Volodymyr Suprun, a graduate of Lviv Polytechnic, has been living in Germany for 36 years. For many years he was a professor at the Martin Luther Halle-Wittenberg University, and headed the Heterogeneous Catalysis Laboratory at the Institute of Chemical Technology, the University of Leipzig. After retirement, he chose a hobby – to popularize the fourth-generation chemistry, which he tells students and colleagues about as a visiting professor. Volodymyr Suprun has recently started lectures on this topic at the Institute of Chemistry and Chemical Technologies, Lviv Polytechnic.
I want to support Ukrainian students and postgraduate students
The first cycle of such meetings took place in early April. The Professor talked about the master’s degree programs in chemical technology at the universities of Halle and Leipzig. He gave lectures on the regeneration of phosphorus from municipal wastewater, the technology of biodiesel and biogas production, and told the participants about prospects and problems of using wind energy.
– This is the chemistry of the fourth generation – explains Volodymyr Suprun. – I will talk about it in more detail at my next lectures. The thing is that it has a wide field of activity and great prospects. Around us there is a lot of agricultural and plastic waste, in which Ukraine is drowning. Here it is garbage, but all over the world it is waste, secondary raw materials, 80–90% of which are processed into new products, biomaterial for the production of vital biogas, biofuel, etc. The chemistry of the fourth generation is developing on the basis of secondary raw materials, and not on the basis of petrochemicals and coal (in Germany, for example, there is no coal chemistry at all, and in two years they plan to close thermal power plants that work on coal raw materials). There are many social aspects in the development of chemistry, in particular recycling, that is the reuse of resources through the complete processing of waste from the state of raw materials to the state of a finished product, that is, it can be said that it is circular chemistry.
– What do you hope to achieve with these lectures?
– To increase interest in chemistry among young people, so that students and postgraduate students see great opportunities in it. Now, for some reason, most Ukrainians enroll in programming and management, but one of the world’s leading modern chemists, Nobel Prize laureate Linus Pauling, said that chemists are the people who best understand the development of society. 90% of what surrounds us is chemistry, starting from textiles, paints, polymers, thermal energy, etc. And for some reason, in the 21st century, it is undeservedly considered to be a non-prestigious science. In fact, without chemistry it is like without water: neither here nor there, because there is food, organic, analytical, ecological chemistry etc... The problem is that wares which we use in our everyday life – detergents, mineral and organic fertilizers, polymer raw materials and products made from them, even fuel and lubricants – are imported to Ukraine . The state spends billions of money on the purchase of all this. That is why I want to support Ukrainian students and postgraduates who have chosen chemistry, because in Ukraine there is no place for them to work. I want to introduce them to advanced discoveries in the field of chemical technology, ecology, polymer recycling, biofuels and engineering, and show them this perspective.
