Inaugural ChemE Cube team places 2nd at nationals
Founded last year, the inaugural U-M ChemE Cube Team placed second at the 4th Annual ChemE Cube Competition in October.
This October, the University of Michigan’s ChemE Cube team made an impressive debut at the 2024 National ChemE Cube Competition, securing 2nd place overall out of 18 competing university teams. The competition, held at the 2024 AIChE Annual Student Conference in San Diego, took place over the span of two days.
What is ChemE Cube?
The annual ChemE Cube competition, launched in 2020 by the RAPID Manufacturing Institute, challenges undergraduate university teams to design, build, and operate a 1-cubic-foot chemical plant in response to a defined problem statement.
Teams must also promote their technology through a 1-minute ad, a detailed poster, and a 20-minute “shark tank” pitch to a panel of mock investors.
The competition evaluates not only technical performance, but also innovation and business strategy. By working together, students design and construct their cube while promoting their technology through professional-grade deliverables, building skills in teamwork, problem-solving, and communication.
This year’s challenge focused on direct air capture, a critical technology for mitigating climate change. Teams were tasked with creating a modular direct-air capture plant capable of removing carbon dioxide (CO₂) from the atmosphere.
The challenge required teams to integrate adsorption and regeneration processes into a 1-cubic-foot cube while ensuring energy efficiency to minimize emissions from the plant’s operation. Beyond meeting strict technical and budgetary constraints, teams had to demonstrate the marketability and societal impact of their design as a modular CO₂ capture solution.
Overcoming challenges
For the U-M ChemE Cube Team, the path to nationals was not without obstacles. As a newly founded project team, they faced the challenge of building a new organization from the ground up while also preparing to compete on a national stage.
“Brady Wright and I founded the team last year and had to work to secure funding and recruit new members,” said team co-president and chemical engineering undergraduate student Emeline Martin. “As a brand-new team, we didn’t have any deliverables to highlight our innovativeness to potential donors and recruits until just this semester. Thankfully, we received lots of support from the chemical engineering department, ESCO, and ExxonMobil, which allowed us to afford the materials for our design, as well as flights, hotel rooms, and registration fees.”
With the support of their sponsors, the team was able to send eight team members to the national competition in San Diego.
Joining the team
The U-M ChemE Cube Team welcomes undergraduate students from a variety of engineering backgrounds who are passionate about solving sustainability problems in a hands-on and practical way. The team values creativity, collaboration, and innovation, and encourages students from all majors to join and contribute.
“The sheer range of ways you can get involved in ChemE Cube make it one of the most unique and dynamic opportunities for any Wolverine,” said the team’s business lead Alex Lourbas. “Imagine what you could do in a team that always plays to your strengths.”