Heavy oil extraction project was supported by the Investment and Venture Fund of the Republic of Tatarstan.

The prize was given away to Senior Research Associate at In-Situ Combustion Laboratory Irek Mukhamatdinov for his patent “Catalyst of destructive hydrogenation of heavy raw hydrocarbons and ways of its implementation.” The patent was co-authored by Sergey Sitnov, Dmitry Feoktistov, Yaroslav Onishchenko, and Aleksey Vakhin.

Dr. Mukhamatdinov comments, “We created a catalyst, based on water-soluble inorganic salts of metals with variable valence and salts of monocarbon acids, which can be placed into a productive stratum. As a results of this catalyst’s functioning, chemical processes arise which irreversibly decrease the viscosity of heavy oils. This raises the ratio of light fractions, lowers the molecular mass of resin-asphaltene matter, and increases oil recovery.”

This is the fifth patent in non-traditional hydrocarbon production produced by KFU. Last year, employees of the same lab Ruslan Khafizov and Sergey Sitnov placed first and third respectively in the Best Student of PhD Candidate Inventor contest in Tatarstan.