Partner: City of Charlottetown

The City of Charlottetown seeks to retrofit existing bus shelters with solar-powered solutions to enhance safety, comfort, and convenience. The current bus shelters within the city of Charlottetown provide occupants with basic sheltering, seating and a lack of visibility during night hours due to the absence of lighting systems, neglecting the need of convenience and safety for those using these high traffic areas. The solution must resolve these primary issues through the design of lighting systems for safety and charging stations for convenience, while ensuring that the solar panels applied to shelters are able to obtain maximum southern exposure regardless of orientation with the integration of energy storage using a battery.

Student Team: Jack King, Daniel Ikpor, Dwayne Gardiner, Joshua Hall, Shihonghao Liu

CrossFit 782 has requested the design for an attachment for a weighted sled that can be used in their indoor gym. Currently, the weighted sled has been being used outdoors on the asphalt, but the goal is to move this exercise inside on the rubber horse stall mats. The attachment must slide freely on the high-friction flooring without causing any damage.

Student Team: Marwan Taha Aly, Liam Greenan, Eyad Mosalem, Temiloluwa Shokunbi

Engineers PEI is gearing up for its 28th annual Bridge Building Contest; however, they face critical issues with the load application. The current method of delivering loads utilizes a threaded rod and a load cell that requires great mechanical effort. In addition, the current load cell does not have a high enough load ceiling, leading to inaccurate readings often surpassing the current ceiling limit. Engineers PEI have tasked the team with automating the load application process and enhancing the load cell capacity to at least 2,000 lbs for the popsicle stick bridge-building competition.

Student Team: Kieran Muse, Nathan Cudmore, Ali Maamoun, Manaf Saleh Mohammad Albarari

Parks Canada is searching for a more durable campsite and parking lot marker that shall be no more expensive than the existing solution, must match the natural aesthetics, and should not be invasive to the soil. The current markers are susceptible to damage upon installation, removal, and in case of being bumped into by a vehicle, and their short life spans are costly. An improved design based on these criteria would improve these units' cost-effectiveness and protect the environment from broken pieces of plastic being lost in the soil. The proposed solution would have a base made of durable materials, a breakaway or flexible design to avoid damage and be composed mainly of earthy colours such as green and brown..

Student Team: Abdul-Basit Emmanuel, Nick Blanchard, Connor Lilly, Ahmed Islam Mohamed 

The Bio-Chem Laboratory at Mount Allison University uses more than 1000 pipette tips per day. A thirdyear biology student, Isaac McCardle, manually repackages these tips, consuming considerable operational lab time. A solution is sought that recoups the used pipette tips efficiently, which is less laborious, exploring the possibility of automation with little oversight. The devised method must be ergonomically sound and unobtrusive to the environment where it can be readily installed. 

Student Team: Tyler Aitken, Zaid Alawneh, Tomiwa Ayomide Adebowale, Oluwatobi Oriade

The community partner in this project, a Nova Scotia-based seafood processor, wants lobster boxes to be packaged weighing 10 lbs each and graded in three grades based on weight. Due to varying lobster weights, their current system leads to boxes exceeding the 10 lb target for each grade, causing profit losses. The intended solution will help maintain packaging weight to minimize losses and maximize profits while meeting regulatory standards.

Student Team: Stephen MacKinnon, Abasiofon Charles, Ibrahim Younis, Caitlin Higginbotham

Northsyde Processing requires an automated system to regulate the salinity, temperature, and water level of the brine tank that is used during the lobster cooling process. Currently, changes in the water level impact salinity, resulting in the frequent freezing of ammonia coils, which elevates the temperature past food safety levels and halts the production line. The automated system must monitor and control salinity, temperature, and water levels to eliminate monetary losses and time delays.

Student Team: Chase MacMillan, Sam Murphy, Emma Ledgerwood, Myah Van't Veld

Currently, due to the lack of atypical fermentation systems, including agitation equipment, in the supply chain, the National Research Council of Canada (NRC) continues to use agitation equipment and impeller configurations designed for standard fermentation processes and require an impeller designed specifically for atypical fermentation processes. These typical fermentation systems provide reduced efficiency and production yields for atypical fermentation processes. The NRC requires an impeller design that provides adequate agitation to the atypical fermentation media by utilizing low-shear axial flow shall improve the efficiency and production yields of atypical fermentation processes.

Student Team: William Craine, Nguyen Phuong Thao Bui, Ethan Nabuurs, Kate Everest

The Faculty of Indigenous Knowledge, Education, Research, and Applied Sciences (IKERAS) at the University of Prince Edward Island plans to design rainwater and composting systems. In an ideal scenario, efficient rainwater handling and producing high-quality compost to support sustainable gardening are sought. However, challenges are posed by determining the optimal size and sources of rainwater and the collection and feedstock for the composting system. To address these challenges, comprehensive and efficient designs shall be proposed: a sensor-controlled rainwater harvesting technique and a composting system with optimized aeration, accelerated decomposition, and enhanced nutrient retention.

Student Team: Oluwatomi Omolokun, Ahnais Young, Madelyn Case, Tristyn Crawford

The Atlantic Veterinary College (AVC), located at the University of Prince Edward Island, has requested the design of a cost-effective and interactive horse leg joint model that accurately represents the locations of a horse leg's joint where injections would be administered. The existing leg model at the AVC is primarily used for radiography, is expensive to replace, and does not provide adequate educational value, resulting in inadequate training for aspiring veterinarians. The proposed solution is to create a horse leg joint model that provides real-time feedback with accurate representations of injection sites and can be easily replaced or upgraded, as necessary.

Student Team: Sam Crockett, Kavya Pillai, Nathalie Antoun, Aaron Walsh, Tryphena Dan-Ebbah

Effectively sizing Atlantic salmon and brook trout at the Abegweit Biodiversity Enhancement Hatchery requires the elimination of manual labor. Their specific requirements necessitate a versatile measurement tool capable of accommodating various fish sizes and enhancing the overall efficiency of the grading process. The intended solution will result in minimizing disruption to the fish, preventing irreversible changes, and guaranteeing complete independent operation.

Student Team: Cethy Nepherhotep Nach, Kaitlyn Smith, Ethan Carragher

The Abegweit First Nation Community faces the challenge of transforming wind-damaged forest into productive blueberry crops while safeguarding the suitability of the land for wild blueberry cultivation. Current methods and machinery for commercial tree removal are prohibitively expensive and pose a risk to the land’s suitability for blueberry propagation. To address this challenge, there is a need for an affordable and sustainable solution that preserves the cultural and environmental values of the community.

Student Team: Chukwuma Ezeilo, Huy (Alvin) Nguyen, James Campbell, Remi Antoun

Cavendish Farms Corporation’s Wastewater Treatment Plant in New Annan seeks a team to design an automated clean-in-place system for the Rotary Drum Thickener (RDT). The current cleaning process is highly labour-intensive and time-consuming -- it involves shutting down the RDT for an extended length of time, leading to waste buildup, and requires manually washing the drum with SHC Extreme II (Caustic). The proposed solution must automate the cleaning process, incorporating functions that allow scheduling cleaning timing and frequency and adjusting the rotary drum speed to reduce downtime.

Student Team: Tyson Ashton-Losee, Tyson Laybolt, Yuvraj Singh Gill, Jacob Burt

Atlantic Aqua Farms, an island-based company focused on mussel farming is seeking a new design to reduce hard labour and employee’s exposure to a harsh environment in the mussel socking workstation. This station must maintain or improve its current efficiency and resist salt water, potentially freezing temperatures, and other adverse conditions.

Student Team: Jith Mercy Roy, Keegan McCardle, Kareem Mohamed, Minh Man Ngo