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PUERTO RICO’s Coki Turbo stormed to the finishing line but didn’t cross it to win the world ChemE Car conference championship in Montreal, Canada.

Packed into a hall in Montreal’s Palais des congrès, home to the 8^th World Congress of Chemical Engineering, ten university teams from across the globe put the final touches to a whole host of weird and wonderfully shaped cars. The object of the competition, a long running event organised by the American Institute of Chemical Engineers, is to design and build a shoebox-sized car powered by a controlled chemical reaction. With a varying load of between 0 to 500ml of water and no more than two minutes on the clock, the car must run and come to a stop at a distance of between 50 to 100 feet without using mechanical breaks.

The teams, travelling to Montreal from Canada, Mexico, US and further afield from Australia, Iran, and Malaysia, arrived in Montreal with their cars having no idea how far they’d have to run and how much water they’d have to carry. The ruling: 50 ml of water, 50 yards. With this information the teams began tailoring their cars.

“Due to these variables, the design has to be very versatile,” said Shihao Koh, a graduate chemical engineer from Cornell University, which calls its ChemE Car MacGyver after the TV special agent who shunned brawn for brains using applied science to solve problems and get himself out of trouble.

MacGyver would have been proud of the versatility of designs. The power reactions varied from mixing baking soda and vinegar, creating batteries out of aluminium and charcoal, and even building hydrogen fuel cells. No car looked the same; some appeared like dune buggies, other were  simple box cars with Perspex wheels, but most striking to the eye was Louisiana State University’s affectionately named Swamp Thing, which looked like a trundling pilot plant on wheels; all were covered in tanks, gauges and piping.

After two hours of preparation, the teams were called to the starting line one-by-one to see how close they could get to the fifty foot marker. Asked who are the favourites, Koh pointed to the University of Puerto Rico team.

LSU were up first: Swamp Thing fell 1.4 m short of the line. Canada’s University of British Columbia was next, but something had gone wrong because the car wouldn’t move off the line at all – they headed back to the pits to prep and put all their hopes on the second and final run. Puerto Rico was up third. The team gathered on the line around Coki Turbo, a flick was switched and off the buggy went – its hydrogen peroxide decomposing in potassium iodide producing oxygen, storing it at high pressure and then feeding it through a regulator to drive the turbine.

Coki Turbo raced down the line, and then slowing, slowing, slowing, stopped – its two front wheels sitting flush atop the finish line. The room broke into applause, people hooting and screaming as the seven strong Puerto Rico team whooped, leapt, hi-fived and then hugged each other excitedly.

Back in the pits, slightly more relaxed, Puerto Rico’s Christian Archeval explained the accuracy behind their design. Rather than using a chemical stopping mechanism, a common choice among rival teams being the iodine clock reaction using a light sensor and colour change reaction to cut off power to the craft, Puerto Rico ran hundreds of trials at different pressures and distances providing them with reference tables to suit any variables that a competition could throw at them.

“I’ve only ever seen two ChemE Cars stop on the line,” said Archeval who has seen many hundreds of competitive runs in his four years of regional and national US trials. “So, as you can imagine we’re pretty ecstatic with our first run.”

Come the final run, somebody would have to hit the line to take the competition to a sudden death play-off. But it wasn’t to be. University of Kuala Lumpur again had a false start – their team leader slapped the floor and stormed back to the pits. Curtin University again ran over the line. No one else managed to hit the line – not even Puerto Rico could reproduce their first feat, this time falling 1.12 m inches short.

New York State’s Scuderia Cooper Union came third with a run of 39 cm short of the line, LSU with 35 cm from the line, and first Puerto Rico.

Following the presentations and the group photos crouching in front of their ChemE Cars, Puerto Rico team leader Annette Meléndez told tce “It feels great to win. We’ve worked so hard, we’ve sacrificed many hours, and a lot of sleep.”

Okay, so where to next?

“We’re looking forward to the nationals in Tennessee in November.”

Asked how she will celebrate, Meléndez smiled to her teammates “We’re going on tonight’s student social programme.” A few drinks maybe? Not answering she smiled coyly.