EV, the leader in downhole visual analytics, recently sponsored the AIChE team at UCLA for the 3rd Annual ChemE Cube competition powered by RAPID® | ExxonMobil and held at the 2023 AIChE Annual Student Conference.

ChemE Cube is an annual student competition where undergraduate university teams design, build, and demonstrate a one cubic foot plant to produce a specific chemistry challenge focused on sustainability. EV’s sponsorship helped to pay for necessary materials for the project, fees for student registration and traveling to the competition.

“Beyond our industry’s technical challenges, another critical issue we face is the need for more experienced talent in the pipeline,” said Fraser Louden, EV CEO. “EV knows how important it is to help the next generation of students to gain solid experience. By participating in this competition, the students learned how to solve important problems using research and development, business management, and sustainable technology product development. They applied the theory learned in school to a practical, hands-on project in a team environment, which is so critical to every business.”

The 2023 challenge focused on CO2 direct air capture, an urgent global concern considering the rising carbon dioxide emissions and its detrimental effect on the environment and human health. Teams competed on the cube’s performance to achieve the maximum CO2 removal rate via head-to-head duels and promoted their technology through a one-minute poster presentation, and 20-minute 'shark tank' style pitch to a panel of mock investors.

The UCLA ChemE Cube team qualified for the prestigious AIChE national competition hosted by ExxonMobil based on its project proposal. Over the span of 6 months, UCLA’s team of 25 members researched, built, and performed the plant, resulting in a top 5 finish against 37 other universities.

“The UCLA ChemE Cube team is grateful for EV’s sponsorship. Chemical engineering majors can find it difficult to get hands-on, practical experience in college,” said Kaashvi Mahajan, UCLA ChemE Cube Lead and senior at UCLA. “EV provided our team with the unique opportunity to take the chemical engineering knowledge we gained from class and combine it into a profoundly relevant technical project that addresses the urgent need for sustainable solutions in clime tech. This project helped our team prepare to be change-makers in our future professional careers, where we can channel what we learned from this project to combat climate change and contribute to the advancement of sustainable solutions to help create a greener future.”