NEWS > SUCCESS STORIES

Northeastern’s Chem-E-Car

Last Sat­urday, a small, mechan­ical car was zip­ping up and down the Unit Oper­a­tions Lab, a state-​​of-​​the-​​art facility in the Mugar Life Sci­ences Building. It was Chem­ical Engi­neering Day at North­eastern and a few stu­dents on the university’s chem-​​e-​​car team were showing a group of alumni how it worked.

I think we’re on track to do really well this spring,” said team co-​​captain Cory Sweezo, E’18, refer­ring to the group’s upcoming per­for­mance in the Amer­ican Insti­tute of Chem­ical Engi­neers’ 2016 North­east regional chem-​​e-​​car com­pe­ti­tion in April. “We’re never ready this early.”

The team has had a long his­tory of suc­cess, to be sure, win­ning the national com­pe­ti­tion in 2009 and thrice placing first in the regional com­pe­ti­tion over the past seven years. But it has never worked with such alacrity, such focus.

Come April, said Sweezo, the team will have spent more than 1,000 man-​​hours designing and fab­ri­cating the car. The machine itself, nick­name forth­coming, stands 18 inches tall and weighs approx­i­mately 25 pounds. It’s made of alu­minum and pow­ered by an iodine clock reac­tion trig­gered by a com­bi­na­tion of potas­sium iodine, sul­furic acid, starch, sodium, thio­sul­fate, and hydrogen peroxide.

I think the team’s suc­cess comes from our desire to inno­vate,” said co-​​captain Justin Ram­berger, E’18. “Each year, we try to come up with new ideas that have never been tried in com­pe­ti­tion before.”

 Students work on chemical reaction equations for the ChemE Ca

We want to make sure we know how dif­ferent com­po­si­tions of chem­i­cals will affect the dis­tance the car will travel,” Sweezo explained. “In order to find out, we have to do a lot of testing.”

Both he and Ram­berger noted that their co-​​op expe­ri­ences have informed the design of the car and improved their lead­er­ship acumen.

As an engi­neering co-​​op at W.L. Gore and Asso­ciates, the Delaware-​​based man­u­fac­turing com­pany, Ram­berger learned how to design safe, effec­tive exper­i­ments. As he put it, “that’s a key skill for any sci­en­tist or engineer.”

Sweezo’s cur­rent co-​​op at the Rogers Inno­va­tion Center, which is based at Northeastern’s George J. Kostas Research Insti­tute for Home­land Secu­rity, has piqued his interest in mate­rials engi­neering, making him the team’s point person for all things chem-​​e-​​car. “Before this co-​​op, I worked solely on the chem­i­cals team,” he explained. “Now, I’m more knowl­edge­able about the struc­tural qual­i­ties of mate­rials and how they work.”

Courtney Pfluger, the team’s fac­ulty advisor, believes that the group’s tire­less ded­i­ca­tion to designing a quality car will pay off in the regional com­pe­ti­tion. “The car ran really well last weekend,” said Pfluger, assis­tant teaching pro­fessor in the first-​​year engi­neering pro­gram. “We’re going to keep on testing it and making sure the reac­tions are faring the way we want them to.”

Written by  Jason Kornwitz.