UANL obtained Innovation Award at AlChE Student Annual Conference

Young Mexicans created a vehicle that excelled for its innovative design at the AIChE Annual Student Conference 2022, held in Phoenix, Arizona.

Last year’s AIChE Annual Student Conference 2022, held last November in Phoenix, Arizona, awarded the Innovation Award to the Chem-E-Car team formed by students from Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo Leon (UANL).

In addition, UANL representatives won third place in the Student Poster Competition of this international event, which brought together 34 university representatives from Brazil, Canada, Colombia, China, the United States, Greece, Mexico, and Qatar, among other countries in the Americas, Asia, and Europe.

AIChE Annual Meeting is the first academic forum for chemical engineers in the field of innovation and professional growth. Academics and industry experts offer a wide range of relevant topics in areas such as research, new technologies, and emerging development in the areas of chemical engineering.

“The purpose of this contest is to get students to apply chemical engineering principles. Students were asked to create a vehicle that would be ignited by a chemical reaction and fueled through a different chemical reaction.

“Our design excelled precisely because it was like an electric car, like a small Tesla. We did this chemical engineering project dedicating time to it and we think it is representative of the country,” said Garza Hernandez on behalf of his classmates.

The Competition

The AIChE Chem-E-Car Competition privileges students’ ability to measure chemical reactions that provide the starting, movement, and completion of a vehicle’s route, so all students use their knowledge for the project.

“We had the honor of winning the most innovative design this year. The competition is about precision. It’s not about speed; rather, we are given a distance to reach. We have to get as close as possible to that distance, so it is quite an adventure to calculate the correct measurements and quantities to achieve the goal,” said Sánchez Llanes.