Yesterday, we had our final team meeting of the semester before the dread final exams and glorious winter break. Each member completed a Google Form which gauged the club for preference on attending EurekaFest in June. We hope that the results will provide a roster of tentative attendees to submit to Lemelson-MIT in January. In terms of the Mid-Grant Technical Review in February, we plan to meet up on January 5 for our personal progress on the prototype.
The Fundraising team worked on designing CustomInk t-shirts to sell, the Mechanics continued to tinker with heating pads and thermoelectric tiles, the Communications team sent out emails to our new HISD school bus connection, and the Sustainability Lead continued her progress on the SolidWorks software certification.
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Today, we had our first open house webinar with other InvenTeams across the country. Tony Perry, the main Lemelson-MIT facilitator, led discussion in topics such as writing blog posts, community outreach and team updates. It was nice to meet other teams who share the same enthusiasm we have on our project. The Communications Team met with our principal and STEM magnet coordinator to do outreach with HISD media outlets. The Financial Team created a Twitter account, filled out a form with Southwest Airlines (concerning sponsored transportation), and the Technical Team discussed the fuel tank size, looked up the current fuel tank for our donated school bus, and received the wires for the electrical component of the project. They alsoused the thermoelectric tiles to charge a battery.
Next week will be the last meeting we have before the Winter Break. Our goal is to purchase our final components so we can start building our first (and hardest) prototype. Instagram: @EIHS_InvenTeam Twitter: @ EIHS_InvenTeam Email: [email protected] After a well-needed and well-rested break, the team received our viscometer, thermoelectric tiles, and Arduinos. We purchased the viscometer from Cambridge Viscosity, the tiles from Hi-Z Technology, Inc and the Arduinos from We Love Open Source. Each important components to our design, the viscometer will measure the biodiesel's viscosity, the tiles will keep heat the fuel to prevent it from gelling, and the Arduinos are programmed to control the fuel system. We are excited to put our prototype together.\ Next week, we will be attending our first monthly Open House, where we will present our progress to the other 14 InvenTeams via the web. In today's meeting, we updated our InvenTeam Constitution from 2015-2016. We estimated our financial costs and created a wishlist for potential donations. In addition to this, we set up a GoFundMe to cover the cost of the trip to EurekaFest and additional purchases that may come up in the future.
When we broke up into teams, the Finance Team contacted airlines to see if they could find sponsored seats to EurekaFest and added items to the shopping cart, which includes components and essentials to our project design. Communications worked on the November blog post and created a wishlist based on the information from the shopping list. Finally, the Technical Team defined the parameters for the viscometer, which is a crucial part in detecting the viscosity of the biodiesel in the fuel line. After this week is our Thanksgiving Break, so we will not be meeting for two weeks. We hope that the end of this month, we will have purchased most of our design components and will be able to begin prototyping before Winter Break.
Hello from Houston. Yesterday, we won the World Series. Today, we are proud to announce that the 2017-2018 InvenTeam at Energy Institute High School has receieved the Lemelson-MIT grant for $9000. We are using this money to implement a biodiesel fuel system onto a donated HISD bus. Additionally, we added four more members to the team, making our team total with fifteen juniors and seniors. Our final member list is (pictured below back row to front; left to right):
Currently, we are working on fundraising for our travel expenses, and one of our major goals is to purchase a vibrational viscometer--a key element to the fuel system. We can't wait to get our hands on our parts and put our prototype together. The InvenTeam of EIHS has gone through a lot this summer, to say the least. We are excited to submit our proposal and (hopefully) get an acceptance in return. By the end of this week, we will have done the following:
Written by Trisha
On May the Fourth Trisha Litong, Daniel Nadel, Mark Cabrera, and Sage Cade attended The Offshore Technology Conference (OTC) and attended the first ever OTC Challenge Competition. To compete with other schools such as St. Johns and Kinkaid, the team members created an e-poster and a video to accompany it. For about an hour, judges from BP, NASA, and other industry giants went around asking schools about e-posters made to complete a challenge faced by the Oil and Gas Industry. The EIHS kids presented how to measure Metocean conditions without the use of a vessel or humans. After the judging was over, Trisha, Daniel, Mark, and Sage won the performance award for their achievements in presenting their solution. Written by Daniel Yesterday, members from InvenTeam, along with students from the junior class attended a field trip to the Energy Research Park at the University of Houston. Once we were there, we went to the Texas Center for Clean Engines, Emissions & FUels (TxCEF). We met Dr. Henry Ng and Dr. Greg Bugosh who led tours of the facility's labs and led group discussion between them and us students. Here, they showed us how they tested diesel engines, filters, and even presented us a UH team whose yearly project is to build a race-car from scratch. It was great to have a conversation with Dr. Henry Ng who made every student ask him a question related to science. Many questions we had were about biodiesel, and we got a lot of input back from Dr. Ng. Some students even interviewed him for a podcast many of us are working on for our Environmental Science and Biotech Engineering classes. Thank you to the staff of UH and the people at TxCEF for working with our teachers and coordinating this awesome field trip. Below are some pictures from the trip! Written by Trisha Yes, it's Inventive! We are still alive and breathing! I (Trisha) have not gotten the time to post our regular updates due to AP testing, final projects, and other extracurricular activities. However, I have a lot of things to catch you up on!
On April 11, Chris Powers (owner of Houston Biodiesel) came into the junior Environmental Sustainability class to give a lecture and perform transesterification of Chipotle oil. He talked about the different chemical reactions that occur during titration (which our class performed the day before) and transesterification. He brought samples of biodiesel which we passed around and some students got to aid in the biodiesel making process. It was an interactive and compelling lecture, especially to the kids part of InvenTeam, as we are currently working on our biodiesel engine. Speaking of engines, yesterday (April 25), we got to take apart the Cummins engine with wrenches, screwdrivers, flat heads, and our own bare hands. We really dug deep into the engine, looked at its parts, and got a better understanding of how everything goes together. Now all we have to do is understand how each part works and come up with how we will modify it. Our plan is to modify the engine so that an automated system will sense the car's surrounding temperature and switch from biodiesel to petrodiesel accordingly (when it's hot = biodiesel; when it's cold = petrodiesel). Tomorrow, some InvenTeam members will be going on a field trip to the University of Houston to learn more about diesel engines. Other junior classmates will be attending, as an ongoing project during school pertains to the subject. Will post more updates soon! (Written by Trisha) |
AboutCurrently, HISD uses B5 (Diesel with 5% Biodiesel) in most of its bust fleet. Research shows that B100 (100% Biodiesel) would reduce greenhouse gas emissions significantly, but as a fuel it tends to “gel” in colder temperatures and this can lead to engine malfunction. The EIHS InvenTeam is currently developing “The Slush Buster”, which would be an automated system for regulating fuel viscosity in any diesel vehicle. Our invention would facilitate the use of B100 in any climate, as the current, widespread solution is simply to reduce the blend of biodiesel if the weather gets cold. We hope that our invention can be used by buses in HISD, and eventually vehicles in all parts of the country!
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