Gazprom Neft has announced the finalists of the second round of its "Industrix" student project accelerator, including Regina Gaffanova, a Postgraduate Student and Assistant at the Department of Chemical Technology of Petroleum and Gas Processing. The company will facilitate the implementation of multiple technology entrepreneurship initiatives, providing participants with opportunities to test and scale their innovations in real-world production settings.

Students and young scientists from across Russia submitted more than 400 applications to the "Industrix" accelerator. Based on the jury’s evaluation, 21 startups became program graduates. The developers will be able to conduct pilot industrial testing of their products, with the prospect of bringing them to the industry market.

Some of the startups will be tested and implemented at Gazprom Neft's facilities. Among them is a plant-based reagent for enhanced oil recovery at mature fields, developed by a KNRTU research team. Postgraduate student Regina Gaffanova created this promising project for the oil industry under the guidance of Prof. Nataliya Bashkirtseva, Chair of the Department of Chemical Technology of Petroleum and Gas Processing, and Rifat Mingazov, Associate Professor.

“A bifunctional plant-based surfactant reagent compatible with formation water for extracting residual hard-to-recover oil serves as an alternative to surfactant-polymer systems. The active base of the reagent, derived from vegetable oils, simultaneously possesses the oil-washing properties of surfactants and the oil-displacing properties of polymers,” commented Regina Gaffanova.