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Sustainability spotlight

EcoHawks greening the garage

Chris Depcik, assistant professor of mechanical engineering, is driving new sustainability initiatives, creating opportunities for his mechanical engineering students to gain experience developing real-world solutions for sustainable transportation and energy use. Depcik’s engineering design team, known as EcoHawks, is working not only to develop more efficient vehicles, but to find more sustainable methods to power them.

During the 2008-09 academic year, his students recycled a 1974 Volkswagen Super Beetle into a series hybrid vehicle. The on-board generator operates on 100 percent biodiesel created from used campus cooking oil as part of the KU Biodiesel Initiative. It fills lead-acid batteries — 98 percent of all battery lead and plastic is recyclable — that move the vehicle by powering an electric motor connected directly to the original transmission. The system is designed to allow for exchange of the installed generator for another that operates using a different fuel, such as ethanol or compressed natural gas, which allows for flexibility according to local energy infrastructure and future fuel availability. Calculations indicate the vehicle should get more than 50 miles per gallon, an 80 percent increase over the original design.

Renovating the vehicle resulted in CO2 reductions between 3 and 12 tons over embodied emissions from building a new car. The project stems from the students’ goal to design an automobile using the tenets of sustainability, which include applying engineering principles to solving real-world problems by focusing upon the interconnectedness of the environment, energy, economy, education and ethics.

This academic year brings an exciting addition to the project by adding plug-in recharging capability for the vehicle along with the creation of a solar energy filling station. In particular, the EcoHawks are renovating an old barn on west campus to act as a model of energy efficiency and green engineering. This is part of an interdisciplinary approach to sustainable energy fostered through the EcoHawks program. For example, aerospace engineering students are building a wind turbine to augment the solar energy filling station and electrical engineering students are prototyping a telemetry package to help transfer useful data on-board the vehicle to the mechanical engineering students.

The goal is to make the building a model of smart grid technology where the hybrid vehicle batteries provide an outlet for solar and wind energy and a source of energy during times of high demand. Moreover, mechanical engineering students in the EcoHawks get the chance to experiment with advanced batteries, electrical motors, solar panels and fuel cell technologies on a small scale in preparation for future vehicle introduction. The advanced vehicle and energy technology program will continually strive for better fuel economy of the vehicle, while additionally including its role as part of the electrical grid.

Click here for more information about the EcoHawks.