HE WAS AHEAD OF TIME

One of the leading Azerbaijani scientists in the area of oil refining and petrochemicals, Doctor of Engineering, Professor and honored scientist Professor Rasul Sirinovic Quliyev died on 17 March. As a news and analytical edition, our magazine doesn't often address anniversaries or remembrance dates pertaining to people of science, culture and arts. 

However, while working on this story, we did not only want to pay tribute to a prominent Azerbaijani scientist whose ideas and suggestions were often running ahead of time and the level of perception in the democratic environment which surrounded him. Above all, we wanted to highlight the civil and human feat of the scholar who completely lost his eyesight 20 years ago but kept on conducting serious scientific experiments together with his colleagues from the Institute of petrochemical processes of the Academy of Sciences.

We wanted to pay tribute to a man who was deprived of the opportunity to move about in the last years of his life, but carried on dictating academic papers for publication in leading academic journalists and was sorry only because he wasn't able to engage in serious research.

To some extent, Rasul Quliyev can be described as our own Lomonosov. He was born on 19 January 1915 in a remote village of Zahmatabad, Calilabad District. After losing parents at an early age, he moved to Baku in 1924 and already in 1934 completed the Oil College with distinction. On 22 June 1941, the day when World War II began, he also graduated with honors from the Azerbaijan Industrial University named after M. Azizbayov. Then he worked at Baku refineries, first as an operator and then as workshop supervisor. During the war, R. Quliyev applied a lot of effort and energy to supply the army with fuel and lubricants.

In the early 1950s, Quliyev took charge of the chemical and lubricants technology laboratory at the Azerbaijan Scientific Research Institute named after Kuybishev (currently the Institute of petrochemical processes of the Academy of Sciences), where he worked until 1985. The priority direction of the laboratory was to provide technological indicators for the design, construction and reconstruction of facilities at Baku refineries manufacturing fuel and lubricants, wax and bitumen, coke and other important national economy and defense industry products. To implement this work, an experimental base with enlarged pilot facilities was established at the Institute with R. Quliyev's direct involvement. This extensive and intense work was carried out under the leadership of the late Academician V. S. Aliyev. In 1954, Rasul Quliyev defended his Ph.D. and in 1963 doctoral theses. In 1965, he was awarded the title of professor and in 1979 the prestigious title of honored scientist of Azerbaijan.

Professor Quliyev was one of the initiators and organizers of a major overhaul of oil production at Baku refineries. It was under his guidance that technological data were developed for the design and construction of industrial de-asphalting, selective treatment and de-waxing facilities. He was closely involved in launching and operating these facilities. He also carried out major research to develop a technology of production of hydrocarbon, synthetic and semi-synthetic lubricating oils. The results of his research were extensively used in the industry. In the last years of his life, his research focused on replacing hydrocarbon oils with environmentally friendly and renewable products of vegetable origin. In this area he achieved certain success, but unfortunately the results of this work have been widely applied not in our country but abroad.

We would like to delve into this topic, because it preoccupied the scientist's mind in the last years of his life. Already in 1970s Professor Quliyev raised the issue of "protecting oil" and the need for treating this natural wealth rationally and carefully. "Oil is the second Sun. It is the main source of energy on the Earth and still the only raw material used in the production of many oil products. Besides, oil reserves are not unlimited. Therefore, this invaluable gift of nature needs to be protected," Rasul Quliyev used to say. The Azerbaijani scientist believed that while oil fields are gradually depleting, it is necessary to enforce strict regulations for consuming oil and oil products and to use natural sources of energy more broadly (solar energy, wind power, rivers, sea waves, tides and ebbs, thermal waters, etc.). All this is in ample supply in Azerbaijan, the scientist believed, but acknowledged that only the energy of rivers, which accounts for only 7-8 per cent of the total electric energy generated by thermal power stations, is being sufficiently exploited. In this regard, Rasul Quliyev published an open letter to the Baku Mayor's Office in the Vyshka newspaper in December 2000. He suggested installing solar batteries onto the roofs of high-risers being built in the city, which could be used for heating apartments and illuminating buildings and adjacent streets. Unfortunately, this interesting proposal remained unanswered. In the same letter the scientist recommended that oil companies producing oil offshore build at least two wind power stations each.

Professor Quliyev was noted for inexhaustible energy, firm convictions and innovative thinking. In early 2001, the Azerbaijani scientist sent a letter to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan through the UN Baku branch office. He suggested that a scientific council be established within the organization to develop, together with academic councils of other countries, a master plan for the replacement of oil, the main source of energy and raw materials, with renewable and alternative energy.

In January 2002, Rasul Quliyev suggested that the Azerbaijani Government consider the construction of hundreds of wind power stations on an area between Baku and Alat, 20 km wide, which will enable a considerable increase in electric energy output. In his research, the scientist constantly referred to the experience of leading European and Asian countries in this sphere.

Many years of research and innovative ideas of the Azerbaijani scientist received a high assessment abroad. In September 2001, the authoritative American Biographical Institute, ABI, named Professor Quliyev Man of the Year for his scientific achievements which contributed a lot to the development of society. In early 2002, the same institute awarded Quliyev with a prestigious US medal of honor for his contribution to the development of science and society. A letter from Institute President Mr. Evans said: "This award is the expression of respect of the USA and the Biographical Institute for the selected people."

Professor Quliyev was a selected person indeed. Impaired by a severe disease and deprived of vision, he carried on his academic work, offered new ideas, wrote research papers and sent numerous suggestions to the Baku branches of world oil companies and ministries. In April 2003, he published an open letter to Education Minister Misir Mardanov suggesting that training of highly-qualified specialists be launched at appropriate Azerbaijani universities for work in new sectors of the electric energy. With this aim, he suggested introducing extra 40-50 academic hours into the curricula of technical schools and colleges and establishing within such schools some experimental facilities for electric energy production using wind power and solar energy. Unfortunately, the Ministry of Education did not respond to this call.

However, the main direction of scientific research to which Professor Quliyev devoted 50 years of his academic activity and industrial was the justification of the possibility to produce high-quality fuels and lubricants from different oils. It is worth mentioning that in parallel with Quliyev's experiments, similar research was carried out in the USA and leading European countries, mainly in Germany and Austria. Germany, for instance, designed an advanced technology for the production of high-quality oils and fuels for diesel engines using rape-seed oil. The scientist was emphasizing that Azerbaijan's climatic conditions are favorable enough to cultivate different vegetable oils (soy-bean, rape-seed, corn oil, olive oil, cotton-seed oil, etc.) and produce lubricants from them. At the same time, he said that lubricating and motor oils produced from vegetable oils have significant advantages over hydrocarbon oils: they are environmentally friendly, easily biodegradable (70-98 per cent as opposed to 13-80 per cent in hydrocarbon oils) and renewable. Also, it is possible to increase the oil content of such crops by agro-chemical and agro-technical methods and to change the chemical composition of oils in order to reduce the weight of harmful components. Finally, they are less expensive.

Guided by advanced international experience and for the first time in the former USSR, Professor Quliyev, together with a group of his associates, embarked on research work at the Institute of Petrochemical Processes named after Y. Mammadaliyev to develop a technology for the production of lubricants using vegetable oils. The group he was leading studied the physical and chemical properties of more than 200 types of vegetable oils (including cotton-seed oil, rape-seed oil, olive oil, palm-oil, castor oil, etc.) and proved the possibility of using them not only as a source for production of motor oils, but also as antioxidants, anticorrosion and depressant additives for oils. Together with his colleagues from the Institute of Petrochemical Processes, he designed the technology for the production of a wide assortment of synthetic oils. Unfortunately, scientific research and experimental work in this direction are not carried out any longer although such work could have resulted in a technology for the production of oils, lubricants and different additives, and allowed their industrial production.

Professor Quliyev spent years trying to justify the need to pay attention to such an important problem as alternative and renewable energy. It is worth mentioning that the leadership of our country currently sees this task as priority one from the standpoint of national energy security and the most important direction of energy cooperation between Azerbaijan, the European Union and the USA.

Professor Quliyev's colleagues, friends and family will remember him as a strong personality and a man of integrity. In addition to being goal-oriented in science, Rasul Guliyev was a principled and decent man in relation to his colleagues. He never betrayed his friends for the sake of party or other interests. He was also caring and attentive to his family. He managed to preserve the love and respect for his wife throughout his life. He never called her by the first name, always addressing her as Mrs. Rasul Quliyev's wife, the late Masma, was indeed a mistress of his life, ideas, work and achievements. In other words, Rasul Quliyev was not only an established scientist, but also a father, grandfather and great grandfather. He taught his offspring his best qualities - kindness, respect and tolerance, decency and love of knowledge. 

Usually such stories are crowned with a list of awards and publications, monographs and inventions, Ph.D.'s and doctors trained. Professor Quliyev had all of that as well. He has authored 500 publications, including four monographs and 37 inventions. In the years of academic and industrial activity he nurtured a generation of highly-qualified specialists, including Corresponding Fellow of the NAS F. I. Samadova, Doctor of Engineering R. Z. Hasanova, Ph.D.'s F. R. Sirinov, I. K. Valiyev, F. A. Quliyev, T. S. Mammadova, S. N. Popova, B. A. Sadixova and others. In recognition of many years of productive work he was awarded with the Red Banner of Labor, many medals and other awards.

In the last years of his life Rasul Quliyev thought and wrote a lot about establishing a museum of oil in Azerbaijan, home of the world's oil industry. He first put forward this idea in 1978, on the 150th anniversary of oil production in Baku. In a letter to President Heydar Aliyev, Professor Quliyev suggested establishing a museum of oil in Baku with a photo gallery of well-known oil-workers. On Heydar Aliyev's instruction, this suggestion was reviewed by the Cabinet of Ministers and SOCAR, but was never pursued to the end. Today, the government and our oil company are quite capable of fulfilling this task which is still very relevant. The establishment of such a museum, further pursuit of the already launched research to find alternative energy, including those on the basis of vegetable oils, permanent academic search for and realization of new ideas and scientific projects would be the best tribute we could pay to Professor Quliyev for his contribution to the development of our national science.