UC Irvine Engineering Students Compete for First Time in International ChemE Cube Contest
Dec. 16, 2025 - Seven engineering students traveled to Boston, Massachusetts, last month for the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AlChE) Annual Student Conference’s ChemE Cube competition.
The ChemE Cube is an international, annual student competition sponsored by ExxonMobil where students make a project to solve an environmental issue in a cubic foot cube. The competition has a different theme each year; this year’s was carbon capture, where students were tasked with designing a modular direct air capture and regeneration process, building the mechanism and pitching the device as a marketable product to a panel of mock investors.
Seven of the 18 students in the Anteater team attended the conference to pitch a compact and modular direct-air capture plant. This year’s goal was to create a chemical and mechanical process to filter and remove carbon dioxide from the air with a budget of $2,500 or less. The UCI students created a small-scale bubble column using a sparger, or a device that introduces gas into a liquid in the form of fine bubbles, to optimize the gas-liquid interface for mass transfer of gaseous carbon dioxide into a potassium hydroxide solution.
The team started their project during the 2025 winter quarter and presented their work to a virtual panel of judges in week two of spring quarter. After receiving their scores in week eight of the spring quarter, the students spent all summer creating and testing the apparatus and identifying the optimal bubble column and sparger arrangement. The fall quarter was spent building their product, which culminated during a 10-minute product pitch, a 15-minute poster presentation, a comprehensive safety review and two technical runs of the device during the two-day conference.
For their first year participating, the UCI engineers came in seventh place out of the 23 teams who competed.
“Although I can't quantify the exact amount of man-hours spent on the project, this time range adds up to about 44 weeks, 20+ energy drinks crushed and one dance break,” said chemical engineering senior and one of the team leads Zachary Wong.
Wong was instrumental in bringing ChemE Cube to UCI. While attending the ChemE Car competition last November — a similar premise where a team designs and builds a car that is powered through chemical reactions — Wong stumbled upon the ChemE Cube competition at the AlChE conference.
“I knew bringing the project to UCI had the potential to reach a large population of students, such as those interested in the intersection between business and engineering, or in process design,” Wong said. “In the span of two weeks, we drew up plans for team organization, released team applications and the rest is history!”
In addition to Wong, the team included co-leads Hailey Kautz and Rishabh Rakesh, chemical subteams lead Angel Huante, systems lead Jillyan Canaveral, and marketing lead Caleb Chung. The students were advised by Ali Mohraz, professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering, and supported by the Samueli School’s Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering and the Office for Experiential Learning.
ChemE Cube’s application for new members closed this month, and the team will compete in the AlChE student conference next year.
– Cassandra Nava
