UMaine Students Design Paper Snowboard for Engineering Competition
Contact: University of Maine, Nick Houtman, Dept. of Public Affairs, 207-581-3777
John Hwalek, Dept. of Chemical and Biological Engineering, 207-581-2302, U.S. Department of Energy
John Horst, 303-434-2817 or 303-868-9145 (cell)
ORONO, Maine — When UMaine engineering students hit the slopes at the Winter Park Resort in Colorado on April 3, they’ll be aiming for more than a thrilling run on a fast course. The 12 members of UMaine’s 2004 Energy Challenge team are hoping that their custom designed paper snowboard will carry them to another first place finish in a national engineering competition.
“We’re getting excited,” says team captain Mike Byrd of Bangor. “We’ve been paying attention to the questions that some of the other teams are asking the judges, and no one else seems to be doing what we’ve done.”
“At first we felt kind of lost trying to figure out how to build the board. What we were trying wasn’t giving us the results we wanted. The turning point for us came when we toured the wood composites center here (at UMaine) and saw the machine they use to make boards out of sawdust and plastics.”
Byrd and team member Joe Ramos of New Sweden, Maine work part time at the Georgia Pacific (GP) mill in Old Town and had access to paper dust, a waste product generated by the tissue manufacturing process. GP normally disposes of the dust in a landfill. It turned out to be the perfect ingredient to mix with plastic and run through an extrusion machine at the Advanced Engineered Wood Composites Center.
The annual Energy Challenge is sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and the Institute of Paper Science and Technology at Georgia Tech. Its purpose is to encourage students to develop engineering designs that save energy and consider waste recycling and reuse. According to DOE, the pulp and paper manufacturing is the second most intensive energy industry in the nation.
“This project has given us the opportunity to think about alternatives,” says Byrd. “We’ve gotten to apply some of the techniques that we’ve been learning about in our engineering courses. There’s a lot of satisfaction in going from the beginning, when we had no idea of how we were going to make it, to seeing a final product.”
In addition to Byrd and Ramos, members of the UMaine team include: Janelle Lavoie, Glen Cove; Jennifer Saucier, Millinocket; Kristy Palmer, Rumford; Stephanie Fisher, Winslow; Andrew Sawyer, Holden; Timothy Davis, Glenburn; Ryan Wadsworth, Cornish; Jay Mitchell, Dryden; Joshua Higgins, Kittery; and Lara Smart, Airdrie, Alberta, Canada. Professor John Hwalek of the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering is the advisor.
During the competition, students will subject their snowboards to stress tests and race them down a short course. Students also must present information before a panel of judges and submit written materials that demonstrate how their products meet technical criteria for energy use, recycling and composition.
UMaine took first place in the Energy Challenge in 1999 with an innovative paper kayak. In other years, students have built a paper windsurfing board, a paper sailboat sail and a packaging container.
This year’s competition features 13 teams from the United States and Canada. Other teams include the Georgia Institute of Technology, Lamar University, Miami University (Ohio), Mississippi State, North Carolina State, Pasadena City College, Savannah College of Art and Design, Spartan School of Aeronautics (Tulsa, Okla.), State University of New York — College of Environmental Science and Forestry (Syracuse, N.Y.), Temple University, University of Colorado- Denver and University of Central Florida.
Local sponsors for the UMaine team include: Cianbro Corporation, Pittsfield, Maine; D&S Engineering, Millinocket, Maine; Georgia Pacific, Old Town, Maine; SAPPI, Somerset Operations, Skowhegan, Maine; SD Warren Services Co., Westbrook, Maine; Castine Energy Services, Inc., Waterville, Maine; University of Maine Student Government; Peter Duncan, director of the University of Maine Pulp and Paper Foundation; Faye Woodcock-Murray, Manager of Business & Special Programs, University of Maine Pulp and Paper Foundation; Sugarloaf/USA — Carrabassett Valley, Maine; and International Paper, Bucksport, Maine.