A huge congratulations to Isobella Nicholls who was awarded ‘Best Presenter’ at the Chemeca Hackathon, in addition to coming second place in the competition with her team.
Held during the annual Chemeca event last week, this year’s Hackathon competition involved creating a conceptual solution for moving away from using natural gas in the dairy industry.
Isobella described the competition as a great experience.
"Our approach involved harnessing the potential of dairy effluent to generate biogas, which was subsequently refined to meet higher quality standards, making it a viable substitute for natural gas. There are scalability issues for New Zealand with biogas, so we looked to Hydrogen produced from electrolysis to make up that gap, while allowing flexibility with production."
The judges said that they liked the two-pronged approach of Isobella’s team’s solution, and that overall the team spoke very confidently about their solution, demonstrating a thorough understanding of what they were proposing.
A Chemical and Biological Engineering student at the University of Waikato, we’re looking forward to welcoming Isobella this month as our newest process intern for 23/24.
If you’re interested in turning your engineering passion into a profession, and you’re keen on becoming a high-performing engineer, then click here to learn more about interning and graduate roles at PDV.
