Many things come out of the Sino-Danish Center (SDC) in Beijing. For chemical engineering student Nicolaj Ma, it has opened the doors to cultural experiences and career opportunities as well as an impressive third place at the annual Green Challenge conference.
By Frederik Appel Olsen
Success based on liquid manure
Lots of people will feel like blocking their noses at the mere thought of storage silos brimming with pig manure. However, for Nicolaj Ma and his team Pure Manure, it has laid the foundations for a success story. Together with his Danish and Chinese fellow students, he achieved an impressive third place in this year’s DTU Green Challenge competition with the project Antibiotic Degradation in Manure by Composting and Laccase Oxidation.
“As much as 75–90 per cent of the antimicrobial agents which are used in pig production are excreted by the animals, but it is only the volume which ends up in the meat that is regulated. This means that most of the antimicrobial agents used may end up in nature, for example in watercourses. Our project presented a method for fermenting manure which removes 55–65 per cent of the antimicrobial agents in the manure within 24 hours, in contrast to the approx. 14 per cent which can be removed through normal methods,” explains Nicolaj.
The Pure Manure team consists of Nicolaj, one other Dane, and their two Chinese partners from SDC.
“Our SDC cooperation has been important for the project in that both our Chinese fellow students had contacts with Chinese institutes that possessed expert knowledge about the chemical processes in manure, and which could help us to perform our experiments. Without this connection, we probably couldn’t have done the project,” he says, adding: “We definitely wouldn’t have come third. And then there wouldn’t have been any prize money to spend on a new bicycle.”
The Pure Manure team at Green Challenge.
An international career
As pay levels in China are considerably lower than those in Denmark, Nicolaj has no plans to apply for a job with a Chinese company on completing his studies. On the other hand, this does not preclude him from using the experience he gained through studying and living in China after he leaves university:
“I have a clear advantage when applying for jobs with Danish companies wanting to send their employees to China. In this context, it is very valuable to have prior knowledge of the country and its culture. I have previously taken a comprehensive language course, so I now speak Mandarin fairly well. These are qualifications that can give me a head start over other applicants for whom China is unchartered territory,” says Nicolaj.
Even though all this obviously looks good on a CV, Nicolaj is in no doubt about what he liked most about the SDC experience:
“Seeing the world!” he says without hesitation. “Sharing a dormitory with the other Danish students. Making lifelong friendships. Being able to live well on the Danish state educational grant (SU). Finding the best places to eat local food, and shopping in the massive Chinese market for gadgets and electronics.”
However, there are also drawbacks to living in Beijing.
For example, the Internet is notoriously restricted, and websites which Danish students are used to visiting can be difficult to access or may even be blocked.” But Nicolaj does not despair:
“The flip side is that we actually spend more time together in our dormitory instead of sitting in our rooms in front of our computer screens the whole time,” he says.
On the home stretch
The first SDC graduates have already received their diplomas this year, but Nicolaj still has a semester and a thesis to do before he can call himself a chemical engineer. As the months have passed, he has acquired a good sense of what it’s like to live in China, but living in the Far East is a continual learning process, even after having spent a whole year in Beijing:
“You invariably encounter a wide range of cultural differences. Some you will be expecting, others are a surprise. China has been in the grip of globalization for years now, but many things are still completely different to what you are used to back home. But that’s all part of the experience—and the charm,” he says.