Boreskov Institute of Catalysis was founded in 1958 as a part of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences. The founder and the first Director of the Institute till 1984 was academician Georgii Konstantinovich Boreskov.
One of the main activity areas of the Boreskov Institute of Catalysis is fundamental investigations in catalytic science to discover new principles of chemical reactions and to create innovative catalytic compositions and technologies.
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Boreskov Institute of Catalysis pays great attention to the training of young scientists. Each year more than 100 students and post-graduates are being trained at its research and educational facilities. The Institute collaborates with many educational organizations, including:
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For more than half a century, the Boreskov Institute of Catalysis is at a cutting edge of innovative R&D for chemical and petrochemical industries, energy power, environmental protection.
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14 December 2021
Anna Kurenkova from Boreskov Institute of Catalysis presented the technology of green hydrogen production from water with the help of photocatalysis at the Congress of Young Scientists in Sochi. It allows synthesis of valuable organic compounds such as glucose and carboxylic acids from vegetable biomass simultaneously with high-purity hydrogen. The technology will be developed in the NTI Competence Center on Hydrogen Technologies established in the Institute of Catalysis.
The BIC’s technology presented at the session “Hydrogen market: Do we need a new model for collaboration of science and business?” is totally environmentally friendly as compared with the traditional ways of obtaining hydrogen by gasification and steam conversion with formation of side products that pollute the atmosphere.
“We develop the technology of obtaining hydrogen from water or water solutions under the influence of light, including solar radiation, in the presence of photocatalysts. As such we use various semiconducting materials that are able to activate under light and so to initiate or accelerate a chemical reaction. The method’s advantages, in addition to obtaining high-purity hydrogen, include also the reaction occurrence at room temperature and atmospheric pressure and the use of renewable energy sources for obtaining hydrogen, namely, solar radiation and water”, said Anna Kurenkova.
The researchers managed to increase the range of the used radiation for conducting the reaction twofold with adding components of vegetable biomass into the reaction system.
“We showed that the components of vegetable biomass that are water-insoluble transform in the process of photocatalysis with formation of valuable organic products, such as glucose and carboxylic acids, including formic and acetic. So photocatalysis allows obtaining not only the high-purity green hydrogen but also conducting photocatalytic reforming of biomass with formation of valuable organic products”, the researcher added.
The developed method has not been approved for industrial use, but its fundamental basics are thoroughly elaborated, including the mechanisms of reforming of biomass and transformation of photocatalysts in the course of the reaction.
The participants of the session discussed the interaction of science and business, in particular in the sphere of hydrogen technologies. In Anna Kurenkova’s opinion, an important role in such interaction belongs to education.
“It is important that science, business, and industry developed their joint educational programs in order to train the specialists who could engage into the solving of industrial problems right after graduation”, she noted.
Information: The Congress of Young Scientists took place in the educational center Sirius in Sochi on December 8-10, 2021, and became one of the key events of the Year of Science and Technologies. It was attended by the representatives of the leading scientific schools from various regions of Russia, authorities, industrial partners, as well as the young scientists, students, and schoolchildren.
