A group of four students from Zhejiang University were invited to participate in the 2013 “TECO Green Tech Contest” held in Taiwan beginning on August 26th. This team was composed of three members from Department of Energy Engineering, Zhichao Ying, Ye Yang and Chongde Huang, and another student from DPSE, Yixing Jing guided by Prof. Shusheng Xiong. They won the “Best Technology Award by Creative Sensor” due to their excellent work known as “An energy-saving electric kettle based on heat transfer by heat pipe” and received an award totally of 100,000NTD.
Since 2006, "TECO Green Tech Contest" has been held to address increasing global energy demands which require new efficient technologies to reduce carbon dioxide emissions and protect the environment. Participating students doing research on possible "Green Tech" solutions including friendly energy resources, materials and applications.The competition is divided into two independent contests known as main contest and international contest. Eligible participants of main contest are those post-secondary students studying in Taiwan. Up to almost 100 teams, corresponding to about 500 participants, have been attracted to participate in main contest this year, while only 12 teams were nominated to enter the final round. For international contest, students from 14 outstanding universities in Japan, Russia, Singapore, Mainland China and other Asian countries was invited, among which 16 teams were admitted to joined the race and competed with each other to hunt prizes. Lomonosov Moscow State University, National University of Singapore, Nanyang Technological University, The University of Tokyo and some leading universities in China such as Tsinghua University, Peking University and Zhejiang University were all involved in the international contest. Participating teams were required to give their group presentations and make an introduction of their own models. A judging panel was established with nine members in total including experts from both sides of the Taiwan Strait. Prof. Maochun Hong, academician of Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and Prof. Lijun Fang,the director of the Institute of Chemistry, CAS, were especially invited. The brilliant performance and creative work of all the teams were impressive to the audience and the judging panel. In the end, due to their ingenious design and prominent performance in the presentation and model introduction, the team from our university was awarded "Best Technology Award by Creative Sensor Inc". Another two teams from Mainland China have also won other prizes and The University of Tokyo succeeded in hunting the "Champion" of international contest. The winning model of our students was a successfully fabricated energy-saving electric kettle based on heat transfer by heat pipe. They utilized the energy released during the cooling process, in which the water temperature decreased from boiling temperature to drinking temperature, to heat up the water in the next round taking advantage of fast heat transfer. Three cabins were designed in the electric kettle model, the heat between the hot cabin and the cold cabin could be transferred through the heat pipe. The hot water exchanged its heat with cold water and thus cooled down much faster until the set drinking temperature was reached. Meanwhile, the cold water was heated by absorbing that part of heat. In this way, more energy would be saved. According to their calculation, one heat transfer process could save energy by 20% with normal drinking temperature. If we repeated this process, then more electric energy was supposed to be saved in a cumulative way. With its energy-saving design and function of setting the drinking temperature, this electric kettle model may find great potential applications in those household appliances such as electric heaters.
(By Kotel)
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