HOUGHTON - Using innovative and cutting-edge technology, students at Michigan Technological University can turn an ordinary gas-hog snowmobile into a rather quiet and clean snow machine.

And the students of the Michigan Tech Society of Automotive Engineers take what they learn and apply it to a challenge, the Clean Snowmobile Challenge. Their aim: To reduce emissions and noise from the machine while maintaining or boosting performance.

Nineteen teams have registered to compete in the SAE Clean Snowmobile Challenge 2010, which will take place March 15 to 20 at Michigan Technological University's Keweenaw Resource Center. This is the eighth year the event has been held at Tech, co-organizer Jay Meldrum said.

"The event brings 300 or 400 people into the community and it's something that helps our research center gain notoriety," he said. "We have a 500-acre winter test course. It's good for us - the university and the community."

The 19 teams from different universities across the country are in charge of designing a snowmobile that is cleaner and quieter than the 2012 standards, Meldrum said. The week-long event requires students to write a paper and present the paper at competition, he said. They participate in acceleration and handling events and present their machines and how they compare to the 2012 standards. Their machines are evaluated by professional riders and they show off their sleds in a showroom display, he said.

"There's about a dozen different events they participate in and get points," he said.

This year, the focus will shift to fuel economy for those participating in the internal combustion division, or the gas-powered sleds. Using E2X, ethanol-based fuel incorporating between 20 and 29 percent ethanol, the goal is to improve the fuel economy.

"What we're doing in this challenge is investigating difference," he said.

This year, the students will design their sleds to accommodate E2X without knowing the exact range of the blend that will be used the week of the challenge.

The fuel economy will be tested during the individual challenges including the endurance run, the indoor emissions testing and the mobile emissions test using a fuel flow meter, Meldrum said.

The teams participating in the zero emissions division, or electric battery powered section, will develop better needs for the battery-powered sled.

The teams received the rules in August and have since been working and tweaking their sleds. Approximately 50 students at Michigan Tech are participating in the challenge, however, some schools may have as few as a couple of participants.

"Michigan Tech has one of the largest SAE chapters in the world," he said.

Teams registered in the internal combustion division are the University of Alaska-Fairbanks, the University of Idaho, the University of Maine, the University of Minnesota Duluth, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the University of Wisconsin-Platteville, Clarkson University, Ecole de Technologie Superieure of Montreal, Kettering University, Michigan Tech, North Dakota State University, Northern Illinois University, the State University of New York at Buffalo and Waterloo of Ontario.

Teams in the zero-emissions division are the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Clarkson, Alaska-Fairbanks, the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology and McGill University of Montreal.

"It's proven than you can make snowmobiles quieter and cleaner," Meldrum said. "I think today, snowmobiles are quieter and cleaner than they were in the 1990s."

Stacey Kukkonen can be reached at skukkonen@mininggazette.com.