MY Camper Elina Nissilä: Enthusiasm will help you achieve things
19-year-old MY Camper Elina Nissilä has already taken part in renewable energy research. The upcoming Millennium Youth Camp will be an excellent opportunity for her to look even further into the world of science.
Elina lives in Kälviä, which is a part of municipality of Kokkola in Finland. Kokkola is located by the sea, on the coast of the Gulf of Bothnia. Chemical industry plays a significant role in Kokkola’s economy.
“I worked with a chemistry research group in the Kokkola University Consortium Chydenius during my high school studies. In addition to reading about MY Camp on the internet, one of the professors mentioned the camp, and suggested that I should apply.”
The research Elina took part in concentrated in bioenergy, therefore she decided to choose renewable energy as her MY Camp project. She is especially interested in renewable energy from the environmental perspective. Her local area has several companies that use biomass for energy production in one way or another.
“I know one of these companies particularly well. This company manufactures CHP-power generators that produce electricity and thermal power from woodchip. The process is environmentally friendly – the wood is gasified, and also some ash sludge is obtained as a side product. On the 2nd stage of the application process my project focused on the different ways to exploit the wood gas and ash sludge. One possibility would be to use wood gas in biofuel production.”
Elina is very enthusiastic about learning new things, and when she finds something interesting, she gets excited over it easily. Elina’s hobbies include riding, hiking and camping as well as 4H activities (The Finnish 4H Federation is one of the largest youth organizations in Finland).
“The more stuff I do, the more I achieve. School has always been easy for me, so studying has never prevented me from taking part in other activities.”
Link: Millennium Youth Camp
Document: Elina´s plan for MY Camp (pdf)
Johannes Posti is one of the guides that will be taking part in MY Camp's renewable energy group. He is a masters student at the Department of Chemistry, University of Helsinki. Besides a wide range of scientific interests he also enjoys music and sailing.