In 2021 Zoriana Demchuk, a graduate of the Department of Organic Chemistry, Lviv Polytechnic, received the Industrial Oil Products Division Student Excellence Award from the American Oil Chemists’ Society (AOCS). At the invitation of this Society, Zoriana Demchuk will give a lecture on the results of her work at the annual scientific and practical symposium 2021 AOCS Annual Meeting & Expo.
Zoriana’s research on «Sustainable synthesis of monomers and latex polymers derived from renewable vegetable oils» is dedicated to how renewable resources can be used to create new latex polymers. This work, conducted in collaboration with researchers from Lviv Polytechnic National University and North Dakota State University, highlights the relevance of the synthesis of polymeric materials from vegetable oils, which has a number of advantages over traditional methods of obtaining latexes from petrochemical products. This is due to the fact that the problem of depletion of sources of petrochemical raw materials has become world-class and is complicated not only by economic but also environmental and political factors. The presence of vegetable oils fragments in the macromolecules of latex polymers gives them flexibility, increases the hydrophobicity of latex films and increases water resistance. Such materials can be used in the production of waterproof polymer coatings, plasticizers, paints, adhesives etc.
The 2021 AOCS Annual Meeting & Expo Symposium will take place on May 3–14, 2021. It is a leading international scientific and business forum on fats, oils, surfactants, proteins and related materials with a powerful technical program.
In 2013, Zoriana graduated with honours from Lviv Polytechnic. As part of the Memorandum of Understanding between Lviv Polytechnic National University and North Dakota State University, she undertook her postgraduate studies at the Department of Coatings and Polymeric Materials under the guidance of Professor Andriy Voronov. Last year she successfully defended her PhD thesis. Now Zoriana Demchuk is a researcher at the Chemical Sciences Division, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, USA.