Only an hour’s drive from Porto Alegre, the capital of Rio Grande do Sul, lies São Leopoldo, a small but lively town where our group spent the majority of our time. We were staying at a small hotel directly across the street from Unisinos, our partner university here. With this proximity, we were able to spend time with their professors and engineering students, talking through how their programs are structured, what careers look like for engineers in Brazil, and what each of us hopes to do after graduation, particularly the similarities and differences between our two countries.
We got to walk their campus and see their labs, and they showed us their solar panel setup on the roof. Unlike the US, Brazil has a single electric grid for the entire country. So rather than feeding power into a local microgrid (that only powers internal devices) or storing it in a campus battery, they use an inverter to convert the DC output from the panels into AC and send it directly back into the national grid.
Nearby was Higra, an engineering company focused on researching and developing amphibious water pumps. Most pumps are designed for either dry or wet environments, given motor constraints and waterproofing requirements that make it hard to build one that works in both. Higra solved this with their own line of sealed wet motors that can function anywhere. By using bronze sliding bearings and a hardened motor shaft, their pumps hold up in any condition, have extremely long lifetimes, and are used across manufacturing, hydroelectric, and industrial applications. It was also interesting to see them running Ansys CFX for their fluid dynamics work, which is the same software that mechanical engineers use back at Pitt.
On the cultural side, we caught live samba at a music club in Porto Alegre. Samba is one of Brazil’s defining music styles, and seeing it performed live was an amazing experience.
We also went to a Grêmio vs. Flamengo soccer match. The energy in that stadium was unlike anything I’ve been to.
I’m excited for the rest of our time in Porto Alegre before we head west to Foz do Iguaçu.