The St. Petersburg Mining University’s “Oil Workers and the Pump” team took second place in the Autumn Cup of the International Engineering CASE-IN Championship. More than 250 people, including students and young specialists of fuel and energy complex companies, as well as representatives of industry ministries and departments of the country, took part in its final held in Moscow.
The main theme of this year’s championship was climate projects, their development, and implementation in permafrost conditions. During the qualifying stages, the teams had to choose an enterprise of the fuel and energy sector, to offer the example of its measures to reduce, capture, recycle and store greenhouse gases, as well as develop a “road map” for their implementation.
“Our decision concerned the modernization of the Norilsk-Taimyr Energy Company. We proposed to use hydrogen as a resource for power generation there. We analyzed three ways to produce it from natural gas: steam reforming of methane, its thermal pyrolysis, and methane conversion in nonequilibrium low-temperature plasma. Based on the results of the analysis, steam reforming became the basis of our program to reduce the carbon environment. Due to the best technological and economic indicators and environmental safety of this method. The payback period of the project will not exceed 8 years,” said Tikhon Glum, captain of the “Oil Workers and the Pump”, a 4th-year student of Mining University.
In the finals, in addition to presenting their work, the teams also had additional tasks to complete. These included a benchmark analysis of the best available technologies for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, an assessment of key profitability indicators for companies that minimize their carbon footprint, and a justification of approaches to controlling the implementation of relevant innovations.
It should be noted that the “Oil Workers and the Pump” included Tikhon Glum, Roman Ivanov, Savva Solodukhin, and Maksim Yamkin. The organizers of the Autumn Cup of the International CASE-IN Championship were the New Reliable Generation Fund, the Youth Forum of Mining Leaders non-profit partnership, and the AstraLogica company.
