ASU team finishes among leaders in Chem-E-Car championship

A team of Arizona State University engineering students finished in eighth place among 35 teams that competed recently in the American Institute of Chemical Engineers’ Chem-E-Car national championship.

The competition requires students to design and build a small vehicle powered by a chemical source.

The ASU team produced a vehicle – named Hydrospark – powered by a hydrogen fuel-cell, with an electronic system to control speed, and using a chemical-reaction process to stop the car.

The team took a first-place award with its vehicle at a Chem-E-Car regional event last spring in Reno, Nev.

At the national competition, students are given a certain distance that the car must travel while carrying a specified amount of weight.

Cornell University’s team took first place in this year’s national championship event in Pittsburgh.

ASU Chem-E-Car team members are  chemical engineer majors Devon Bridgeman, Andrew Chesley, Jacob Sciacca, Mike Morales, Nick Dunteman, Tyler Sherman and Chelsea Francis, along with mechanical engineering students, Dinesh Kale, Anna Debrilovic, Tianyu Dua and computer systems engineering major Matthew Mellott.

The team’s faculty adviser is César Torres, an assistant professor in the School for Engineering of Matter, Transport and Energy, one of ASU’s Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering.

Written by Rosie Gochnour and Joe Kullman