Vahid Saadattalab
About me
I come from Dotovalley (دوتوولی), Iran. I was privileged to be born in a village, being truly in touch with nature and interrogating many aspects of life from a philosophical and scientifically sharp point of view. I got my BSc. in Applied Chemistry from the University of Tabriz, Iran, in which I studied photocatalytic treatment of waste water. During my master studies at University of Tehran, I worked on low cost CZTS solar cells and in parallel did research on water purification using polymer membranes. I arrived in Sweden in 2018 to do my PhD studies in Niklas Hedin’s group.
Research
Currently, I work on hydrothermal carbonization (HTC) of carbon precursors in the presence of iron ions and particles to obtain magnetically activated carbons for water purification applications. My project started in August 2018 and is funded by the MistraTerraClean program. I am also interested in the structural and compositional effect of metal salts on the HTC of biomass. HTC mimics the natural process of coal formation and was first described by the German chemist Friedrich Bergius. In simple words, HTC is about heating organic materials in water. Metal ions and metal or metal oxide particles affect the composition and structure of solid components called hydrochars, which can be used or refined for various applications.