Rustam Minnikhanov to KAI rector: ‘We shouldn’t limit to aviation, we should get down to earth too’

Voice of Kazan universities

The next session of Tatneftekhiminvest-holding Board of Directors was again in the closed masks-and-gloves regime introduced since the first days of the coronavirus pandemic in the building of the government. Due to strict self-isolation measures, famous developers of know-how of Russian and foreign research centres who regularly shared the latest scientific successes and accomplishments in high-tech sectors of the economy in their reports temporarily stopped coming to Kazan.

However, the emptiness of engineering though isn’t felt anyway. It turned out that Kazan universities have things to offer giants of the Russian industry. On 25 May, they had a rare chance to show off: university representatives demonstrated fruits of scientific research during almost 1,5 hours. So Kazan National Research Technological University presented promising developments to make smart materials that can be used to label different goods. Its technological partner Ingehim presented supercritical fluid technologies to process materials, while KNRTU promotes the idea of introducing light composites in the industry.

Kazan Fair goes online

However, the main intrigue of the board meeting was absolutely different — if the Tatarstan Oil and Petrochemical Forum 2020 would be in September, which has gathered moguls of the Russian oil industry in Kazan for 25 years. We should note that this year the forum was to be hosted at Kazan Expo new exhibition site for the first time and move from the small territory of Kazan Fair’s pavilions. The expected area of the exposition is 10,000 square metres, which surpasses previous parameters. Last year it was visited by 180 companies from 23 countries of the world.

There are just 3 months to go till the official opening date, but organisers are postponing the announcement of accurate information about its probability in Kazan because of the coronavirus pandemic. This is quite explicable: who can predict the end of the pandemic accurately?

“Broader representation, lower costs”

Nevertheless, Director General of Kazan Fair LLC Lev Semyonov offered the board of directors of Tatneftekhiminvest-holding an online oil and gas forum as one of the options. He explained that Kazan Fair renewed exhibition activity in June. It is expected that three sectoral exhibitions at once cancelled in spring would open in June, but they will be online. It is Volgastroy-expo, Dortranspexpo and Security and Communication. According to his presentation, the online exhibition allows attracting a wider circle of participants.

“A reduction in solvency of potential exponents due to forced suspension of production activity isn’t an obstacle to decreasing marketing activity,” reads a short version of his presentation. “Participation costs on an online exhibition are much lower than the participation in offline projects — no need for money for building a stand, transport, participation costs, which significantly reduced the prime cost of a project and makes it as much available as possible for small and medium entrepreneurship. In June, Kazan Fair will test the platform when hosting the three exhibitions.”

However, Rustam Minnikhanov didn’t back this proposal. “If we can’t gather people, this doesn’t have sense, personal contacts, communication are important,” he said. “If we can’t host it as usual, it should be postponed. June will show,” the president offered to go back to this issue on 1 June. The president probably intends to make sure that online exhibitions that the organiser is now preparing won’t have failures. Lev Semyonov himself told Realnoe Vremya that the date wouldn’t be postponed and the format of live communication is more preferable.

For road construction and pharmaceuticals

Evaluating the prospects of Kazan developments, the president tasked oil, pharmaceutical enterprises of the republic the use of supercritical fluid technologies. Director General of Kazan Ingehim Engineering and Promotion Centre LLC Mansur Farakhov gave a speech about it.

This field is recognised promising around the world. For instance, impregnation of crushed carbonate rock for road construction with FKM environments allows reducing water consumption, the speaker said. Rustam Minnikhanov instructed the Ministry of Transport with testing the technology on local roads. Moreover, Farrakhov talked about the prospects of the world market of vegetable treatment and extracts. The advantage of continuous pulsation technology by Ingehim is an unlimited amount of processing of products. The director offered to create a regional centre in the Republic of Tatarstan to process vegetable feedstock. This can be used to manufacture new medicines for people and products for agriculture.

Come down to earth!

Rector of the Tupolev Kazan National Research Technological University Albert Gilmutdinov offered the idea of creating an air and space complex in Tatarstan to test composite commodities, the press service of the Tatarstan president said. The aviation institute has KAI-Composite Distributed Centre for Composite Technologies, Specialised Competence Centre, 3D weaving and KAI-Resource subdivision.

Gilmutdinov asked the president for help to create a centre for the development and production of composite blades for helicopters and wind energy. It can be created together with Kazan Helicopters. “The world creates new materials, it is already the norm of life. This is why we shouldn’t limit to aviation, we should get down to earth too,” Rustam Minnikhanov added. As a successful example, he named composite scaffoldings at TANECO. In his opinion, composites should be used more when building bridges and facilities of the Fuel and Energy Complex.

Kukmor stone for Kazan metro finishing

Director General of Master and Stone Industry company from Kukmor Ilnar Gilyazen presented projects on stone use to finish the Kaban Lake Embankment near Marjani Mosque in Kazan, Moscow metro. Granite crumb is 10% cheaper than bitumen and endures longer, the speaker explained. The enterprise will launch a stone processing shop next year. Specialists from Italy and Scandinavia are invited to boost the quality of products.

“Tatarstan accounts for just 3% of natural stone consumption across Russia,” Gilyazov noted. “We wouldn’t like to lag behind Moscow, we should use as much granite as possible. The Kukmor factory is one of the biggest in the Volga region.” “It is the latest factory with world-class products,” Minnikhanov claimed. “As many local materials as possible should be used in construction projects in the republic.”

Director General of InnoStage DH LLC Aydar Guzairov presented an automated system to monitor a facility’s physical security (Digital Headquarters). The company is a part of InnoStage group and is a resident of Innopolis Special Economic Zone in Tatarstan. “Now there are a lot of threats, and to resist them, a lot of data needs to be processed,” Guzairov noted. “A person not always can quickly and accurately process them. We create single response centres at corporate level.”