The Third Annual LNG in BC Conference provided a meeting place for exhibitors, businesses, government leaders, and others from the industry to discuss the LNG facilities in BC set to begin operation as early as 2020. This year, the conference included an Innovation Engineering Competition for post-secondary students. The UBC Chem-E-Car team decided to participate in the competition with a poster presentation.
The Chem-E-Car team uses clean energy systems such as hydrogen and metal-air batteries to power a small-scale automobile that competes in the annual American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) Competition. Therefore, the team envisioned that part of the natural gas extracted in BC could be used in the steam reforming and gas shift reactions to produce hydrogen gas. The hydrogen gas produced can be used in fuelling stations to power automobiles and other equipment, as a replacement to using traditional fossil fuels. In addition, the hydrogen gas could be transported together with natural gas in the same pipelines, making use of existing infrastructure. Due to the different densities of hydrogen and natural gas, they can be easily separated at the working site.
The competition judges approved the poster and the team was set to present during the conference. With much guidance from some UBC professors, we decided to make a prototype of our idea to show during the presentation. This involved a lot of time and effort from team members to plan and 3D print parts for the prototype. On the day of the competition, the team received good feedback from the judges and other visitors to the booth. We were also able to network with different companies that were present.
There were great ideas from all student teams present at the competition. Therefore, we were pleased to hear about our 2nd place standing amongst all the teams that participated. The team received a certificate and $3000, which will go towards funding for the team.
We would like to thank the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering, along with the professors for providing support and advice during this endeavour.
UBC Chem-E-Car 