Hybrid Car in the News
The Advertiser has featured student research into alternative fuels as part of their 1° series of features.
From the article:
A SEARCH for alternative fuels has led a group of Adelaide University students to build what they believe may become the car of the future.
Chemical engineering student Tim Kenefick said the team's working model, one tenth the size of a normal car, was a hydrogen fuel cell hybrid vehicle that could be the "next generation" of green motoring technologies.
The remote-controlled car is hooked up to a hydrogen fuel cell and has access to electric power stored in rechargeable batteries, much like existing vehicles such as the Honda SCX and Toyota FCHV.
But hydrogen storage has presented a challenge to carmakers and the university team get around this by storing the gas in sold form in a metal hydride vessel, instead of a compressed-gas tank.
You may view the full text of the article on the Adelaide Now site
Level IV Poster Presentation
The School of Chemical Engineering held it's Level IV Poster presentation on Thursday, 11th October, 2007. The day was a great success with representatives from industry attending and assisting with the assessment process. The generous sponsors Australian Institute of Energy presented a prize to Kong Jin Lee (shared with Tim Kenefick, Girish Prem Kumar, George Zabanias and Sanjeet Marwah) for the Best Level IV Chemical Engineering Research Poster on an Energy Theme and Santos presented a prize to Michael Iles for the Best Overall Chemical Engineering Level IV Research Poster.
The day topped off the earlier success of Chemical Engineering students who attended the recent Chemeca 2007 conference held in Melbourne 23-26 September. The aim of the conference was to highlight the role of the Chemical Engineering profession in generating the benefits that academia and industry deliver for the community at large.
Beyond the technical programme the popular Chem-e-Car competition was conducted involving teams of undergraduate engineers demonstrating their skills at controlling chemical reaction. Team Mad-Z won both first prize in the car race and first prize in the poster competition. Team Blank ran third in the car race. Postgraduate student L Low also won for the poster entitled "Field Testing of Nanofiltration for Tartrate Stabilisation of Wine and Berri Estates Winery".
Excellence in Teaching
The Carrick Institute for Learning and Teaching in Higher Education recognise the unique contributions to quality teaching by academic staff throughout Australia.
Dr Peter Ashman (Chemical Engineering) was one of seven individuals from the Univeristy of Adelaide to receive a citation in 2007. He was awarded "For the creative use of 'real-world', open-ended scenarios in Chemical Engineering to promote the development of not just skills in problem analysis, but the ability to perceive and to choose between multiple solutions."
Chemical Engineering at the Women In Technology Challenge
As part of the Women In Technology Challenge, 120 school girls gained a detailed insight into Chemical Engineering.
Participants were given an introduction to the discipline of chemical
engineering by addressing the question: "What do chemical engineers
do?". Afterwards, the key chemical engineering technology of
fluidisation was explained and then explored in the laboratory. The
session concluded with the girls conducting an experiment verifying
that the pressure drop through a fluidised bed is independent of gas
velocity.
