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ME 316 System Design The quest to win the H2-Refuel challenge

ME 316 Fall 2015

Building the first hydrogen refueling station in Washington State

fueling station
Rendering courtesy of 2014 winning team member Pat Fromme.

Last spring ME 316 achieved new heights. We re-visioned the class and undertook what was likely the largest project in the history of the course in the Machinescape. Along the way we turned what was the lowest student reviewed course in MME and likely made it the highest with a 4.9/5.0 rating. Even this is just the beginning.

This fall’s semester of ME 316 has an unprecedented opportunity, potentially in the history of engineering education. Our challenge: design the first hydrogen refueling station in Washington State and compete to win the Department of Energy’s $1 million H2-Refuel challenge.

How is this possible? Several opportunities converging at once:

  1. The competition deliverables directly map to the ME 316 syllabus and course outline.
  2. Support from the Washington Research Foundation, WSU Alumnus Paul Laufman, Insitu Inc., and others (pending).
  3. Recent win in the 2014 Hydrogen Student Design Competition.

Along the way we are going to pioneer a new class structure and communication system. We will follow the JigSaw classroom technique integrated with the Slack communication system. We’re working to seamlessly integrate Slack with this WordPress page. So stay tuned! The real time blog posts could form a systems design textbook accompanied by a fantastic story of student learning and achievement.