Chem-E-Car Success | Pages

Chem-E-Car teammates Brett Bertini, Jared Strauss, and Jash Patel

Chem-E-Car Team Wins Regionals

The UF Chem-E-Car Design Team won the competition at the 2021 Southern Student Regional (Virtual) Conference on March 26-28, 2021. The team advanced to the Annual Student conference held at the AIChE Annual Meeting in Boston on Nov. 6-7, 2021.

“Winning 1st place in the regional competition was truly a team effort from all of our design leads,” said Emerick Gilliams, UF ChE undergraduate student and 2021 technical captain and electrical team lead. The Chem-E-Car competition teaches students how to safely work with chemicals, build electrical systems, write code, and construct mechanical chassis. The UF Chem-E-Car is divided into four teams—the Power, Stopping, Electrical, and Mechanical. Together they build a small, handheld car that is powered and stopped by chemical reactions. They compete in regional and national competitions hosted by AIChE. At the competition, a judge announces a distance and specifies a weight that the car must carry. The team whose car gets closest to the announced distance after two rounds wins the competition.

“The main component of our victory was due to the significant improvement from the previously designed

Jash Patel sets the Chem-E-Car at the starting line. The team celebrates their win!

cells,” said Gilliam.

Every aspect of the team came together to create great results. Brett Bertini (Team Captain), Emerick Gilliam - Technical Captain/previous power team and electrical team lead), Garrett Kost (Power Team Lead) and Jash Patel (Electrical Team Lead) all made impacts with the new fuel cells. Gilliam designed and constructed it, Kost worked on perfecting functionality, and Patel and Bertini experimented with it to improve performance. The team mechanical lead, Adam Lipworth, fixed a critical design issue from the previous car that caused the bottom of the car to drag on the floor. This fix was essential to the team’s success in competition. The Stopping Team Lead, Jared Strauss produced consistently good results with the stopping chemistry in order to predict what concentrations were needed for competition.

This year’s Chem-E-Car design used a Lead-Acid Battery as the propulsion mechanism and a Chameleon Clock reaction as the stopping mechanism.

Sumant Patankar, Ph.D., keeps time for the team.