2014 Plastic Metals places 1st and will be heading to Atlanta!

Our start from scratch 2014 project (Plastic Metals) had a very good run stopping just 39.5 cm of the target distance! This was close enough to place 1st at the PNW Regional Chem-E-Car and qualify for a spot at the annual AIChE National competition.

We’re now going to have to start looking into fundraising for the trip to compete at the AIChE National Chem-E-Car Competition. As of yet, we do not know of another Canadian team qualifying for the National competition (will update if we find another), so we might be solely representing Canada again! If you’re interested in helping us get to Atlanta in the fall or interested in donating items/equipment towards the project – please contact us at ubc.chem-e@live.ca.

1st and 2nd place cars to be representing the region in Atlanta. (left) 1st place UBC (right) 2nd place WSU.

 

A big thanks goes out to UBC Rapid for helping us print out components for our car, the UBCs Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering for lab space and support, and SolidWorks for providing drafting software. Also thanks to the Shell Engineering Student Engineering fund and UBCs Professional Activities Fund for financial support. And one last thanks to WSU for hosting this year’s conference!

Competition later this week

We’re finishing exams so we can get ready for our trip down to Pullman, Washington later this week. Our car appears to be working fairly well, but the ultimate test will be to perform at this years Pacific Northwest AIChE Chem-E-Car competition on April 26. We have been in touch with a couple other schools and it sounds like everyone has stepped up their game since last year so we’re expecting stiff competition this year…

We finally got around to taking our team picture for the year (with two members missing).

Thanks to Tim we now have some more pictures of the car:

Above is the car during chemical clock calibrations. The shelf is small shelf in from is built to house our zinc-air batteries (not in place in the picture).

Our iodine clock reactor, laser sight is perfectly aligned.

 

Our new car with our old clock, we used this set up to gain data on our clock before the final iteration was complete.

More pictures to come of student designed and fabricated: printed circuit boards, zinc-air batteries, and some super-hydrophobic surfaces.