Researcher Abdolreza Farhadian receives two awards in Iran
Abdolreza Farhadian, a senior researcher at the Research Laboratory of Hydrate Technologies for Greenhouse Gas Utilization and Storage and associate professor in the Department of Petroleum Engineering at the Institute of Geology and Petroleum Technology, was named the laureate of the Khorezmi Youth Prize and the World Intellectual Property Organization National Prize.
The award ceremony took place in Tehran at the International Khorezmi Prize ceremony.
“The prizes were presented by First Vice President of Iran Mohammad Reza Aref and Minister of Science, Research, and Technology Hossein Simaee Sharaf,” says Dr Farhadian. “I was also congratulated on stage by Hamid Bovard, Director General of the National Iranian Oil Company, and Alireza Ashori, Chairman of the International Khorezmi Prize.”
He explained that he received a third-place diploma in the Inventions and Innovations in Chemical Technologies category of the Khorezmi Youth Prize and the national award for the design and development of dual-use inhibitors. They are designed to combat corrosion and gas hydrate formation in oil and gas pipelines.
Farhadian’s PhD dissertation, which he defended under the supervision of Mikhail Varfolomeev, Chair of the Department of Petroleum Engineering, was devoted to the creation of such chemical reagents.
“Corrosion inhibitors and gas hydrate inhibitors are widely used to ensure the safe and economical transportation of hydrocarbons through oil and gas pipelines. However, when they are introduced into pipelines simultaneously, incompatibility issues often arise due to their different molecular compositions, leading to reduced productivity,” Farhadian explains.
An Iranian scientist has successfully synthesized new inhibitors at Kazan Federal University that help combat both corrosion and gas hydrates.
“A comprehensive study was required to evaluate their effectiveness. Experiments have shown that the inhibitors prevent the formation of natural gas hydrates. Molecular dynamics simulations showed that the diffusion of gas molecules into growing hydrate ‘cells’ is hindered by the adsorption of the inhibitor on the hydrate surface. Furthermore, the inhibitors prevent the formation of hydrogen bonds necessary for hydrate crystallization,” he notes. “It was also found that these reagents can protect mild steel from corrosion in oil field formation water.”
It’s worth noting that Abdolreza Farhadian has been ranked among the world’s most cited scientists for several years now, being in the top 2 percent.
