Congrats to UVA ChemE majors Jack Kilduff, Brandon Hudson, Chris Hawkins, Rebecca Brown, Patrick Bruns and Ethan Kutner, and their advisors Eric Anderson and George Prpich, on their outstanding performance in AIChE's 2021 ChemE-Sports Competition.Two University of Virginia undergraduate teams from the Department of Chemical Engineering competed in this year's competition held at the American Institute of Chemical Engineers' Annual Meeting, which recently concluded its in-person portion in Boston.
Both teams, coached by lecturer Eric Anderson and assistant professor George Prpich, performed exceptionally well, with one team claiming second place, and the other just getting nudged out by the eventual winner.
This year's ChemE-Sports program had the teams work on amine gas treating problems — a common industrial process used in refineries and petrochemical, natural gas processing and other plants — with dual objectives of optimization and safety.
The competition, open to undergraduate AIChE student members, called for the teams to use computer simulations to work through multiple scenarios for the first round, with the highest-scoring teams advancing to the knockout rounds. The students were given real-life scenarios that could be observed in a plant and an objective to complete within a given timeframe. Scoring was based on profitability and the safety of the unit during the simulated run for each team.
Congrats to ChemE majors Jack, Brandon and Chris on their second-place finish, and to Rebecca, Patrick and Ethan — who, despite scoring the fourth-most points in the tournament, were knocked out by the winning team from Sri Lanka.