The AV club is currently working on two projects: The Solar Boat and the Biodiesel Hybrid Vehicle. The team Members of these two projects consist of the students from different engineering majors including Mechanical, Civil, Electrical, Chemical and Engineering Technology.

The goal of the Solar Boat Project is to construct a competitive solar boat to compete in Solar Splash, 2007. Solar Splash is a yearly World Intercollegiate Championship Competition.

The Biodiesel Hybrid Vehicle Project consists of three individual teams including the EV Conversion Team, the Biodiesel Generator Team, and the Chemical team. For the first year, the three teams will work independantly, and research specific aspects of the project. After that, they will combine their efforts in order to design and build an optimized efficiency hybrid vehicle that is operated by biodiesel fuel.

EV Conversion

During the summer, the EV team took an old Kewet that was sitting in the back of the lab, and studied it in order to gain a better understanding of how electric vehicles work. During the Fall quarter, the EV team intends to use the Kewet as a test platform in order to test different possible electric vehicle configurations for the main project that will be started in the winter quarter. In the winter quarter, the team will take what they learned in the previous quarter, and apply it to a bigger project. The team will convert a 1979 Civic Station Wagon into an electric car. If time permits it, the team will then develop a range extender for the electric car. The range extender is basically a generator that will charge the batteries. In essence, the car will actually be a series hybrid.

Biodiesel Generator

The project will span two years with the first year dedicated to the power plant. The second year will focus on integrating the system into a passenger vehicle.

Project Objectives:

• Optimize efficiency of diesel engine operating on high grade biodiesel. Ideally B100 Grade Fuel (100% Biodiesel)
• Recover additional energy from the system¡¯s exhaust heat.
• Convert traditional gasoline powered passenger vehicle into high efficiency Hybrid Biodiesel-Electric Vehicle.
• Convert a wankel rotary engine to operate efficiently On petroleum diesel and then biodiesel. The completed wankel rotary engine Will be used to Operate The Hybrid Biodiesel-Electric Vehicle Replacing The Diesel Piston Engine.
• For more detail about the biodiesel team and its project, please go to visit:

Chemical

The objective of the project is to design and build an optimized Biodiesel process that will minimize the current waste, increase productivity and quality of the product. The project will be conducted in three phases:-

• Phase I consists of a literature review and current process evaluation.
• Phase II will involve the design of the improvement of the current process, testing of pretreatment of different feedstock and separation techniques for purification of the biodiesel.
• Phase III will be the implementation of the design, construction and testing of the newly improved biodiesel production process.

Work tasks would include design calculations, hardware procurement and testing in laboratory or bench scale, analysis of the separation efficiency of the equipment and optimizing the operation of the process. In order to determine the efficiency of the separation techniques for both feedstock pretreatment and product purification, the physical and chemical properties of the feedstock and product before and after separation should be analyzed. However, how detailed the analysis is would depend on the availability of funding and resources. For the process improvement, the minimization of the loss of unused reactant (methanol) and its reuse will be studied and implemented in the process modification.

It is anticipated that the completion of this project would result in an improved biodiesel production process with a shorter production time and better quality product.