and impartial evaluation, 8 works won the praise from members of the jury. The work of the first-prize winner makes use of the alcohol released from the fermented cellulose of rice straws melted in the carbonate fuel battery to generate electricity. It can also be combined to E10 gasoline. The second-prize winner also turns rice straws into alcohol and even produces organic acid and methane through anaerobic fermentation with the solid residues after acidic treatment and mixed bacteria found in ox excretions in order to turn wastes into gold. All award-winners can display their creativity with what they have learned from schools in turning raw straws into biofuel and into highly value-added agricultural resource. This is the prime goal of the creative competition.