Every year the Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining IOM3 (Great Britain) holds a worldwide competition for young specialists in their specialization. In Russia, it partners with the International Competence Centre for Mining Engineering Education under the auspices of UNESCO. On October 1, Forpost found out information about of its results.
As in other countries of the world, Russian students, postgraduate students and specialists from specialized companies could present and defend their reports on innovative developments in mining, raw materials processing, and oil production. Members of the youth community of the IOM3 Institute, winners of the competition “Topical problems of subsoil use” held by St. Petersburg Mining University and the UNESCO Center, young specialists of partner companies were admitted to participate.
The competition had two stages. After an internal selection of the most promising projects, the Russian-British commission, which included scientists and industry representatives, assessed the practical applicability of the work. A prerequisite for admission to the online presentation was fluent command of the English language by the applicants.
Anton Khachkovsky, expert of the Quality project office, PJSC Sibur, who made a presentation on “How to improve the quality of polypropylene pipes”, believes that participation in the competition gave him a perfect opportunity to broadcast his experience as a participant and leader of an engineering project.
“It was interesting to tell how, as part of the Chemical Engineering advanced training program, SIBUR implemented a project to increase the efficiency of existing production using digital and technological tools that improved product quality and positively affected the company's environmental performance,” the young scientist noted.
The second place winner Alina Orlova, a Master’s degree student of Tomsk Polytechnic University, presented the results of determining the characteristics and composition of straight-run diesel fuel. She studied the low-temperature properties (cloud point, cold filter plugging, and pour point) of diesel fuels and low-temperature additive mixtures and has revealed the regularities of the influence of the content of n-paraffins and aromatic hydrocarbons in the composition of diesel fuels on the efficiency of low-temperature additives. This technology minimizes the excess consumption of light fractions in the production of winter and arctic fuels, and also offers the possibility of using heavy oil paraffins and vacuum gas.
The winner was a graduate student of St. Petersburg Mining University Andrey Polyakov with the work on “Primary aluminum production: how the wettability of carbon anodes affects energy efficiency.” The work is devoted to the specific energy consumption during the electrolysis of aluminum and methods of its reduction, the wettability of carbon anodes with cryolite-aluminum melt and its effect on electrolysis. The author presented theoretical and experimental data concerning the connection between anodic process, wettability and anodic effect.
Andrey Polyakov will take part in the World Online Final, which will take place on November 12. He will compete with British, South African, Chinese and other colleagues from eight countries. In 2020, due to the complicated epidemiological situation, all stages of the competition are held online using the ZOOM platform.
