Irek Mukhamatdinov receives Presidential Award for Science and Innovation from President Vladimir Putin

The awardee was invited for a ceremony in the Moscow Kremlin on 8 February.

During the meeting with the President of Russia, Irek Mukhamatdinov spoke about the activities of the World-Class Research Center in Liquid Hydrocarbons.

“I want to thank you, Vladimir Vladimirovich, and the Presidential Council on Science and Education for this high esteem of my contribution to viscous oil recovery. Of course, such results would be unobtainable without the opportunities provided to me by Kazan Federal University. I want to thank Director of the Institute of Geology and Petroleum Technologies Danis Nurgaliev, Chair of the Department of Petroleum Engineering Mikhail Varfolomeev, Head of the In-Situ Combustion Laboratory Aleksey Vakhin, and our team for the immense support and contribution to our shared victory, A separate gratitude to my parents, my spouse and my daughter,” said the invitee.

After that, the scientist spoke about his work, “When our catalysts are added, the oil becomes fluid, and it can be recovered and pumped to the surface. The quality of oil improves during this process. The economic effect is evident. The recovery can be increased by 10-20 percent with this technique. We use both imported and local equipment, and also construct some things ourselves.”

President Putin asked about real-life implementations of the invention. Dr Mukhamatdinov informed him that it has been tested in Russia and Cuba.

“Working with sulfur on such depth? Is there any more work needed with such oil so that it can be pumped with other blends into a pipeline?” inquired Putin. The awardee responded that no additional work is needed.

The oil recovery research is a family business – Rezeda Mukhamatdinova, the triumphant’s wife, is a research associate of the same laboratory at KFU.

You can read more about Mukhamatdinov’s research here.