The 2013 project consisted of building a car on which hydrogen could be produced, stored and utilized. (“Dehydrated Water” is the start of a tradition of naming our projects using oxymorons; we do however, both split and recombine water on the car.)
The car used sodium borohydride to create hydrogen via the following reaction: NaBH4 + 2H2O -> 4H2 + NaBO2. The hydrogen was then stored in the reactor/pressure vessel and slowly released through a series of pressure regulators, relief valves and flow controllers before it reached the hydrogen fuel cell. The hydrogen fuel cell provided electricity for the motor to power the car.
Reactor/pressure vessel design:
To start, a mason jar was used to store the pressure built up by hydrogen. This however, proved to be a pain to clean out after each batch and the allowable pressure was limited. the next iteration used what is essentially a glass beaker, however, incorrect tightening techniques cracked that one, a dollar store glass was used in the mean time to store the pressure until a welded stainless reactor could be fabricated in a last minute attempt to make it to competition (which we did and placed 2nd in PNW North America). The stainless steel reactor was unnecessarily large and heavy which put a large strain on our electric motor – so a smaller, optically clear, acrylic reactor was fabricated for the National competition.
Iodine clock iterations:
The clock went from a simple cardboard box holding the laser, photosensor (accuracy ~20 s), and vial as a clock to a more robust acrylic design to hold everything (accuracy ~10 s). For the national competition the laser and photoreceptor were mounted directly to the clock reactor to minimize variations in timing (accuracy ~2 s). We were comfortable with our chemical timing to within two seconds at Nationals, unfortunately, due to fuel cell degradation we were unable to power the vehicle at the competition.
UBC Chem-E-Car 