Bulgaria, a center of clean technology research / Bulgaria / Area / Home

And thanks to European Union funds, Bulgaria recently set up an innovative research centre for clean technologies, bringing together Bulgaria’s scientific community and helping citizens and institutions comply with new environmental standards.

“The most important thing for a scientist is the curiosity and perseverance to continue their research. But at the same time, the importance of having access to state-of-the-art infrastructure and equipment to achieve significant results cannot be denied. Today, our researchers can also rely on these fundamental elements.”

In the early summer heat, Professor Radostina Stoyanova, Director of the Institute of General and Inorganic Chemistry at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences (BAS), guided me through the labyrinth-like streets and buildings of the campus in the quiet residential area of ​​Zhio Milev in Sofia.

Most of the buildings around us were built in the late socialist brutalist style for the academic activities of the Academy and are surrounded by vast greenery, showing signs of time, sometimes bleak. Therefore, our destination, “Block 29”, stands out from the rest of the campus with its modern facade and attractive architectural details in bright colours that contrast with the grey of the surrounding buildings.

“This is the heart of our National Center for Mechatronics and Clean Technologies,” said Stoyanova, from the institute leading the project, without hiding a certain pride. “Our ambition is to create a hub in Bulgaria where research into new materials can be carried out and innovative technologies can be developed to enable the world of production and institutions to improve the lives of our citizens and increasingly respect new environmental standards.”

In fact, the “Block 29” research facility, which cost around 70 million leva (35 million euros), is just one of three to be completed between 2018 and 2023 thanks to a large contribution from the European Regional Development Fund. Two other centers are being created in the Bulgarian capital, one managed by Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski” and the other by the Sofia Technical University.

“Seventeen scientific partners participated in the project, including several universities and institutes of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences (BAS),” explains Tsvetelina Vladimirova, the project’s head of monitoring, as she guides us down the long corridor of the “block,” whose laboratories overlook an area of ​​about 1,800 square meters.

“The project has several objectives: in addition to providing researchers with new infrastructure and equipment, there is also a less obvious, but equally important, objective of improving and strengthening cooperation between the country’s scientific institutions,” Vladimirova adds. “The project partners themselves have outlined a general strategy for carrying out the planned activities.”

New Catalyst Technology

We entered the laboratories, some of which were still being prepared, while in others machines and equipment were hard at work analyzing things, and in still others researchers were checking monitors showing the results of ongoing experiments.

“As mentioned before, the underlying theme of our research here is the creation of clean technologies,” Stoyanova reiterated. “Currently, we are focusing on a few specific research areas. A crucial research area is the improvement and creation of new catalytic technologies to reduce the impact of the use and consumption of fuels and industrial products on the atmosphere and the environment as a whole.”

To achieve their specific goal, BAS scientists now have access to new and powerful tools such as field emission electron microscopes. The instruments are manufactured in Italy and allow previously unattainable depth analyses, and can be used in a variety of research fields, from the analysis of electronic materials to archaeological research. Only a few microscopes of this type are available to scientists – there is only one in Bulgaria, and only five installed in the whole of Europe.

We move to other laboratories, such as the catalytic techniques lab, which studies not only materials but also organic matter present in the atmosphere, and the crystallography lab.

In the field of work methods, there are ongoing experiments, which are coordinated by researcher Oleg Lagunov, who has been studying catalytic materials for about 10 years. “The aim is to identify the most promising catalytic materials, which, if found, can be introduced into industrial production processes,” explains Lagunov. Lagunov focuses on the overall impact that the establishment of the “national center” will have on the quality of his research.

“The new center and the new laboratories will undoubtedly create a better environment for research. Not only will there be the undeniable advantage of working in a new structure and using state-of-the-art equipment, but having more laboratories in the same building will make it much easier to coordinate research with other researchers.”

New generation battery

We arrive at the synthesis lab, where efforts are concentrated on one of the center’s most ambitious scientific goals: researching and manufacturing a new generation of batteries to replace those currently in use – a challenge in which Professor Stoyanova, an expert in the field, is the protagonist.

“The most promising technology seems to be sodium-ion batteries, which could replace the more expensive and less stable lithium-ion batteries in the near future,” the scientist explains.

At the moment, there is actually a race to develop sodium-ion batteries. Sodium is much more abundant than lithium, but lithium is difficult to obtain and expensive, especially in Europe. A new generation of sodium-ion batteries could have an even bigger advantage: they use activated carbon instead of graphite. Activated carbon comes from waste, so it has the double advantage of being cheaper and allowing the manufacturing process to incorporate recycled materials.

“It’s difficult to say how long it will take for the new battery to be ready and available on the market, but it will likely happen within a few years. The race is on and whoever arrives first will undoubtedly reap the big benefits,” Stoyanova says with confidence.

The project has had a significant impact on the research and employability of Bulgarian academics: by 2023, the Center will have employed 175 scientists in various research fields, exceeding expectations.

They include young researchers, who are a key element in efforts to preserve Bulgaria’s vital intellectual resources: “It’s difficult to give an exact figure, but at the moment about 250 researchers have access to the new labs,” Vladimirova explains.

Productive connections to the world

The first phase, which began in 2018 and will finish in 2023, focused on the physical construction of the new center and new infrastructure. Since the project began, it has faced many challenges. The COVID-19 pandemic significantly slowed progress and made it difficult for researchers to move around, while structural renovations were also delayed by public procurement mechanisms that were not always functioning.

“In the second phase, which recently began, the goal is to make the center financially sustainable and establish long-term, stable cooperation with the productive world to realize innovations in exchange for funding,” explains Vladimirova. Not surprisingly, she adds: “The possibility of cooperation with institutions has also attracted great interest. Much of the research that will be carried out not only has great economic and productive potential, but can also improve the living standards of Bulgarian citizens.”

But building strong connections with the world of production is not easy. Currently, the greatest potential lies with researchers and laboratories at technical universities, which have traditionally focused on research linked to immediate practical goals. For researchers at the Academy of Sciences, which are oriented towards “pure” scientific research, the process is neither so immediate nor so simple.

“The idea was to embed our partners in an NGO, which will appear as the 18th project partner but take on a coordinating role, in order to increase our capacity to build external connections,” Vladimirova explains. “This NGO will have the task of acting as a driver of the center’s work and developing a marketing strategy to make the activities carried out here visible and attractive to the outside world.”

There have already been some results, such as active exchanges with business circles, including Bulgarian and American cement-producing companies. “But we are still in the early stages and there is a lot to be done,” Vladimirova acknowledges.

But all the conditions for a possible success are there: “The new framework of the Center’s infrastructure and equipment has laid the foundation for producing at least 600 scientific publications,” Professor Stoyanova explains again proudly. “125 of these have been published in the ‘Q1’ quartile, which includes the most prestigious journals in the field with the highest number of citations.”

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