User talk:J326kim

  UWAFT – University of Waterloo Alternative Fuel Team   

Overview
University of Waterloo Alternative Fuel Team (UWAFT) is one of the most prominent and successful team in University of Waterloo. Furthermore, it is widely known and ranked one of the top university alternative fuel team in North America. This team designs, develops, implements, and manages fuel-efficient automobiles. Such types of automobiles include hydrogen, ethanol, electric, hybrid, and many more. The team consists of several members who are mostly upper year undergraduate and graduate students. The team’s main goals are to discover new methods and develop innovative technologies to reduce the dependency over the use of fossil fuel.

History
UWAFT was established at University of Waterloo in the year of 1996. The team quickly became one of the leaders in developing advanced clean-technological vehicles used for competitions to promote awareness and education in alternative fuel. UWAFT is the first team in Canada to develop a hydrogen fuel cell vehicles used for competitions. Currently, there are three teams in Canada competing in EcoCAR: The NeXt Challenge Competition.

Team Divisions
[[ The UWAFT team is comprised of two divisions: the technical team and the business team. The members in the technical team are responsible for operating, experimenting, and developing their vehicles which will compete in the competitions. Almost all members are students and post/graduating students of University from Waterloo. The members in the business team are responsible for events, project coordination, administration, and many more. The members primarily consists students and post/graduating students from University of Waterloo and University of Wilfrid Laurier. Both teams are very important because they are given important challenging tasks to make their overall team successful.

Projects
The current project known as “ECO CAR” which will be presented in a competition requires each competing team to create and develop a unique car using alternative fuel called “Challenger X”. UWAFT has chosen to compete for this challenge; thus, the team’s specific goals and objectives were divided and organized into the three-year term project. In year one, the team has chosen to create a fuel cell plug-in hybrid electric vehicle, in which, the car would require a hydrogen drivetrain in a computerized system. Its most important sponsor, GM, has given 5 drivetrain components: fuel cell stack, hydrogen tanks, front electric motor, rear Ballard electric motor, battery pack. The drivetrain is comprised of 6 components and the sixth component is a DC/DC convertor designed by UWAFT.

In the second year, the UWAFT will complete the implementation and fabrication of all the necessary vehicle components including the drivetrain components donated from GM. In addition, the vehicle will undergo several performance test to ensure all of the key objectives are met such as acceleration, energy use, driving range, and many more. As the tests are being performed, the powertrain control will be optimized as much as possible. At the end, documents and reports will be written about the tests for future use.

In year three, the vehicle will be tested in EV drive mode in which the vehicle will be driven only using electric power. The DC/DC converter designed by UWAFT will be optimized to successfully operate the car in full hybrid mode. The design of the overall car design and safety features will be refined to attract more consumers’ attention. Lastly, final test will be performed to check any failures and report will be documented for U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Challenger X - UWAFT CAR

 *  Major Power-train Components 


 * 1. Fuel cell Stock: Provides up to 93 kW of power at a voltage between 260V to 371V.


 * 2. Electric Motor 1: Provides 110 kW of peak power for front wheels


 * 3. Electric Motor 2 (Ballard): Provides 67 peak power for rear wheels. Both motors can be operated simultaneously to provide AWD (All Wheel-Drive).


 * 4. Hydrogen Tanks: Has a 4.3 kg capacity of hydrogen pressured at 10000 psi. Driving range of 300 km.


 * 5. Battery: Stores 9.7 kWh of power with a driving range of 40 km in EV mode (Electric Mode) and charges within 3 hours using 240V outlet.


 * 6. DC/DC converter: Regulates voltage in power-train system and regulates output from fuel cell to battery.


 * (All main power-train components were donated by GM except the DC/DC converter.)


 *  Key Specification 




 * 1. Energy Use: 0.29 kWh


 * 2. Driving Range: 350 km


 * 3. Fuel consumption: 3.2 L / 100 km


 * 4. Acceleration (0 - 60 km/h) : 10 s


 * 5. Mass: 2318 kg


 *  Key Benefits 


 * 1. ZERO EMISSION


 * 2. 350 km drive gasoline free


 * 3. Low cost to recharge battery ($1.00 / charge)


 * 4. Quiet Drive


 * 5. Faster acceleration than traditional cars


 * 6. No need to drill for oil

Sponsors
Some of the team’s main competition sponsors include General Motors (GM) and US National Department of Energy. Each year, GM would offer large amount of contribution such as donating some of their car models to UWAFT. As a result, almost all of their operated cars are from GM. Some of its most prominent team sponsors include Natural Resources of Canada, RIM, AIR LIQUIDE, and Braskem.

Competitions
UWAFT has competed in several competitions including “EcoCAR: The NeXt Challenge”. EcoCAR competition has been running over 19 years. The purpose of the competition is to promote technological development in improving fuel economy, emissions, and safety in vehicles. Though technological innovation is important, the competition also strongly deals with objectives in creating solutions to real world problems.

There are 16 North American accredited engineering schools compete in the competition. All of the teams will operate and develop original GM crossover vehicle with a newly implemented drive-train system using alternative fuel. Alternative fuel can either be hydrogen, ethanol, or biodiesel. The key objectives for the vehicles are to produce exceptional performance without comprising excellent environmental benefits from low emissions and high-energy efficiency.

Rankings
Out of the 16 teams, UWAFT achieved a 3rd place overall ranking in the EcoCar Challenge competition. The Challenger was praised for its excellent results in all aspects including acceleration, towing, emission testing, and driving performance. Its outstanding result proved that hydrogen fuel cell cars could be eco-friendly and suitable for consumer market. In addition, UWAFT also achieved to receive the 1st Place Overall Outreach Award.

Speedy deletion nomination of UWAFT


A tag has been placed on UWAFT, requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under section G11 of the criteria for speedy deletion, because the page seems to be unambiguous advertising which only promotes a company, product, group, service or person and would need to be fundamentally rewritten in order to become an encyclopedia article. Please read the guidelines on spam and FAQ/Business for more information.

If you think that this notice was placed here in error, contest the deletion by clicking on the button labelled "Click here to contest this speedy deletion". Doing so will take you to the talk page where you will find a pre-formatted place for you to explain why you believe the page should not be deleted. You can also visit the page's talk page directly to give your reasons, but be aware that once tagged for speedy deletion, if the page meets the criterion, it may be deleted without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag yourself, but don't hesitate to add information to the page that would render it more in conformance with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. If the page is deleted, you can contact one of these administrators to request that the administrator userfy the page or email a copy to you.  Pink Bull  16:01, 25 November 2011 (UTC)