Mechanical Engineering students make final of global innovation competition

Three Mechanical Engineering students scooped the Audience Award at the Shell Ideas 360 competition final for their project generating clean water.

Having competed with 1,100 student teams from 55 countries across the world, Imperial’s Team Blu were the only European team to make the final, where they presented their ideas to a judging panel of business, NGO and academic experts at Shell’s headquarters in Rotterdam.

Now in its second year, Shell Ideas 360 is a global competition that encourages students to develop ideas to tackle the pressures on the world’s food, water and energy resources.

The final year students’ project proposed an innovative design to extract moisture from air, using smart solar domes for heating brine solution and massive air towers for pumping humid air throughout the system.

The Blu.Gen generator can produce 150-200 litres of water per day from a manually operated pump, using low cost materials. The impact of such increased water availability could be wide ranging across sub-Saharan countries, helping to drive industrialisation of local regions, improve agriculture and develop a sustainable future.

Commenting on their design, Dmitri Ivanov said "We brainstormed several ideas including large expensive water condenser designs with cryogenic fluids, however we decided to focus on the people we hoped the project could have the largest impact on - the poorest people in rural areas of developing countries.

"As such we drastically changed the design and manufacturing to make it as low cost and low maintenance as possible, through the use of only passive or manual components and creating an adaptable design that could function with local materials across different regions."

Despite narrowly losing out to another team for the Judges Award, Dmitri Ivanov, Amanda Sjodahl and Avtar Rekhi can still be extremely proud of their achievement.

On hearing they'd won the award Avtar said "We were asked a lot of questions and couldn't tell if the judges were sceptical or curious. It was just great that they were interested in our ideas. Then we sat down while the audience voted for their favourites... And we won!"

Jenniffer Gearheart-Tang, Shell’s Global Innovation and Research Manager was full of praise for Team Blu: "Congratulations to Team Blu for winning the Audience Award. It is a great recognition for their idea and they did a great job presenting their idea in a professional, engaging and succinct manner which resonated very well with the audience.

"They beat four other very strong teams to clinch the Audience Award.  Well done to Team Blu! I really hope they will continue to innovate and turn their ideas into reality!"

Marc Masen, a Senior Lecturer in Mechanical Engineering and the team’s academic supervisor for the final, said: "The team were completely self-motivated and developed a truly innovative idea despite having a hectic schedule of final year reports to finish at the same time!"

Team Blu is now planning on completing a fully functional prototype of the water extractor to demonstrate its potential and functionality. Amanda explains, "Once we have a functioning prototype, we're hoping to take the collaboration a step further and use these societies and their networks to actually bring the technology to a community in Tanzania. If successful, we hope to spread the technology in the region, and to other organisations to implement in other parts of the world."

Find out more about Team Blu’s project in the video of their final pitch.