Six Novocherkassk polytechnics have joined a team of enthusiasts who will have to overcome technological barriers and find a breakthrough solution to the most complex technological problems on a global scale - this is the task of the National Technology Initiative competition "The First Element. Air." The first - qualifying - stage of the competition has already been successfully completed. Today, experts work at the YURGPU (NPI), who, as part of the qualification stage, review and evaluate the progress of work and equipment.

Technological contests of the National Technological Initiative are competitions of technologies and innovative products, including breakthrough technological solutions to complex scientific and technological problems, held in order to overcome technological barriers in priority industries and STI markets, to ensure Russia's competitiveness in high-tech markets.
The winner of the technology competition receives a cash prize for creating a breakthrough solution to a significant problem, after a prototype of such a solution has been created and successfully demonstrated.

NTI Technology Competition "The first element. Air" is dedicated to the creation of hydrogen fuel cell power plants for copters and cars. The competitive task is as follows: it is necessary to create a working power plant based on hydrogen fuel cells with a capacity of 1.3 kW and a specific mass energy consumption of at least 700 Wh / kg, capable of being placed on a multicopter platform provided by the organizers of the competition and stay in the air the longest, but not less than three hours.

- We, chemists, have been working on catalysts for fuel cells for many years and have good practices in this regard, - Professor N.V. Smirnova, the captain of the Polytech team, tells about the origin of the idea and the formation of the group. - There are also strong specialists at the university who are engaged in hydropneumoautomatics, pneumatics (since gas flows are very important in a fuel cell), we also have a strong school of mechatronics (most of the power plant is the "head" that controls the entire system). So a fairly young team was assembled, representing the three above-mentioned areas, which is working on the development of the power plant. We have two partners - the Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology (a group led by Professor Uzhinsky, which is engaged in digital modeling of systems) and InEnergy LLC (Moscow), which is engaged in the production of fuel cells. So a triple alliance was formed, complementing each other: six people from YURGPU (NPI), three from Skolkovo, two from InEnergy. We have already passed the first qualifying stage, within the framework of the current qualification stage, experts have already visited Moscow, in the company "InEnergy", where they saw our installation. Now they have come to us to see how the work on the catalysts is going.

The Polytech team includes six representatives of the YURSPU (NPI): team leader N.V. Smirnova; engineer of the Research Institute of Electromechanics, the author of the installation Ivan Vasyukov; leading engineer of the Research Institute of TSK Evgeny Anisimov, in charge of the "machine-building" part; senior researcher of the Research Institute of NTiNM Alexandra Kuriganova, who directs the electrochemical part, and two undergraduates - Nikita Fadeev and Tatiana Molodtsova are the guys whose hands make catalysts.

About their tasks in the context of the qualification stage of the competition "The first element. Air" told the experts.

S.V. Belenov, senior researcher at the Faculty of Chemistry of the Southern Federal University: "We saw the installation, got acquainted with the technology, which is patented, there are publications about it, that is, it is clear that the technology was developed by these people and in this laboratory."

A.V. Levchenko, Head of the laboratory at the Institute of Problems of Chemical Physics: "At YURGPU (NPI) we are looking at part of the production process concerning the manufacture of membrane-electrode blocks and bipolar plates. In our conclusion, we will point out that there really are technologies and developments on your site that allow you to create fuel cells. The materials submitted to the correspondence stage of the competition allow us to say that the group worked very seriously on all the technical parts of the competition. I think the team will perform well at the final stage of the competition."

The Polytech team has a crucial stage ahead - product testing, which will take place from April 15 to 30. There is no doubt that the team will overcome this stage successfully and will be in the final of the prestigious competition. We wish success, luck and good luck to all the participants of the PolyTech!