Every year, during the Annual Student conference conducted by AIChE, the AIChE's annual Chem-E-Car Competition® is held, where groups of university students representing their AIChE chapters compete with cars powered by a chemical energy source. In the course of the year, regional competitions are also carried out to determine which team will reach the final. Thus, in order to participate in the AIChE's annual Chem-E-Car Competition®, students must design, build and test their cars in order to safely travel a certain distance by carrying a load and finally stop. In addition, the teams must make a poster in English detailing the operation of their car.

During the V Technical Day of Chemical Engineering and Biological Engineering - Procesa 2017, held from March 13 to 17, 2017, the second Latin American regional competition of Chem-E-Car was carried out. There were two participating teams, belonging to the AIChE student chapters of the Universidad Nacional de Colombia - Campus Medellín with the car "Hydrocar" and the Universidad Nacional de Colombia - Campus Bogotá with the car "Guarito".

 In the photos, teams representing the AIChE student chapters of the Universidad Nacional de Colombia - Campus Medellín and the Universidad Nacional de Colombia - Campus Bogota respectively, working on their trolleys during the regional competition.

An hour before the competition, teams are informed about the distance that the cars must travel, which can vary between 15 and 30 m ± 0.005 m and the load to be transported that can be between 0 and 500 ml of water. Each team have two opportunities to operate its cart, so that it travels the determined distance, and wins the one that reach the distance closest to the finish line.

In the photo, members of the team representing the AIChE student chapter of the Universidad Nacional de Colombia - Campus Medellín, winner of the regional competition, accompanied by their cart "Hydrocar".

The winning team, representative of the AIChE student chapter of the Universidad Nacional de Colombia - Campus Medellín, will have the opportunity to participate in the final competition to be held at the Annual Student conference in Minneapolis, United States, from October 27 to 30, 2017. This team is made up of 17 students from different careers: 3 of them belonging to Mechanical Engineering, 1 to Petroleum Engineering, 1 to Biological Engineering and the others to Chemical Engineering.

His car, called "Hydrocar," runs on a hydrogen production reaction using NaOH and Al. Hydrogen is sent to a 5-cell stack of graphite electrodes where an oxidation reaction and a reduction reaction occur. Then there is a flow of electrons that generates the energy needed to make the car's engines run and it creates movement. At the same time, another reaction known as the iodine clock that causes the formation of a starch-iodate complex to intervene in a color change in a specified time, this change is detected by a photosensor that identifies the signal and by the use of an arduino a relay is triggered that opens a circuit and brakes the car.

Regarding the operation of the car, Luis Antonio Martínez, member of the team and student of Chemical Engineering, clarifies that "tests were done on different sizes of aluminum powder until finding the ideal value and the correct mixture to give a stable hydrogen production" and he adds that "the temperature must be taken into account as this depends on the precision of the braking reaction". Finally Luis Antonio comments on the triumph saying that the members of the team felt a lot of happiness at the moment they won because "these were 7 months of hard work rewarded" and he invites the other students interested in participating, explaining that they will start a research seed for the next Chem-E-Car project.