SUSU student creates a catalyst for biofuel production

In Russia, a winner of the UMNIK competition, student of the SUSU Institute of Natural Sciences and Mathematics is working on a fundamentally new catalyst that will help to produce cheap biodiesel fuel from waste food raw materials. This type of fuel can be used for cars and other vehicles with diesel engine.

The aim of the work is to create a cheap and regenerable catalyst, with the help of which it will be possible to convert food raw materials and waste edible fats into biofuels. The catalyst is a finely dispersed powder of brown, gray or red colour, depending on the composition, and is used to accelerate chemical reactions.

This development will be of interest to biofuel companies. The use of waste raw materials will significantly reduce the cost of the finished product.

In addition to creating the catalyst itself, the team is also working on a new technology for its use. The production of ferrite catalysts has already started, and a series of laboratory experiments are to be carried out in order to understand how effective they are. The test results will be covered in a number of scientific articles in highly rated scientific journals, indexed in Scopus and Web of Science.