Stella Burnham and Isobella Nicholls scooped the prizes for the best individual presenters at Chemeca’s Student Hackathon in 2023. With Chemeca 2024 in Queensland, Australia just around the corner, Aniqah Majid caught up with the pair to talk about the opportunities chemical engineering presents for both society and individuals
“I’VE NOTICED, in young people, that we have a lot of flexibility with what we learn and what we can do,” says Stella Burnham, who is studying for both a chemical engineering and a biomedical sciences degree at the University of Queensland.
Stella won the best individual presenter prize at last year’s Chemeca Student Hackathon in Auckland, New Zealand, along with Isobella Nicholls, who is in her final year of chemical and biological engineering at the University of Waikato.
A year on, Stella and Isobella have gained further insight into the industry they are soon to join and are keen to modernise its reputation.
“Diversity of thought and diversity of experience and perspective is necessary,” says Isobella. “Especially when we are going through these big transitions, and engineering would be missing out if it wasn't trying to be more inclusive.”
As part of their win, Stella and Isobella were invited to attend the International Gas Research Conference (IGRC) in Banff, Canada in May.
Sponsored by North American engineering and oil and gas heavyweights, including AltaGas and Fluor, the prize winners listened in on conversations around biomethane production, and how gas use can continue sustainably.
“There were so many people from different professions and different backgrounds, speaking and sharing their research,” says Stella. “Obviously, a lot of the researchers were in the engineering and science space, but then a lot of the people I met were in the strategy and policy side of things, and it was interesting to hear their perspectives on the industry.”
Isobella enjoyed that the conference did not shy away from the technical “nitty gritty” issues of transitioning fuels, but remarked how there were still some old heads at the conference who downplayed the effect natural gas has on the climate.
“One of the speakers said something along the lines of ‘it won't be that bad’, regarding climate change, which was a little like OK, but it's still bad, and we could still try and make it less bad”, she says.
“Yes, we're obviously interested in gas but pretending that there's no environmental impact is not realistic.”
She adds: “It's just that we need to be more aware of where and how we are using [natural gas] and if it is the only option, what can we do to try and mitigate those impacts.”
Last year’s Chemeca Student Hackathon tasked teams with developing a solution to support the transition from carbon intensive fuels to net zero carbon emission fuels at dairy plants.
Stella’s team, which took third place at the competition, focused on evolving the whole process of alternative heat sources in dairy.
She says: “We looked at something completely new in UV pasteurisation, which helped us reduce the energy intensity of the process and from that we were able to use biomethane in a sustainable way.”
Pasteurisation and dairy processing is energy intensive, and plants are required to input around 600 MJ and 450 MJ of thermal energy respectively in these processes with traditional heating, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN. UV pasteurisation uses UV light to sterilise products, eliminating the microorganisms that lead to food spoilage.
Isobella’s team, which took second place behind UNSW Sydney, also looked at biomethane as an alternative, taking advantage of New Zealand’s abundance of livestock.
The team collected cow excrement and ran it through aerobic digestion and purification to create biomethane and fertiliser as a byproduct. As biomethane alone cannot replace LNG demand, the team also looked at hydrogen and how it could be blended with natural gas.
The International Energy Organisation (IEA) expects biogas and biomethane demand to skyrocket in the run up to 2040, with their combined market share in modern bioenergy to jump from 5% to 20%, in line with their sustainable development scenario.
“It is potentially a great time to start looking at bringing in biogas because it is a good way of using some of the waste that we have, rather than just putting it all in landfill.”
The demand for chemical engineers increased at a rate of 8% from 2016 to 2026, with 1,300 new openings a year in the US alone.
Though it provides confidence in the growing need and presence of chemical engineers in industry, the profession has a long way to go before it reaches gender equality, with women representing just 13% of practicing chemical engineers, according to AIChE.
There is brighter news at academic level, particularly in the UK, with UCAS reporting that female admissions to undergraduate courses in chemical, process, and energy engineering rose to 33% in 2023.
Isobella says she is excited to be part of this new wave of female engineers: “Engineering is obviously still a very male-dominated space, but a lot of the chemical engineers that I’m in classes with are woman and I think it's an interesting space to be in where it is becoming a bit more inclusive and open and a bit less of a guys’ club.”
Stella is a member of the University of Queensland’s Women in Engineering programme, which was established in 2013 and gives young girls a glimpse into the industry via workshops and events.
She explains: “We go to different schools and talk to girls about what engineering is and what engineering looks like because a very common thought or misconception is that engineering is just sitting back in a room and thinking about bridges, or on the computer. But it's so much more than that.
“It is about finding technically viable solutions to problems, and when I explain that to girls as a path they can take from school, they’re like ‘that's engineering’, so it's really exciting to see them sort of change their thinking of what engineering is.”
The next Chemeca 2024 conference takes place between 29 September and 1 October in Queensland, Australia.
Catch up on the latest news, views and jobs from The Chemical Engineer. Below are the four latest issues. View a wider selection of the archive from within the Magazine section of this site.