Many experts including CSULB chemical engineering Assistant Professor Sepideh Faraji believe the world’s oil supplies will someday dry up, so she wants to find alternatives.
Faraji, who studied chemical engineering at the University of Tehran and worked in Iran’s petroleum industry, came to CSULB in 2010 after earning her Ph.D. from the University of Kansas.
On campus, she established a Catalyst and Reaction Engineering Lab and involved her students in building a gas phase chemical reactor to studying hydrogen production reaction.
Faraji and her students also are working on clean water, focusing on a treatment project for greywater that comes from sinks, laundry and bathtubs and contains soap and other chemicals.
“It’s not that dirty,” unlike toilet water, she said, so with thorough cleansing, greywater can provide an additional source of water. As a result, Faraji and CSULB civil engineering Associate Professor Antonella Sciortino recently received a $10,000 grant from the Los Angeles Metropolitan Water District for a collaborative research project on greywater remediation.