UMaine ChemE Car Teams Take Top Spots at Regional Competition
Contact: Matthew Scott, (207) 699-8747; Aimee Dolloff, (207) 581-3777
The University of Maine’s ChemE Car Teams took the two highest honors at last weekend’s race sponsored by the American Institute of Chemical Engineers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
The Blue Team finished in first place out of nine teams, stopping less that two inches
from the finish line on a course of about 70 ft. Their car will make the trip in the fall to the national competition in Nashville, Tenn.
The White Team finished second at a distance of about five feet from the finish line. The
White team also won the Safety Award and received second place in the poster competition.
The goal of the race is to power a car by chemical means a given distance, and the winner is the car that can stop the closest to the line. A timing mechanism is used in each vehicle in an attempt to make it stop as close to the line as possible.
UMaine’s cars have been works-in-progress since last fall. The Blue Team’s winning car uses an aluminum air battery to power two electric motors. The battery is made of aluminum foil, salt water, paper towel, and activated carbon, according to team captain and chemical engineering student Matthew Scott.
In all, the car runs on 13 batteries that are stacked together to produce upwards of 9.5 volts of electricity.
The second place team developed their car based on the everyday alkaline battery.
“The hard work we all put into the car finally paid off with an excellent showing at the regional conference in all the divisions,” says White Team captain and UMaine senior Mark Gonyar. “We ran into many hurdles along the way, but the collaboration within our team and dedication to the project helped us prevail in the end.”
In the past, UMaine’s ChemE car teams have fared well, placing first three times in the last four years in the regional competition. UMaine didn’t compete regionally in 2007.
During that period, they also received third and ninth place in the national competition.