The "CASE-IN" championship helps students of Kuzbass Polytechnic Institute to express themselves

The qualifying stage of the Student League of the International Engineering CASE-IN Championship at the Kuzbass State Technical University has been completed. 21 teams of future engineers competed for the opportunity to represent Kuzbass in the semifinals, and then compete for the main prize in the final of the championship in Moscow.

KuzSTU participates in the CASE-IN for the ninth time, but in 2021 it was not without innovations. So, in addition to the areas of "Mining" and "Electric Power Industry", for the first time students in the direction of "Petrochemistry" could solve a case and declare themselves.

In our new material, we will talk about why the opinion of future engineers is so important for large corporations, what cases students solve during competitions, and why a CASE-IN is needed at all.

An unconventional solution with a fresh look

One of the main goals of the CASE-IN is to attract young people to solve real—world cases. There are no fictional situations here: the tasks for students are set by active industrialists. And the future engineers have only 10 days to do everything about everything.

For example, the guys from the EDS team solved the case "Sustainable development of the electric power industry: Active Energy Complexes" and offered three competitive sites for Kuzbass at once.

"Two of them are in Kemerovo and one in Mezhdurechensk. Mezhdurechensk is a multi–city, and a lot of investments will be made in it in the near future, which is why we decided that it needs AEC.", — Anastasia Aksenova, a student at the Institute of Energy of KuzSTU, told.

The AEC, an active energy complex, acts as one of the mechanisms that allow consumers to reduce their electricity bills by reducing their workload at certain hours of the day. The Ebonitovye team members proposed to introduce AEC at the Alexey Leonov Kemerovo airport.

"We are proposing the installation of a mini-CHP plant with a turbine at the Kemerovo airport, and the main goal of our case is to create microgrids on the territory of the Russian Federation – local energy systems that are not powered by a single analytical system. We believe that microgrids are the future, and the whole world is already switching to them. In Russia, the issue of their implementation will be discussed only in May 2023.", — Elizaveta Kartashova, a student at KuzSTU, told the story.

In search of young staff

Another important mission of the championship is to make some kind of “exchange" between students and potential employers. They defend their project at the CASE-IN engineering championship in front of industry experts from the region — representatives of the real sector of the economy. And those, in turn, select their own personnel. The international championship is included in the presidential platform "Russia — the land of opportunities".

"The championship is important not only for the university, the teams, but also for the development of our economy in general. Those students who participate in these events always begin to feel like a cohesive team capable of solving real production tasks. After all, such cases will be found not only in classrooms, but they will become a daily task at work. And if you learn how to solve it, you will always be head and shoulders above the competition.", — Alexander Bakanov, Vice-rector for Academic Affairs of KuzSTU, said at the opening of the championship.

This year, the guys from the Mining department solved a case, the main object of which is the Udachny mine in the Mirninsky district of the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia). Students of Kuzbass State Technical University had to calculate the volume of air supplied to underground mining workings and develop cost optimization solutions for their ventilation.

"There is a diamond tube deposit in this area. Previously, it was developed in an open way, but now it is underground. Therefore, the mine must now be ventilated, as there is a risk of gas release with the underground mining method. During the defense, experts primarily pay attention to the technological solution, as far as it is applicable in practice, and not just in theory. In the future, of course, we would like our proposed solutions to be applied at various mining enterprises, including Kuzbass ones.", — Anastasia Sokhareva, a student at the KuzSTU branch in Prokopyevsk, tells the "Mountain of Winds" team.

The future belongs to innovation

Most of the students tried to solve their tasks in non-standard ways. For the first time, the Petrochemistry direction was opened — the guys from the Institute of Chemical and Oil and Gas Technologies formed a system of indicators to assess the contribution of one of the product lines of SIBUR– the largest integrated petrochemical company in Russia.

"Our solution involves improving the environmental situation – we considered plastic recycling technology. Now it is used in Korea, China, and Japan, and SIBUR has begun to study this topic. We have focused on DOTF plasticizer – it is more environmentally friendly, it can be recycled, and the quality of products from it increases. And, of course, it can also be used at Kuzbass enterprises.”, — the participants of the “Reactionary” team, KuzSTU students Lilia Solovyova and Valeria, told Kondrashina.

Following the results of the qualifying stage, the best teams will advance to the semifinals, where they will compete in knowledge with students from other universities in the Siberian Federal District. The winners of the final in Moscow, which will be held in May this year, will receive valuable prizes and advantages for admission to master's and postgraduate studies at 20 partner universities of the championship.

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