Research Areas
Professor Barati’s “Sustainable Materials Processing Research Group” centers around research and development of processes that are less energy intensive and more environmentally friendly. Equally, the research seeks development of materials that promise higher performance, create smaller environmental footprint, and demand less from the earth resources. Several specific research areas are listed below.

Production and Refining of High Quality Metals and Alloys
Synthesizing high quality metals and alloys has been one of the primary research subjects. As an example, an extensive research on refining of solar grade silicon is underway.

Alternative Metals Processing Routes
One major stream of research in Prof. Barati’s group looks into alternative metal production and refining processes with an emphasis on reducing the energy consumption and environmental impact. For example, the fundamentals and basic process requirements of a novel steelmaking technology that aims continuous operation are being investigated. The process promises to reduce energy consumption and lower greenhouse gas emissions.

Recycling of Wastes
With societies becoming more consuming, the amount of used goods such as automobiles, electronic devices, batteries, etc is ever increasing. Recycling of such goods and materials is both environmentally justified, also reduces the demand on the earth’s resources. Another line of research looks into the ways of recovering valuable parts of the industrial wastes and converting the irrecoverable wastes into landfill-safe materials.

Fundamentals of Interactions and Properties in Pyrometallurgical Systems
A stream of research focuses on fundamentals of metallurgical systems such as kinetics of gas-slag-metal interactions, aiming to generate essential knowledge for development of the process discussed above.