ChemE car competition

April 9, 2007 - A dozen UW engineering students traveled to Tempe, AZ to participate in the AIChE Rocky Mountain Regional Conference held at Arizona State in March. Under trying circumstances, students competed and placed third in the ChemE car competition in addition to winning the award for the “Most Creative Design.” Placing third allows them to enter the national competition to be held in Salt Lake City, Utah in November.

Morris Argyle, Assistant Professor and Team Advisor stated “I am very pleased with how they represented Wyoming and the Department of Chemical and Petroleum Engineering. If you have an opportunity, please congratulate Melissa Binder, Jared Crawford, Melissa Gangl, JR Maxfield, Kent Miller, Colter Rieke, Derek Schreinert, Nick Stuckert, Mike Thompson, Sean Ukele, Malithi Wickramathilaka, and Ryan Winner for their fine efforts. Also, I want to thank Ron Borgialli for his craftsmanship in constructing the student’s car design.”

The adverse circumstances under which our students competed were caused by chemicals supplied by Arizona State University (ASU) at the competition. In UW’s design, hydrogen peroxide decomposes over a manganese dioxide catalyst in the car’s reactor to produce water and oxygen that flow through a turbine, which is geared to turn the car’s wheels. Two competition runs are allowed for each car. On the first run (using the calibrated H2O2 charge for the 53 foot target distance, about 50 ml), the car did not move because there was minimal reaction. The car was calibrated with ~30% H2O2, which ASU said they supplied, but based on the car’s performance it appeared to be closer to 3% H2O2. Keeping their composure, the team quickly performed a trial run between the two competition runs, using 5 times the normal amount of H2O2 (~250 ml), which moved the car about 1 foot. For the final competition run that occurred moments later, the students filled the reactor with essentially all of the remaining H2O2 supplied by ASU (~500 ml) which propelled the car just over 29 feet. The distance was enough to achieve a third place finish behind Utah and Colorado State University.