Assistant Secretary-Indian Affairs Larry Echo Hawk announced Oct. 7 the second competition for students attending high schools and tribal colleges funded by the Bureau of Indian Education that will promote careers in the fields of green and renewable energy. The competition will be looking for designs of a conversion process that will change biomass into diesel fuel.
The Indian Education Renewable Energy Challenge is being sponsored by the BIE in partnership with the Indian Affairs Office of Indian Energy and Economic Development and the U.S. Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory.
“I am pleased to see this partnership provide such a wonderful opportunity for students to design an innovative process that will convert biomass into diesel fuel,” Echo Hawk said. “Our BIE students are incredibly talented, and this is an opportunity to take on a real world challenge to demonstrate a renewable energy and technology process that tribes can use to promote economic self-sufficiency in Indian country.”
The challenge is designed as a two-part competition. During Phase I, each school and college will establish a team of students to process designs for converting biomass to diesel fuel using any raw biomass material they wish, and must indicate how their process design ensures safety in view of the flammable product and the properties of any chemicals that may be used in the production. Five high school and five college design teams with the best submissions will receive $3,500 a piece to construct prototypes of their inventions.
In Phase II, the teams will be provided with a diesel-powered generator so each team can conduct performance data collections to submit, along with detailed reports and videos of their prototypes in operation, to ANL for evaluation by a team of judges.
More information and application forms are available online.
