Tüpraş R&D Center Continues to Contribute to Energy Industry for 10 Years
Meeting a significant part of energy needs of Turkey, Tüpraş continues to be one of the pioneering companies in its industry with its R&D studies. Focusing on facilitation of operational processes of refineries and contributing to sustainability with its energy efficiency projects, Tüpraş R&D Center continues to contribute to energy industry with its works completed in the last 10 years.
In addition to the projects for development of refinery processes and meeting technical requirements, new product development projects to expand product portfolio are also carried out at Tüpraş R&D Center. Thus, deep knowledge of the company in the industry is combined with highly qualified R&D studies and more savings can be achieved while sustainability is improved.
Studies on several projects in different areas, such as transformation of carbon dioxide, green hydrogen, renewable resources, energy efficiency, hydrocarbon characterization, material technologies, catalyst technologies, digital transformation solutions, sensor and robotic technologies, and advanced analysis methods are being performed in Tüpraş R&D Center.
With its qualified staff and comprehensive technical infrastructure, Tüpraş R&D Center, which is supported by the investments being made since 2010, is also shaping its project portfolio by projecting the future of its industry and strongly collaborating with national and international universities, research institutes and companies. Certifying its success with significant supports received from international R&D incentive funds, Tüpraş R&D Center plays an active role in sustainability, which will ensure the company to be get prepared for the future.
“Tüpraş R&D Center took an active role in creating 2050 roadmap of EU”
Stating that R&D works of Tüpraş are focused on refinery requirements and ensured that less resources are used in production processes, İbrahim Yelmenoğlu, General Manager of Tüpraş, said development of new technologies is very important in energy efficiency, digitalization and data analytics. Yelmenoğlu added, “Our company is a member of A.SPIRE platform, representing private sector, which can drive HORIZON 2020 program calls of European Union and to which leading organizations of Europe in process industry are members. A.SPIRE has created a research and innovation roadmap to keep global temperature at least 2 degrees below the global warming target of Paris Convention and Tüpraş R&D Center took an active role in creation of this roadmap. This roadmap, which was prepared with the target of a Europe that has shifted to circular economy and that is a carbon neutral place until 2050, will affect R&D and innovation supporting strategy of the European Union. Our company has contributed to the roadmap in various areas, such as energy efficiency, green hydrogen - CO2 capturing and conversion, resource and process efficiency, industrial symbiosis and digitalization. We will continue to follow similar studies and manage our R&D works in future in accordance with these significant roadmaps, the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and the strategies of our company.”
“We will continue to collaborate more with universities”
Tüpraş R&D Center is among the leading organizations of Turkey in terms of the qualification of its research staff according to performance index studies of R&D centers, conducted every year by the Ministry of Industry and Technology.
Highlighting that one of the most important factors of the success of Tüpraş R&D center is its close collaborations within the country and abroad in addition to its strong staff, Yelmenoğlu said, “Koç University - Tüpraş Energy Center (KUTEM), which was established with the support of Tüpraş and which is the first energy center that was established with the partnership of private sector in Turkey, performs significant works by blending the experience of academy with the dynamism of young researchers in accordance with the priorities of Tüpraş in industry.”
Stating that the knowledge in universities is very important for the company’s operations and therefore they continue to increase their collaborations with the academia, Yelmenoğlu added, “In addition to our collaborations with many universities in Europe as a part of our HORIZON 2020 projects, we are also carrying out studies with various universities in Turkey and throughout the world for many R&D projects. The number of national and international scientific publications that we have completed until today since the beginning of operation of our R&D Center has reached to 297. Furthermore, we applied for 95 patents and our 33 patents were registered.”
“We were granted a significant incentive in 2018 with our BAMBOO project, which is covered by European Union’s HORIZON 2020 support program. Thanks to our continuing success in our applications for HORIZON 2020 Projects, we were listed as the first company in “The most successful Turkish industrial organizations in HORIZON 2020”, published by TÜBİTAK in 2019. As of today, the number of our projects covered by the program has reached 16 and we still continue on this success.”
About Tüpraş R&D Center:
Tüpraş R&D Center was certified by the Ministry of Industry and Technology on August 2, 2010 as a “R&D Center” as per the Law no. 5746. Tüpraş R&D Center, located in İzmit, is composed of three separate buildings, namely office building, laboratory building and pilot facilities building.
R&D laboratory building does also have four separate laboratories: Fuel Development Laboratory, Material Development Laboratory, Catalyst Development and Characterization Laboratory, and Product Development Laboratory. The center became the best R&D Center of its sector in “Sixth R&D Centers Summit”, organized by the Ministry of Industry and Technology in 2017. There are 4 laboratory scaled reactor systems and 7 pilot scaled facilities in Tüpraş R&D center and it is possible to apply more than 180 analysis methods, 125 of which have been recognized internationally, in Tüpraş R&D Center.
Tüpraş aims to contribute to energy industry in Turkey and throughout the world with the projects it has completed in Tüpraş R&D Center.