Tag archives for energy efficiency
Posted by For several years running, French engineering students from two neighboring Loire Valley schools, Polytech Nantes and La Joliverie, have shared engineering and effort to build rocket-shaped vehicles that captured top prizes at Shell Eco-marathon Europe fuel efficiency race. But the students began to feel there was something lacking in their cars’ perennially award-winning profile. “It…
A hot pink wind turbine turned above one paddock at Shell Eco-marathon Europe this year; it was the stall of the team from Inholland University of Applied Sciences in the Netherlands. The students, all studying aeronautical engineering, have designed a vehicle with a detachable rear end that can be changed in few minutes and converted…
Kağan Meijer of Celal Bayar University in Turkey explains the changes made to the vehicle to conform to new rules for Shell Eco-marathon Europe 2013. Celal Bayar’s car last year, Tarzan, had large over-hanging solar panels, but this year, the solar panels needed to be smaller to be integrated into the body of the vehicle.…
Hungary’s Kecskemét College had an amazing second-place run in last year’s Shell Eco-marathon Europe, and the team was determined to kick up its performance this year. The gasoline-powered engine is now 45 cubic centimeters, about a third larger than last year’s engine for the car, nicknamed Megameter, which achieved a performance of 2,695.5 kilometers per liter…
What if you could pack and assemble a car like Ikea furniture? Students at Aston University aimed for lightweight portability and sustainability in the wood car they designed and built for Shell Eco-marathon Europe. Their project manager, Christian Mclening, explains the innovative plywood composite chassis and “flat-pack” design in the video below. In addition to…
Posted by Dana and Lorena Ruisi of Universidad Cardenal Herrera’s Idea Ceu Team from Spain explain that their team took inspiration from nature for the shape of their car entered in Shell Eco-marathon Europe. Their vehicle is shaped like a rain drop. They believe falling rain is one of nature’s most efficient means of movement, and they…
As a college athlete (track and field), I understand the desire to put on a good performance while on one’s home turf. So when I was talking to high school students from Team Ubbo Emmius from the Netherlands at Shell Eco-marathon Europe, I expected them to feel the same way about “home field advantage” giving…
More than 3,000 high school and college students from 24 countries are gathered in the port city of Rotterdam, the Netherlands, this weekend for a race for fuel efficiency. More than 180 cars are entered in Shell Eco-marathon Europe 2013, where students design and build super-low-mileage vehicles, and then prove them on a 10-mile (16.3-kilometer)…
Efficient Light Bulb Study Generates Heated Debate
Posted by Brian Handwerk on May 3, 2013 When we published a story this week on a study that showed the negative consequences of environmental messaging on light bulbs, we suspected the subject would spark a lively debate—and our readers delivered. The post garnered more than 2,500 Facebook “likes,” 582 tweets, 93 Google+ “+1s,” and more than 90 comments. A few themes are…
The effort to go green in building materials added to the challenges for the Loyola Marymount Senior Mechanical Engineers team at Shell Eco-marathon Americans 2013. Senior Van Weller explained that the team chose lightweight bamboo for the body of its gasoline-powered prototype vehicle, the Gen 5, and spiffed it up with gold paint. Unfortunately, the…
Zack Lapetina of Purdue University explains how the Purdue Solar Racing team uses high-efficiency photovoltaic panels, and then adds intensifiers to increase the amount of sunlight the cars capture for energy in Shell Eco-marathon Americas student design competition. You can also read their blog about their journey here: Lighter and Sleeker for This Year’s Race.…
Students at Cicero-North Syracuse High School are demonstrating an innovation in flexible vehicle design with the hydrogen vehicles they built for Shell Eco-marathon Americas 2013. The CNS Performance Engineering Team fashioned its hydrogen tank and fuel cell unit, shown in one of the photos above, as a modular, removable unit that can be moved back…
The “Let’s Do It Again!” team from James B. Dudley High School in Greensboro, North Carolina weaves reuse, recycling, and waste reduction into construction of the high-efficiency electric cars it builds for Shell Eco-marathon Americas. This year, the team’s three vehicles incorporate parts of an old baby carriage, a child car seat, a chair, some…
In order to gain easy access to work on the engine between heats, students from Mater Dei High School of Evansville, Indiana, typically build their Shell Eco-marathon cars to open like unhinged clamshells. However, as coach Dan Ritter explains, duct tape works surprisingly well at holding everything together on the track. It seems to have…
Sophomore Dansil Green, team driver, explains one of the ways that the Granite Falls High School team from Washington State seeks to set a mark in fuel economy at Shell Eco-marathon Americas: With a light-footed driving style. Like most of the teams, the ShopGirls coast around the track when they can, only drawing on their…
Pamela Ruiz of Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico in Mexico City explains how her team built a car that resembles a predator of the sea. Appropriately, they named their vehicle Mako, after the fast-moving shark. Nacional Autonoma is one of 11 teams from outside the United States in Shell Eco-marathon Americas this year (four from…
Junior electrical engineering student Shane Poindexter, of the University of Alaska, Fairbanks’ “Nanook” team, explains how the team transported their six vehicles more than 4,000 miles (6,400 kilometers) to Houston: In their airline luggage. He says even in an oil-producing state, the students recognize the importance of building more fuel-efficient vehicles. The team team’s six…
Although the mileage turned in by the top performers in Shell Eco-marathon Americas may be eye-popping—typically about 2,000 miles per gallon (846 kilometers per liter)—the student competitors in the European edition of the competition achieve triple the fuel economy. (Last year’s European winner turned in a performance of 6,663.2 mpg (2,832.8 km/l). (See “French Teams…
Although hydrogen has been hampered as an oil alternative in the real world because of challenges in setting up a new fueling infrastructure, students are showing that it is a viable and clean transportation fuel at Shell Eco-marathon Americas. Andy Bank, of the University of Missouri’s Tigergen team, shows off Mizzou’s Tigergen III car in…
Louisiana Tech University has been a perennial winner at Shell Eco-marathon Americas, with an emphasis on slipping aerodynamic features into sleekly designed cars that look like they could be driving the roads today. “They want a car that looks like a car,” explained Heath Tims, associate professor of mechanical engineering and team coach. “They want…
Why does this team’s high-efficiency car look like a taxi? Ride-sharing is the idea that students at St. Paul’s School in Covington, Louisiana wanted to drive home with the vehicle they built for Shell Eco-marathon Americas 2013. It’s nicknamed “Big Yellow Taxi,” and modeled after Benny the cartoon taxi in the movie, “Who Framed Roger…
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Sometimes the long term trends are the hardest to see, yet also the most significant. Take energy efficiency, for example. There’s no question that using energy more efficiently is crucial in both meeting the rising global demand and in minimizing climate change. And the good news is that the United States has been on…
Posted by The Energy Information Administration is touting the fact that “heating and cooling” now comprise less than half of our residential energy usage. But that’s only half the story. Used to be that most of our residential energy bucks went to heating and cooling our homes. In 1978, for example, almost 70 percent of the energy used in American…
Posted by A debate is in full-swing in northwest Washington state about the energy, economic, and environmental future of the region, where coal export terminals have been proposed to send U.S., and potentially Canadian coal to Asia. A plan to build a sprawling $665 million coal terminal northwest of Bellingham, Washington has been the focal point of…
French Design Firm Gives House of Straw a Modernist Touch
Posted by EarthTechling on December 27, 2012 Perhaps the first Little Pig was right all along. In a demonstration about how to build a simple structure made entirely of recyclable or reusable materials, a small Parisian architecture firm called Studio 1984 chose straw as the main building material, designing a cozy, 15-square-meter “nest” that even the Big Bad Wolf would have to admire. The tiny structure, built earlier this fall…
