Food,
water, and energy are necessity for our lives. We all know that we need food to
eat and water to drink for us to live, but how about energy? Energy is also
very important to our lives. It helps us in our daily transportation, producing
the food that we eat, producing power in our home, school and workplace, and
many more.
Studies
have shown that in four decades, the population in the whole world will rise up
to 29% as of the population today. Adding 2 more billion people to our 7
billion population today. In addition to that, millions of people are enjoying
higher standards of living. So, if we continue on consuming how much energy
that we use today, energy demand will rise up to 50%. As a result, oil and gas
companies thought about where to draw on many different sources of energy to meet
our needs.
Last
February 6-9, the Philippines have hosted the Shell Eco Marathon 2014 at Luneta
Park, Manila where more than 1,000 students in 110 teams from more than 16
countries have entered the competition. In this competition, students will
design, build, test and run an extreme energy efficient car that could travel
longer in just 1 liter of fuel. Some teams that are featured are: India’s
passionate students where hundreds have applied just to be part of the team; Indonesia’s
teardrop shaped car where they used ethanol to run the car; and our very own,
the Philippines’ strong, lightweight car body which is made from banana leaves.
I
am very fortunate to have witnessed this kind of event because first, it is not
always that the Philippines have hosted this competition, and also, as a
Mechanical Engineering student, I could learn a lot just by observing even though
I’m not part of the Don Bosco Technical College team.
At
the end of the competition, Indonesia and Thailand have emerged major victors with
four and three champion titles each respectively. Team How Much Ethanol from
Panjavidhya Technological College Thailand drove 2,730km on a litre of ethanol.
The team is joined by fellow Thai winners Sakon Nakhon Technical College in the
Prototype Gasoline category and Rattanakosin Technological College in the Prototype
Battery Electric category.
Although the DBTC Prototype Vehicle failed to finish
the competition, our Urban Concept proudly finished 7th out 15
registered participants to end the Shell Eco Marathon Asia.