Team members gain valuable experience as they are challenged with time and budget constraints. Involvement in this type of collaborative competition gives each team member insight as to how it would be to work for an actual engineering firm.
This type of competition promotes the use of Renewable Energy sources and their importance for the future of solving our energy challenges.
The NMSU Green Baja is intended to be a multi-disciplined program that would consist of chemical engineers and mechanical engineers. The responsibility for making the fuel would be the chemical team, while the mechanical team would be responsible for the car design.
Under faculty supervision, students will design, test and race their unique vehicle and fuel against other teams. The competition simulates "real-world" engineering challenges, and each team is competing to manufacture the "ideal" fuel and produce the most efficient care. NMSU has chosen to use the baja car because we would like to eventually "grow" the dynamic events to emulate those of the current baja competition.
Each competition would initially be split into two types of events:
Static
The static event would consist of fuel production and testing. The fuel will be a B100 based fuel in order to establish and maintain consistency between teams (most likely derived from pure or waste vegetable oil). Also, each team would be required to follow the ASTM standards for biofuel, ASTM D6751-07b, and award points to teams for synthesizing a bio-diesel product that achieves various characteristics rangers of the fuel (see table for primary analytical methods).
In addition, award points for yield of starting material, minimization of by-product, aqueous. and/or catalyst waste, and disposition of glycerol.
A poster presentation of the synthesis route which would include the kinetic analysis of the reaction rate (qualitative based on judging) could also be required.
Dynamic
The dynamic event, at least initially, could simply consist if a duration contest that will be used to determine the efficiency of the vehicle and fuel. each team will be allowed to use one gallon of fuel (or whatever can fit in the fuel tank) and see how far they can go.
Below are the requirements for testing Bio-diesel. The proposed parameters may require changes due to ability to conduct all tests on site:
If you wish to become a sponsor of Green Baja, contact Chris Wise by phone: 575-646-3908 or by email: chwise@nmsu.edu.
Thanks for your support!