MackSolo Team Update: Day 9 ✈️ 🌍
καλημέρα (kali̱méra) to all!
Mack was about to depart from #Heraklion, #Greece for #Alexandria, #Egypt today, but… we are waiting for the Egyptian permit to come in… You know the drill: all fingers and toes crossed everyone!!!🤞🙏😅
So meanwhile, we would like to introduce you to someone...
There have been many people wondering why Mack is taking up this epic journey at only 16 years old and why he was not waiting till he was 18. Well, he has been speaking about his drive and passion for aviation👮♂and the hope to break a record, but also his hope to shine a light on the fact that you do not need to be a legal adult to achieve something amazing, to have a voice, or make a difference for your community.
As Mack is (hopefully soon) going to land in Alexandria, we would like to shine a light on Azza Abdel Hamid Faiad🧕born in the city of his first African landing. As a 16-year-old high school student (yes, 16!), she invented to create biofuel from waste plastic 💪.
One day, while traveling in a taxi 🚖, she ended up at an overcrowded fuel station with long waiting queues. She realized that as oil consumption keeps growing, and supplies remain limited, there is a great need then to find a sustainable alternative.
She began to research🔬what scientists were doing to find new energy sources and found out that scientists had converted plastic into biofuel using a catalyst — but that this catalyst was expensive. She resolved then to find a cheaper alternative. As a high school student, she didn’t have easy access to the kind of research facilities that a study of this scale required, so she approached the Egyptian Petroleum Research Institute in Cairo which accepted her to conduct her research.
The new catalyst she discovered actually works more efficiently, under lower temperatures, breaking down plastic waste while producing gaseous products ⚗️like methane, propane, and ethane, which can then be converted into ethanol.
Given that Egypt’s plastic consumption is estimated to total one million tons per year, Azza’s proposal could have a big impact not only on Egypt's economy, allowing it to generate income from recycled plastic, but on the world as a whole.
For this research, which has the potential to impact the world so greatly and positively, Azza won the European Fusion Development Agreement award at the 23rd European Union Contest for Young Scientists 👨🔬, in 2012.
We all know that plastic pollutes because we still cannot effectively deal with plastic waste. In fact, nearly every piece of plastic that has ever been made, still exists in some shape or form, except for the minor amount that has been burnt, and since 91% of plastic isn’t recycled, all that plastic could theoretically continue to exist for thousands of years 🌎.
But this could change, thanks to the truly groundbreaking discovery of this teenager from Egypt.🤞🙏
#teenager #youngsters #girlsinstem #youngpeoplemakeadifference CNN
Source:
https://www.womensweb.in/2019/03/azza-abdel-hamid-faiad-egypt-cheaper-biofuel-women-innovators-iwd2019-mar19wk1sr/