Two students of Shahid Beheshti University (SBU) won the gold medal of the 3rd international invention and innovation competition for IFIA INV members.
Mehran Amirbeigi Arab and Elaheh Haghbin, master's students in the field of polymer chemistry at the Faculty of Chemistry and Petroleum Sciences of SBU, won the gold medal of the 2023 Switzerland International Invention Competition.
The award was presented for the invention “A facile and green rout to the fabrication of physically cross-linked xanthan gum/chitosan a double-network complex hydrogel in acetic atmosphere for adsorbing of CD2+, N12+ and CU2+ ions and cationic dye from water”.
In this invention, two inexpensive and biodegradable materials have been used in an acidic atmosphere, which does not require pH monitoring, and due to the bi-network nature of the synthesized hydrogel, its reusability and the capacity to absorb pollutants increased significantly.