The CASE-IN champions from Magnitogorsk proposed a solution to eliminate oil spills

Magnitogorsk students have come up with a complex that eliminates oil spills in the water. For such a development, which still exists in theory, the guys have already become winners of the International Engineering CASE-IN Championship. GTRK South Ural correspondent Maria Shesterkina met with four environmental activists.

These four have iron coils, that's what they say about themselves, and they also named their team. Magnitogorsk students have developed a complex that collects oil not only on land, but also from the surface of the water.

Thanks to this development, they won the CASE-IN championship, which was held in Moscow.

"We have a vacuum unit that sucks in sand along with oil, and then it is sorted into big bags and sent for regeneration," says Alexey Kirichko, a third-year student at the Nosov Moscow State Technical University.

The situation in the championship case, which the guys had to solve, was based on a real environmental incident that occurred in December 2024. At that time, the Black Sea experienced one of the most extensive pollution in recent decades.

"Currently, sorbents are the main method of collecting petroleum products. Now they are coming up with new supersorbents based on graphene and Teflon, which we chose after analyzing the market. They have the largest capacity, that is, they will collect more oil," explains Ekaterina Kuzmina, a student at the Moscow State Technical University named after G.I. Nosov.

The sorbent is an aerogel that is sprayed under an oil slick. Taking in petroleum products, the sorbent swells. Such an innovation can be reused, according to Magnitogorsk students.

"It turns out that the fishbot goes underwater, sprays supersorbents, and from above the skimmer is already starting to collect an oil slick," says Kirill Maidankin, the captain of the team, a student at the Moscow State Technical University named after G.I. Nosov.

The students expect that it will take 25 complexes and about four months to eliminate the oil spill in Anapa. Now young people have another task ahead of them — to make their startup a reality.

A source