Scientific and educational centers (RECs) were chosen as a platform for the creation of laboratories. According to the terms of the project, they should be headed by young promising scientists no older than 35 years. At the same age, there must be at least 70% of the total number of employees working in them.
The winners of the youth laboratories competition organized by the Ministry of Education and Science were the participants of the World-class West Siberian Interregional Scientific and Educational Center (ZAPSIBNOK). This is the first time that competitions of this scale were held for the formation and development of young teams.
The main purpose of the competition and the further implementation of the selected projects is the formation of a research group of young scientists under the age of 35 and the creation of a laboratory on the basis of which advanced research will be carried out. This is necessary to solve problems related to the strategy of scientific and technological development of Russia and industrial partners.
To achieve the goal set within the framework of the competition, a team was formed in advance in the subject area ("Microfibre catalysts and technologies based on them"), whose participants over the past 5 years have received more than 25 patents of the Russian Federation and published more than 59 articles in peer-reviewed journals.*
Winning the competition is, first of all, an opportunity to create the first center of attraction for specialists in the field of catalysis and chemical technology in the Tyumen region. Recently, special attention of large industrial companies has been paid to the field of reactor design, hydrodynamic calculations, modeling of reaction and thermal processes in reactors. This kind of research and development (R&D) will allow companies to save financial resources in the future and make modern unprofitable technologies profitable.
Already, the West Siberian Interregional Scientific and Educational Center is working closely with industrial enterprises, focusing its attention and material equivalent on solving technological problems that are a priority for the oil refining industry.
In addition, the support of the Ministry of Education and Science opens up new prospects for the formation of a favorable academic environment. Equipment, financial satisfaction, academic mobility - thanks to these advantages, young researchers from different fields will strive to Tyumen scientific laboratories. An important factor is the opportunity to attract colleagues from the Academy of Sciences and from abroad to cooperate, which will ensure an international level of work in the future.
At the moment, the main task of the REC is the development of the first digital catalysis laboratory in the Tyumen region. The main activity of the new laboratory for 2021 and 2022 will be the creation of new types of catalysts and catalytic processes based on them in a wide interdisciplinary spectrum, from fundamentals to practical implementation using modern software for reactor design, hydrodynamic calculations, simulation of reaction and thermal processes in reactors.
Work in this area will include the development of various stationary and non-stationary catalytic processes to solve the problems of efficient processing of hydrocarbon raw materials, as well as topical environmental problems.
Various activities are planned for the period 2021-2022: from training personnel in the basics of reactor design, hydrodynamic calculations, modeling of reaction and thermal processes in reactors to conducting direct experiments on laboratory stands.
To date, the scientific team of the laboratory includes highly qualified specialists in the field of catalysis, chemical technology, mathematical modeling of catalytic processes and characteristics, as well as employees from the 3rd year of bachelor's degree to graduate students of the Chemical Institute and the Physics and Technology Institute of TSU.
The head of the laboratory Andrey Elyshev stressed the readiness of the research group for new cooperation:
- We are open to everyone and are ready to cooperate and work both with students starting from the 1st year, and with specialists who have already found themselves in the field of catalysis or chemical technology and want to work in a favorable academic environment. The main principle of our laboratory is the interdisciplinary nature of research, so we will be glad to welcome young scientists from such fields as catalysis, physical chemistry, mechanics of solid and dispersed media, hydrodynamics, heat and mass transfer, thermophysics, mathematical modeling, engineering sciences. In general, the team has a unique experience in studying the processes of hydraulic resistance and mass transfer in the layers of microfibre catalysts. The works of the participants in this field have become innovative in the world scientific practice.
* Including 24 in the journals of the Scopus list, of which 14 are in the journals of the first quartile of publications with an impact factor according to Journal Citation Reports (Thomson Reuters): Journal of Chemical Engineering (13,273), Catalyst Today (6766).