Students’ E-car rolls to second in event

• By CHANTE DIONNE WARREN
• Advocate staff writer
• Published: Nov 24, 2008 - Page: 1B - UPDATED: 12:05 a.m.

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Could two ingredients, one that adds a tart flavor to soft drinks and candy and another used in laundry detergent, become the next car fuel combinations  of choice?

A six-member team of  chemical engineering students at LSU used citric acid and sodium carbonate to fuel up a “chemical factory” looking box-sized car that raced into a second-place finish on Nov. 16 during a national alternative fuel-powered car competition in Philadelphia.

“The idea could be applied, but really only for small scale,” said James Henry, LSU Department of Chemical Engineering faculty member and LSU’s Chem-E car adviser.

Fueling a larger car with sodium carbonate and citric acid would be too costly and  also require dangerous and prohibitive amounts of the solutions to keep it running, he said.

“It would be a rolling bomb in a big car,”  Henry said.

Not so for the 25-pound, 15-inch-tall race car. Its alternative fuel components, when combined, create an acid base reaction that can release enough carbon dioxide and pressure to drive the motor that fuels the small car, he said.

LSU competed against 29 other colleges and universities from across the country in the American Institute of Chemical Engineers Chem-E-Car competition. Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y., won the contest with its hydrogen fuel cell car and Texas A&M University placed third.  The LSU students received $1,000.

The top three schools are eligible to compete in the Chem-E-Car World Finals in Canada in August, said Jeanette Krebs, a spokeswoman for the AICE.

“What LSU did this year could have won in previous years. What Cornell did has never happened in the history of this competition,” said Scott Fogler, a University of Michigan chemical engineering professor who helped develop the Chem-E-Car competition 10 years ago.

Each car had to complete a 60-foot run in two minutes, requiring team members to estimate the amount of fuel it would take. In addition, an unspecified amount of water is added to each of the cars to weigh them down.

LSU’s car came in 10.5 inches over the finish line. Cornell’s car landed precisely on the line, earning a perfect score.

The competition could have turned into a bust for LSU teammates who arrived in Philadelphia only to find that their car’s axle had broken during shipping, said team captain Chuck Combs, 24.

“The car wasn’t even working,” he said. “I really didn’t think we would win with the way things had been going.”