Февраль 2005 г.

Российская наука и мир (по материалам зарубежной электронной прессы)

CONTENTS / ОГЛАВЛЕНИЕ


• Queen's physicist 1st Canadian to win top Russian science prize
• Mexico and Russia to Build Quake-Detecting Satellite
• Space Watch: The Russians are coming
• By Means Of Coronas-f Satellite Russian Scientists Make Discoveries On The Sun
• EU-Russia symposium on S&T cooperation in biotechnology
• Protocole de Kyoto: la polémique évincée par le pragmatisme
• Climate change has bright side
• A New IT Attitude for a New Silicon Valley
• While the Oil Barons Sleep
• Melting Siberian Peat Bogs May Unleash Huge Quantities Of Methane
• XXI century to be time of great discoveries in life sciences
• Nuclear plant in earthquake zone
• Un navire scientifique russe en escale
• Solar-powered rocket
• Int'l conf on energy coop of Asian countries opens in Irkutsk
• Russia needs to invest $14 bln in oil exploration in Siberia, Far East
• Russian researchers build prototype of "perpetual" propulsion unit
• Les géophysiciens russes et français vont créer un laboratoire de métallogénie
• Siberian scientists learn to prevent permafrost thawing
• Talking about a revolution
• Navy funds power engine project. Small-scale success spurs development of potent turbine made by Russian scientists
• Space plasma centre opens at Russia mission control centre

Два года назад в Институте катализа создана новая высокоэффективная технология очистки нефти и нефтепродуктов

"Do you understand what you've done?! Now, we have two options. Either we kill you or chuck the whole oil-refining industry!" This is how the industry's major players reacted when they heard about the new technology developed two years ago by scientists at Novosibirsk's G.K. Boreskov Catalysis Institute, part of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences. In contrast to the traditional multi-stage process, the Novosibirsk technique refines oil in only one stage. The process yields high-octane gasoline and high-quality diesel oil that meet even the tightened environmental regulations recently introduced in Europe. Most importantly, however, the production of excellent quality fuel using the new technology costs several times less than older methods.
The Catalysis Institute is no typical Russian academic establishment. Throughout its history, its scientists have only rarely pursued pure scientific curiosity. As a rule, they have been guided in their research by the needs of various industries. Virtually all developments at the Institute have found their buyers. The new, single-stage technology is no exception. At the Expert's second Russian Innovation Competition, the know-how from Novosibirsk took the British Council prize. It is already in use at several companies.
The light fractions
The discovery from Siberia only involves the so-called "top," the light fractions of crude oil that are refined into gas and diesel, and not fuel oil.
Using traditional refining technology, after initial distillation, the gasoline, kerosene, and diesel fractions are each further refined via separate processes. Thus, one method for refining the gasoline fraction into high-octane gas involves hydrotreatment (which removes sulfur and nitrogen), reforming, and alkylation. The diesel fraction is generally refined into what is referred to as "winter-grade diesel" in Russia and undergoes hydrotreatment and dewaxing.
For more than a hundred years of this technology, each fraction has been processed separately using separate catalysts. Platinum catalysts are used in reforming, cobalt-molybdenum catalysts in hydrotreatment, and platinum and palladium catalysts in dewaxing. There have been many attempts to shorten this long chain and optimize the process, but all innovators were hampered by a single pre-existing assumption. They believed it was impossible to refine several different fractions at the same time (meaning in one reactor with one catalyst). The Novosibirsk scientists, however, proved them wrong.
The super catalyst
The new, single-stage method, when everything is processed at the same time, is called Binary Motor Fuel or BMF technology. It is very simple: after primary oil distillation, all light fractions are fed into one reactor block where the refining process takes place. Then, the resulting compound is directed into a dividing block where it is split into three final products, high-octane gasoline, winter diesel, and propane-butane. The last fraction yields a liquefied gas that can be used as both a household and automotive fuel.
The beauty of the new method lies in a unique catalyst that is loaded into a reactor. The idea of a catalyst that could process heavy and light fractions at the same time without the processes interfering with each other occurred to Gennady Yechevsky, Doctor of Chemistry and the Head of the Catalytic Hydrocarbon Transformation Laboratory. He assumed that if a catalyst's structure were transformed in a special way, its active centers (the special areas of a catalyst where specific chemical reactions can take place) would occur with non-uniform density. In this case, diverse reactions, such as aromatization, alkylation, cracking, desulfurization, and isomerization, could take place at the same time on these active centers. The speed ratio of these reactions would allow all fractions to be processed in same amount of time, without clogging the active centers.
The entire lab group, a scientifically strong team with several promising developments for the oil-refining and petrochemical industry to its credit, got to work on the new technology. Together they invented an industrial synthesis technique for this elegant catalyst. The method for redistributing active centers in the volume of a catalyst constitutes a fundamental innovation, as the material scientist chose to use in the new process – high-silica zeolite – is nothing new.
The lab ran pilot trials of the new method in 2001, just one year after the discovery of the super catalyst idea. The first experimental industrial trials were already underway in August 2003. They proved Yechevsky's theory.
Clean, cheap, and beautiful
Thanks to BMF technology, the oil refining process has becomes considerably simpler. It no longer involves complex and costly processes, such as hydrotreatment (and cumbersome and troublesome hydrogen facilities), reforming, isomerization, alkylation, dewaxing, and various rectification stages. Capital expenditures are six times less and operating costs are at least eight times less, compared to the traditional process. BMF technology also uses at least four times less energy.
The BMF catalyst– in contrast to the expensive and touchy noble metals used in the traditional process – is convenient in all respects: it is cheap, non-aggressive, and undemanding to boot.
There is one more essential advantage to the Novosibirsk technology: it can refine oil with absolutely any concentration of sulfur compounds. When refining "dirty" oil using traditional method, hydrotreatment costs increase dramatically. Sulfur has to be removed, as it rapidly destroys the catalysts used in the next refining stages. Therefore, oil refineries are not eager to accept oil with high sulfur content for further refinement, because costs are too high. Russia, however, has a large amount of high-sulfur oil.
The new zeolite catalyst isn't afraid of sulfur at all. That's why it doesn't matter in BMF technology how much sulfur the raw crude contains. Gulping up "sour" crude with ease, the BMF method yields fuel with a sulfur content of less than 0.001% (whereas under Russian state standards, 0.05% is considered good).
Another advantage of BMF technology is the low benzol content of the resulting fuel. Benzol is carcinogenic when burned and Russian state standards set an upper limit of 5% for benzol concentration in fuel. The maximum benzol percentage under European standards is 1%. BMF technology produces fuel with a benzol content of less than 1%. BMF technology also produces excellent winter diesel. Traditional diesel fuel is considered high-quality if it remains liquid at -35°C. The Novosibirsk fuel doesn't freeze even at -75°C. If oil is refined using the traditional process, about 25% of the gasoline turns into a gas and is lost. BMF's developers have outperformed the older method here, too. They have succeeded in achieving much higher liquid yield, the most valuable fraction. The maximum "gas losses" run less than 18%. However, even this 18% cannot really be called a loss. The propane-butane content of this gas is as high as 95%.
"A patent search has shown that there is other technology of this kind anywhere in the world. We already have four Russian and two international patents for a number of variations of BMF technology. Seven more patent applications for the innovations we made during our work are currently under consideration," Yechevsky says.
Fueling ambitions
The BMF technology presents a radical break with existing oil refining processes. This, however, prevents BMF technology from be applied immediately industry-wide. It is not that simple to fit the new technology into the complex, multi-stage production cycle at oil refineries.
While waiting for a response from "big oil," Catalysis Institute officials have focused on promoting their technology in more limited niches, where smaller oil refineries are being set up from scratch. These include plants in remote and hard-to-reach areas, in particular in the Far North. Building oil refineries using the Novosibirsk technology also proves economically sound when developing new oil deposits.
Secondly, the new technology is ideal for processing "problem" crude with large amounts of sulfur or paraffin. Plants bluntly refuse to accept some grades of this kind of oil, and in such cases there is simply no commercially viable alternative to BMF technology.
There is one more promising market. Using the new technology, it would be possible to process gas condensate efficiently, as the liquid fraction is separated from the gas produced in order to send only residue gas through the main pipeline. Gas condensate is an ideal input for BMF technology. It is a mixture of mainly light oil fractions, and its fuel oil content is very low.
The developers also hope to fuel the ambitions of regional politicians for promoting BMF technology. Officials in regions without their own oil refineries often want motor fuel production in their area to avoid price gauging at crucial moments like sowing and harvesting. Using BMF technology, they could build a compact and inexpensive oil refinery on a regional scale

Обширные торфяные болота на севере России играют важную роль в регулировании содержания парниковых газов в атмосфере по всему миру. Сибирские болота стали крупным производителем метана вскоре после окончания последнего ледникового периода около 12 тыс. лет назад. Торфяники являются также одним из крупнейших хранилищ углерода в мире, поглощающим огромное количество углекислого газа из атмосферы. Оба газа считаются парниковыми. Они поглощают длинноволновое излучение и задерживают тепло в нижних слоях земной атмосферы.

Massive Siberian peat bogs, widely known as the permanently frozen home of untold kilometers of moss and uncountable hordes of mosquitoes, also are huge repositories for gases that are thought to play an important role in the Earth's climate balance, according to newly published research by a team of U.S. and Russian scientists in the journal Science. Those gases, carbon dioxide and methane, are known to trap heat in the Earth's atmosphere, but the enormous amounts of the gases contained in the bogs haven't previously been accounted for in climate-change models.
The new research, said Laurence Smith, an associate professor at the University of California and primary author of the paper, could help to refine those materials. Smith's work was funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF). A key finding of the research, unrelated to modern climate change, is that the bogs themselves came into being suddenly about 11,500 to 9,000 years ago - much earlier than previously thought - and expanded very rapidly to fill the niche they now occupy. Their appearance coincides with an abrupt and well documented spike in the amount of atmospheric methane recorded in ancient climate records. The finding counters previously held views that the bogs were largely unchanged - and unchanging - over millennia. The rapid appearance of the bogs provides strong evidence that this is not the case.
Scientists have hotly debated the origin of the methane spike, variously attributing it to sources in tropical wetlands and offshore sediments. The new research conclusively points for the first time to Siberia as a likely methane source. But the researchers also point out that the bogs - which collectively cover an area of roughly 603,000 square kilometers - have long absorbed and held vast amounts of carbon dioxide, while releasing large amounts of methane in the atmosphere.
If, as many scientists predict, a regional Arctic warming trend thaws the bogs and causes the trapped gases to be released into the atmosphere, that could result in a major and unexpected shift in climate trends, according to the researchers. The teams spent three seasons in the Siberian Arctic, drilling several meters down into the sphagnum moss to produce the peat samples for analysis. Smith said thawing of the permafrost would essentially turn the carbon and methane balance in the peat bogs from a scientific constant in climate-change equations to a variable.
"Traditionally, we had thought these areas were simply a gradually varying source of methane and an important sink for atmospheric carbon," he said. "They've been viewed as a stable thing that we always count on. The bottom line is Siberian peat lands may be a bigger player in climate change than we knew before."
"There are natural sources of greenhouse gases out there that are potentially enormous that we need to know about," Smith said. "One of the concerns is that up until now, the bogs have been more or less a sink for CO₂, absorbing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. In an extreme scenario, not only would they stop taking up CO₂, they would release a lot of the carbon they have taken up for centuries." Smith conceded that the team searched their Siberian peat samples for evidence that such a drastic release of gas occurred in the past, with inconclusive results.
But, he added, as other research into Earth's ancient climate begins to yield evidence that changes have occurred before, accounting for unknowns such as the carbon and methane balance in the bogs becomes more important. "It emphasizes a point that has been emerging over the past few years; the idea that the climate system is highly unpredictable and full of thresholds that can trigger greenhouse gas sources and sinks to abruptly switch on and off," he said. "The more of them we can identify, the more accurately we can model and anticipate changes in the future."

XXI век станет временем великих открытий в науках о жизни и энергии, считают члены Российской академии наук.

MOSCOW, February 8 (Itar-Tass) - The twenty first century will be the time of great discoveries in life sciences and energy. "Research in such fields as biotechnology, pharmacology and molecular biology will open up new vistas in the practical medicine," a source in the Russian Academy of Sciences that celebrates in 280th anniversary Sunday told Itar-Tass. Russian Science Day is marked on February 8 since 1999 under a Russian presidential decree.
According to president of the Academy of Sciences Yuri Osipov "scientists will focus attention on the live organism and live cell in the current century." Osipov believes that their study opens new opportunities for the development of medicine. Russian scientists name nanotechnologies as another priority. "Further successes in microelectronics, optics, biotechnologies and creating radically new medicines are impossible" without nanotechnologies, he emphasised. "Medicines affecting selectively genetic programmes that are responsible for some or other diseases will be used for treatment soon," Academician Valentin Vlasov told Itar-Tass.
Energy will also change in the twenty first century. "The stocks of natural resources of oil and gas are rapidly exhausting and their restoration will take millions of years," the source said. Meanwhile "there are unique developments in hydrogen and thermonuclear energy in Russia," Academician Nikolai Ponomarev-Stepnoi told Itar-Tass. He recalled that the international thermonuclear reactor project that became international "was worked out and made the first steps for the practical implementation in our country." Meanwhile he is confident that "hydrogen will be used sweepingly as an energy carrier for heating houses, car engines and even children toys already in twenty years." For his part, Sergei Nikolsky, 98, the oldest Russian academician, believes that "the main discoveries in the new century should be expected in biology and physics." "However without the state support many of them will not be put into practice and probably remain on paper," he told Itar-Tass.
The Russian Academy of Sciences was established by a decree of Peter the Great on February 8 1724. At present the academy comprises of 400 research institutes located all over the country, the Academy of Sciences presidium said. 18 academy scientists were awarded with Nobel Prizes. Academician Ivan Pavlov was the first Nobel laureate in 1904. The Nobel Prize was bestowed on Academicians Vitaly Ginzburg and Alexei Abrikosov last year.

Площадка для предполагаемой АЭС в Архангельской области находится в сейсмоопасной зоне. Об этом в январе заявил директор Института экологических проблем Севера Уральского отделения РАН Феликс Юдахин. Специалисты института провели геологические исследования грунта на месте предполагаемого строительства и установили сейсмическую нестабильность территории.

Director of the Institute of Environmental Problems of the North at the Urals Department of the Russian Science Academy Felix Yudakhin informed the press about that in January. The specialists of the Institute explored the ground in the area of the planned nuclear plant's construction and detected seismic variability. Yudakhin said, "although the research is not completed, we can absolutely confirm the fact that this territory is seismic".
In response to this statement the deputy governor of Arkhangelsk region on economic development Vladimir Kolomentsev, who is responsible for the nuclear plant's project, told the journalists that "the scientist did not make any discovery" and all this information is available from before, adding that the planned nuclear plant is designed to resist grade 9 earthquake on Richter scale. He also said that Rikasikha chosen as a staring point for the nuclear plant, but the final location would be determined this year after the state expert review. The State company Unified Energy System of Russia emphasized many times that Northwest of Russia has excessive energy supplies, but Vladimir Kolomentsev was sceptical about the idea to build power lines from the Kola nuclear power plant or Pechora hydroelectric power plant.
Agreement to build nuclear heat and power plant near Rikasikha was signed in the end of November 2001. The project's cost is about $700m and should be financed by Rosenergoatom concern's investment program, but no money has been allocated yet. The plant's capacity with the VK-300 type power unit is 600MW and it should be put in operation in 2010.

В Атлантическом океане обнаружены богатые месторождения меди, цинка, кобальта и золота. Это открытие было сделано в ходе 24-й экспедиции научно-исследовательского судна "Профессор Логачев", в которой приняли участие 36 российских и два французских специалиста из Института изучения и освоения океана (IFREMER).

Les mines de fer de demain reposent-elles au fond des mers, comme c'est déjà le cas pour le pétrole et le diamant? Après plus de trente ans de coopération, les scientifiques russes et français continuent d'explorer le terrain de l'océan profond. La 24e campagne du Professor Logatchev, avec deux scientifiques de l'Ifremer à son bord, vient de localiser un important site de métaux valorisables en Atlantique.
Le Professor Logatchev, navire océanographique russe, termine une campagne de quatre mois par une escale à Brest, du 5 au 7 avril. À bord, trente-six scientifiques russes et deux de l'Institut français de recherche pour l'exploitation de la mer (Ifremer). Ce bâtiment destiné à l'exploration géologique du domaine océanique, est géré par le Polar Marine Institute basé à Saint-Petersbourg.
Au menu de la 24e campagne du navire océanographique russe, l'observation de la dorsale atlantique, entre l'équateur et les Acores. "On recherche une aiguille dans une botte de foin", reconnaît Yves Fouquet, responsable du laboratoire géosciences marines à Ifremer.
À 4 000 m de profondeur environ, à proximité de volcans sous-marins, le manteau terrestre laisse paraître des sources hydro-termiques. Les scientifiques y ont découvert des "amas de sulfures polymétalliques" contenant des métaux valorisables: fer, cobalt, zinc, or et cuivre. Cette campagne a permis de préciser la richesse du site particulièrement profond. En 2006, pour mieux définir ce site, une étude est prévue à bord du prochain navire de l'Ifremer, le Pourquoi Pas?, et avec son robot téléopéré, le Victor 6 000.
L'exploitation industrielle n'est pas pour demain. Des forages précis seront nécessaires pour en déterminer l'importance. Néanmoins, avec des pays comme la Chine qui affiche un taux de croissance annuel de 10 % et dont les besoins en acier sont énormes, on peut s'attendre à un regain d'intérêt dans ce domaine de la part des politiques et des industriels.
Pour Yves Fouquet, ces sources hydrothermales sont "une réserve potentielle de métaux pour un avenir qui n'est peut-être pas si loin". D'ailleurs, en Russie, ce programme de recherche est financé par le ministère des Ressources naturelles.

Российские и американские ученые планируют запустить космический парусный корабль, работающий только на солнечной энергии. 15-ти метровый парус сделан в виде веера и покрыт зеркальной пленкой. Впервые подобный проект появился еще в 1924 году, более чем за 30 лет до первого успешного запуска ракеты в космос.

American and Russian scientists are planning the ultimate in fuel-economy travel: they hope to launch a space sailing ship driven only by the pressure of sunlight later this year. Cosmos 1, an unfurled fan of 15 metre sails, each far thinner than a rubbish bag but stiffened and coated with mirror material, could be launched from a Russian nuclear missile submarine.
Sail in place of warhead
A rocket designed during the cold war to attack Britain or the U.S. will be fired from beneath the Barents Sea, in northern Russia, with the furled sail in place of its warhead. The Russians will use a second piece of cold war rocketry — designed to take spy satellites out of orbit — to push the spacecraft to its ideal orbit of 800 km, far above the last wisps of the earth's atmosphere. Then it will unfurl its sails. According to theory, as the solar rays hit the mirrored surface of the sails and then bounce away, they will exert pressure. Even in the pure vacuum of space this pressure will be barely perceptible: five millionths of the push exerted, for instance, by an apple in the palm of a hand.
But under this lighter-than-featherweight touch, the spacecraft will begin to move. The 100kg object will accelerate at a barely measurable fraction of a millimetre per second, but will gain speed with every second in the sun. By the end of the first day it will have increased its velocity by 160 km per hour. In 100 days, it could reach 16,000 km per hour. Cosmos 1 is a venture by the Planetary Society — an independent international group of enthusiasts and space veterans — backed by a film and television company called Cosmos Studios and working with the Russian Academy's space research, Russian contractors and the Russian navy.
Obviating rocket fuel
Space sailing ships were first proposed in 1924, more than 30 years before the first successful rocket launch. Rocket fuel is the biggest single cost in a space mission, and the U.S., European and Japanese space agencies all have solar sailing projects. The first to go up, however, will be an entirely private venture. A suborbital test in 2001 failed, but only because the third stage of the rocket failed to separate. The Cosmos 1 team had hoped to launch last year, and then again earlier this year. Launch could still slip to early 2005. "We had a couple of setbacks in difficulties with the radio system development, and the software testing took longer than planned," said Louis Friedman, the director of the Planetary Society, who once worked on a NASA solar sail project. "Also the Russians, with our agreement, kept adding capabilities to the spacecraft. Progress isn't really slow — developing anything new is a complex process in which hope always exceeds reality."
The best hope is that once launched, Cosmos 1 will spiral away from Earth for a month: proof that theorists got their sums right. The sails could be adjusted like helicopter blades to alter flight direction and speed. Solar sails are, for the moment, the only hope for interstellar missions. Although far slower than a chemically powered rocket, a space clipper would continue to accelerate as long as there was sunlight.
A thing of beauty
A craft like Cosmos 1 could reach Pluto in five years. The fastest orthodox mission planned so far would take nine years. Ann Druyan, wife of the late astronomer and writer Carl Sagan, said: "If Cosmos 1 succeeds it will be visible throughout much of the world to the naked eye, a signal flare of hope for the wise use of science and high technology. Over the past four years I've imagined Cosmos 1's vast silvery sails unfurling in space countless times. If it does come to pass, it will be a thing of beauty and a milestone of progress on the long human journey to the stars".

14 сентября в Иркутске открылась Международная конференция "Энергетическая кооперация в Азии: межгосударственная инфраструктура и энергетические рынки". В конференции принимают участие ученые и эксперты из России, Монголии, Кореи, Японии и других стран.

IRKUTSK, September 14 (Itar-Tass) - The international conference "Energy cooperation in Asia: interstate structure and energy markets" has opened in Irkutsk on Tuesday. Scientists and experts from Russia, Mongolia, the Republic of Korea, Japan and other countries take part in the conference.
As chairman of the conference organizing committee, director of the Institute of Power Engineering Systems of the Siberian branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences Nikolai Voropai said, about 50 reports embracing the whole spectrum of the main problems of the present day world power engineering are presented at the conference.
They are connected with the interstate integration of the fuel and energy complex, creation of a corresponding infrastructure and markets. Participants in the conference intend to discuss developing projects and technological decisions on the joint creation of electric lines, as well as gas and oil pipelines.
"The conference will be held within the framework of the Baikal Economic Forum which begins its work on Wednesday. And it's logical because energy cooperation is one of the basic links of the globalisation process of different states' economies," said Nikolai Voropai.

На разработку месторождений нефти в Сибири и на Дальнем Востоке России необходимо 14 мрд. долларов, заявил в своем выступлении на 4-й международной конференции "Энергетическая кооперация в Азии: межгосударственная инфраструктура и энергетические рынки" директор Института геологии, нефти и газа Алексей Конторович.

Irkutsk, (Interfax) - Russia needs to invest some $14 billion in the exploration of oil fields in Siberia and the Far East to fill a pipeline to the Japanese coast with a branch to Daqing, in China, director of the Russian Academy of Sciences Siberian branch of the Institute of Geology, Oil and Gas Alexei Kontorovich said. "This is 2%-3% of oil sales, while foreign companies spend up to 10% on this," he said at the fourth international conference on energy cooperation in Asia, which opened in Irkutsk on Tuesday.
Existing reserves are not sufficient to fill the pipeline with 80 million tonnes per year, of which 30 million tonnes to Daqing and 50 million tonnes to Nakhodka, as originally planned, Alexander Safronov, director of the Institute of oil and gas problems in Yakutia, said at the conference. He said the degree of oil exploration in Eastern Siberia, Yakutia and the Far East is 4.4%. Of the forecast 19.15 billion tonnes of reserves, A+B+C1 accounts for 846 million tonnes and C2 for 908 million tonnes. Eastern Siberia has the largest forecast reserves of 10.19 billion tonnes and their degree of exploration does not exceed 3.8%. Oil production could reach 55 million - 61 million tonnes a year in Eastern Siberia and Yakutia by 2030. It was 0.44 million tonnes in 2003. The production level is estimated to be 5 million - 10 million tonnes in 2010 and 55 million - 60 million tonnes in 2020, Safronov said.
Fields in Krasnoyarsk territory will produce 40 million - 45 million tonnes in 2030. Production was 0.08 million tonnes in 2003. Irkutsk region and Yakutia could produce 7 million - 8 million and 8 million - 9 million tonnes respectively. Production was 0.03 million and 0.33 million tonnes respectively in 2003. The priority oil pipeline projects should be Yurubcheno-Tokhomskaya (in Krasnoyarsk territory) - Poima; Taishet - Ust - Kut; Talakan (in Yakutia) - Verkhny Chon (Irkutsk region); and also building the Ust-Kut oil loading railway terminal, Safronov said.
He also predicted that oil consumption in Eastern Siberia, Yakutia and in the Far East would be 35 million - 40 million tonnes in 2030, against 14.9 million tonnes in 2003. Oil consumption in the Asian and Pacific region will grow to 2.35 billion - 2.48 billion tonnes from 1.049 billion tonnes.

В подмосковном НИИ космических систем (НИИ КС) разрабатывают "вечный" двигатель, который может быть использован как в космосе, так и на Земле. По словам научного руководителя НИИ КС Валерия Меньшикова, в институте уже несколько лет идет работа над так называемым двигателем без выброса реактивной массы, и уже создан опытный образец.

The Space Systems Scientific Research Institute outside Moscow is developing a "perpetual" engine for use in space and on Earth.
Valeriy Menshikov, the director and chief scientist at the institute, told ITAR-TASS news agency today that "the institute has been working on a so-called reactive mass emission-free engine for some years". He said "scientists have already developed an original prototype engine".
"The prototype is propelled by the movement within it of a liquid or solid propellant on a fixed trajectory reminiscent of a tornado," Menshikov explained. "Moreover, it is possible that we may observe in this motion some as-yet unknown interaction between the propellant and little-studied fields such as, for example, the gravitational field," he said.
"We have managed to record thrust of up to 28g with this prototype, but only for a few minutes so far," a department head at the institute, Yuriy Danshov, told the agency. "Thrust of this magnitude may appear extremely small, but were it to be applied for 20 minutes to a 100-kg satellite, the satellite's orbit would increase by 2 km," the scientist said.
The developers say this kind of propulsion unit would have a service life of at least 15 years, with a maximum of some 300,000 activations. It would be powered by solar batteries. Experts believe the device needs to be tested in space or dropped down a deep silo to replicate the effects of weightlessness to maintain the integrity of the experiment in measuring the thrust of the prototype. "Formally, science draws parallels between this research and attempts to build a perpetual motion machine, but big firms in the West are working very seriously and investing heavily in this," Menshikov said.
The Moscow researchers believe the engine would not just be for use in controlling and adjusting space craft orbits and orbital stations. "This environmentally clean engine will have applications in air and land transport in future, too," Menshikov said.

Создана совместная российско-французская лаборатория, целью которой будет разработка и внедрение методики прогноза крупных и сверхкрупных месторождений полезных ископаемых.

Les géophysiciens russes et français vont créer un laboratoire conjoint destiné à l'élaboration et au développement de méthodes originales de détermination et de localisation de gisements métallifères géants, a indiqué lundi l'ambassade de France à Moscou. Un accord en ce sens a été signé à Moscou entre le Musée géologique d'État Vernadski de l'Académie russe des Sciences et le Bureau français des Recherches Géologiques et Minières (BRGM), a précisé à l'AFP le service de presse de l'ambassade.
Le laboratoire franco-russe emploiera dans ses recherches des méthodes basées sur des observations géographiques, géologiques, thermiques, énergétiques ou magnétiques obtenues notamment par satellite, en utilisant les dernières théories de la dynamique de la croûte terrestre. Les outils développés permettront de réaliser des économies substantielles dans la recherche des minerais nécessaires à l'activité humaine. Le projet est soutenu par l'ambassade de France en Russie, le ministère russe de l'Education et de la Science et l'Otan.

Ученые томского Института химии нефти СО РАН борются с последствиями потепления с помощью специальных криогелей, помогая спасать вечную мерзлоту от таяния.

MOSCOW, Nov 20 (RIA Novosti) - The Institute of Oil Chemistry of the Russian Academy of Sciences' Siberian branch has worked out a method to prevent permafrost thawing, reports the Expert-Sibir magazine. The problem is becoming still more urgent. To eliminate the consequences of permafrost thawing in Siberia, huge funds will be required next decade.
The Yakutian town of Mirny gets drinking water from the Irelyakh water reservoir enclosed with a dam with permafrost in foundation. The frost has started thawing out, and water began to infiltrate near the foundation. Due to the dam slump, a many-meter gap appeared, through which the water reservoir lost up to 4,000 tons of water an hour.
Alrosa, a company producing diamonds in Yakutia, turned to the Oil Chemistry Institute in the West Siberian city of Tomsk, which specializes in resolution of problems in the field of prospecting, extracting and processing hydrocarbons. One of the most important and promising directions dealt with here for about 20 years is creation of technologies to increase oil recovery of layers. Different gel-forming mixtures are used for this.
For the dam of the Irelyakh hydrosystem, scientists suggested using cryo-gel. This is a chemical solution that becomes a gel when being frozen. In two years of tense work, ecologically pure solutions of polymers with electrolyte additions which form a gel with temperatures from 0 to -20 Celsius were created. With cyclic processes "freezing-thawing" the gel becomes a cryo-gel, which possesses high elasticity and a perfect cohesion with the rock. It blocks the stream and creates a screen. The more often the cycle repeats, the firmer it becomes.
Cryo-gels have never been used before for hydro-technical facilities. To build a barrier to water along the perimeter of the whole dam, whose length is 300 meters, it's necessary to inject 1,700 tons of gel to 117 holes. Scientists hope to fill with it only 20-25 before the year end.
The next facility is likely to be the Vilyuiskaya hydroelectric power plant (on the left tributary of the Lena river in Central Yakutia) - the first hydropower plant in Russia built in the zone of permafrost. In the future, the new technology may serve not only for maintenance and elimination of emergencies, but to strengthen soils in the permafrost area.

Ученые из Государственного ракетного центра КБ им. академика В.П. Макеева создали новую ветряную турбину, которая работает почти бесшумно и менее опасна для птиц.

Russian scientists, from the Makeyev State Rocket Centre near Miass, have developed a wind turbine that is almost silent and much less dangerous to birds. The turbine looks a bit like an egg-beater, with lightweight, glass fibre bladesthat revolve around a vertical structure. The radical design will be commercially developed with funding from the US department of environment.
"The blade speed is around twice the wind speed, which is much less than the speed on the conventional propeller design," says Richard Halstead, president of US company Empire Magnetics, which supplies the turbines' alternators. In theory birds will be able to see and avoid the slow-moving blades, while low speed makes the turbines very quiet.
Although the turbines aren't quite as efficient as conventional ones, they are much cheaper to make and better suited to a wide range of environments and applications. "There is more power output per dollar from this new windmill," says Halstead. So far the team has built a 9m high (3kW) turbine, suitable for fitting to the top of a home. They are now developing a 100kW turbine for use on commercial wind farms.

Группа российских ученых разрабатывает принципиально новый двигатель, работающий на всех видах топлива. Возможно, со временем он заменит большинство двигателей внутреннего сгорания.

A team of Russian scientists and a Houston entrepreneur hope to develop a revolutionary new engine with a fresh round of funding from the U.S. Navy.
Operating out of a small warehouse in Missouri City, principals of General Vortex Energy Inc. claim their creation will burn any kind of fuel - liquid, gas, or biowaste - at twice the efficiency of other engines. And at the same time, emissions are sharply reduced.
The patented Jirnov Vortex Turbine engine, they contend, could one day replace most of the internal combustion engines and gas turbines that power everything from cars to air conditioners to electricity generation plants.
In 2003, the Office of Naval Research gave General Vortex $100,000 to construct a 30-kilowatt prototype of the engine. Test results impressed the naval salts so much that they upped the ante for a larger version.
General Vortex recently received a $1 million grant to produce an upgraded 125-kilowatt prototype engine that will undergo more extensive tests at a Navy facility.
The Jirnov engine was invented and patented by Russian scientist Alexei Jirnov in collaboration with group of colleagues that included Anatoli Borissov.
Both Jirnov and Borissov came to the United States around 1990 and continued their research at the University of Houston.
General Vortex was formed in 1994 by Borissov, his brother Alexander, and Ken Kramer, a self-described "serial entrepreneur" with a degree in mechanical engineering from Rice University.
The partners launched the startup to develop and commercialize the four patented technologies for separate components of the Jirnov Vortex Turbine. General Vortex is currently owned by 10 shareholders and has so far been self-supporting. Early on, the company received a $155,000 research grant from the Texas Council of Environmental Technology for developing a combustion chamber technology that exceeded the council's targets for fuel efficiency and emission reduction.
That was followed by the $100,000 grant from the Navy to build the small prototype engine, and the $1 million now being used to duplicate the engine on a larger scale. If the 125-kilowatt engine exceeds performance standards along the lines of the first prototype, General Vortex could receive a purchase order and a $3 million grant from the Navy to establish a production facility.
Less fuel, low emissions
Several aspects of the Jirnov engine have especially impressed the Navy, according to Kramer and Borissov
A complementary design that allows reuse of power sources like excess hydrogen from fuel cells increases efficiency and reduces the amount of fuel a ship has to carry.
"Efficiency is important on a ship that is running 24 hours a day seven days a week. If they can carry less fuel, that's an enormous amount of money saved," Kramer says. Another advantage is that the Jirnov can burn virtually any kind of fuel.
"The Navy sent us some of the dirtiest, heaviest crude they had and we successfully burned it," says Kramer.
"You could burn kerosene in this engine. You could pour used cooking oil in and burn it," he adds.
The Jirnov Vortex and traditional gas turbine engines have the same four components - a combustion chamber, a compressor, a turbine and a heat exchanger.
But unlike conventional engines which typically run at 50,000 to 90,000 revolutions per minute, the Jirnov is designed to run at 1,800 to 3,600 RPMs while still delivering the same amount of energy.
This is accomplished by optimizing the performance of each component, Jirnov's developers say. For example, every fuel molecule is sucked into a "vortex" in the combustion chamber where it is thoroughly mixed and completely burned. This wastes very little fuel and keeps emissions low.
Kramer and Borissov claim the Jirnov engine is 58 percent to 70 percent fuel-efficient compared to 30 percent for coal or steam combustion, 35 percent for gas turbines, 50 for fuel cells - and about 20 percent for auto engines.
This translates into consumption of less than 150,000 gallons of fuel a year for a 1,500-kilowatt Jirnov unit compared with more than 600,000 gallons of natural gas needed for a gas turbine of the same size.
Looking ahead
While work continues on the Navy prototype project, Kramer and Borissov see potential applications extending to horizons far beyond seagoing vessels.
The General Vortex principals say they have talked to a "very large" Houston manufacturing company in the energy conversion sector. Discussions have centered on manufacturing and marketing the Jirnov engine in the form of an appliance that could produce all the hot and cold water and air, plus electricity for individual homes and businesses, and larger units to distribute power from electric utility substations.
The partners say they have talked to a company with worldwide operations about distribution and support of the product.
In 2005 the partners plan to target potential partners and licensees - major manufacturers of engines and gas turbines such as General Electric Co. and Rolls-Royce. Also on the list is Houston-based Stewart & Stevenson Services Inc., which builds diesel engines and gas turbine-powered vehicles and equipment for the military, the airlines and the oil industry.
All of these expectations will remain moot while prototypes of the Jirnov engine continue to proceed through an increasingly stringent series of performance tests. But the potential implications are seen as enormous.
"It could be quite a breakthrough as a source of energy," says Keith Thayer, the retired president of a Houston engineering consulting firm and past president of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers.
Thayer has provided technical assistance to General Vortex through a business and technology mentoring program at the Houston Development Center.
"It would be an alternative to the internal combustion engine and turbines and a good stand-by power source, which is the initial interest," Thayer says.

В Королеве открылся Международный космический плазменный центр. Учредителями центра стали Институт теплофизики экстремальных состояний РАН, немецкий Институт внеземной физики Общества Макса Планка и Российская космическая корпорация (РКК) "Энергия".

MOSCOW, February 8 (Itar-Tass) - An international space plasma centre opened in Korolyov outside Moscow on Tuesday.
The co-founders of the centre are Russia's Institute of Physics of Extreme Conditions, the Space rocket corporation Energia and Germany's Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics.
The Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Vladimir Fortov, told Itar-Tass that the "International Research Centre of Physics of Low Temperature Plasma, which is located at the Mission Control Centre in Korolyov, in particular would process results of the experiment Plasma Crystal that is being conducted in orbit".
"Significance of this joint work of Russian and German scientists for development of science is difficult to overevaluate," German Minister of Education and Research Edelgard Bulmahn said at the ceremony of opening the centre.
The Plasma Crystal experiment has been continuing in space for almost ten years.
"Back in January 1998, cosmonauts Vladimir Solovyov and Pavel Vinogradov conducted at the orbiting complex Mir the first experiment to obtain plasma-dust crystals in a PK-1 device. In May of the same year, PK-2 equipment began to be used at Mir that consisted of a gas discharge lamp and a device for video registration of the experiment," an expert of the Mission Control Centre said.
A PK-3 device, with which Russian cosmonaut Salizhan Sharipov is at present carrying out the final, 12th session of the Plasma Crystal experiment, began to operate at the International Space Station in March 2001.
"High frequency plasma is created in a vacuum chamber placed in a hermetic box, and a portable computer with a video camera are used for observation," an expert at Energia corporation said.
An improved version of the device.
Fortov, whose brainchild the Plasma Crystal experiment is, explained that “plasma containing not only electrons, ions and neutral particles but also strongly charged dust particles of micron sizes is called dust plasma”.
"Interaction of these particles in particular leads to the formation of ordered structures and plasma-dust crystals," the scientist said.
He said "processes occurring in plasma-dust structures on the earth are strongly warped by effects of gravity, but its influence is absent in space".
Results of the experiment, which many scientists believe deserve a Nobel Prize, will allow designing new compact energy batteries and lasers and developing technologies for growing diamonds in the space conditions of microgravity.

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