Qatar Foundation Annual Research Conference Proceedings Volume 2014 Issue 1

Food security is field of major research and investigation to improve and find new resource production systems for a continuously growing world population. The State of Qatar, being arid and with limited arable lands, is increasingly reliant on imported food products and has recently engaged in extensive efforts to advance its challenging strategy to sustainably enhance its food security. Microalgae, found in the local environme Read More

Micro algae are a single celled biomass with a very high potential in the biobased economy. In algal biomass cultivation, the harvesting step (i.e., separation of the dilute single cell algae from the growth medium) is a considerable part of the capital and operational cost. These processes typically require the use of high amounts of chemicals and/or a significant energy input. A second important point of attention in algae c Read More

MICROBIAL DESALINATION CELL: A SUSTAINABLE APPROACH FOR BRACKISH WATER DESALINATION AND WASTEWATER TREATMENT WITH BIOELECTRICITY GENERATION Surajbhan Sevda1, Zhen He2, Ibrahim M. Abu-Reesh*1 1Department of Chemical Engineering, College of Engineering, Qatar University P.O. Box 2713, Doha, Qatar 2Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Virginia Polytechnic Instit Read More

Improved Acid Stimulation in Carbonates: impact of acid types and flow rate on reactive transport mechanisms Oussama Gharbi1, Stefan Goedeke2, Mohammed Al-Sammarraie2, Nour El Cheikh Ali1, Saqer Al-Shahwani2, Pascal Chenevière1, Dominique Guérillot2 and Philippe Julien1 1 TOTAL E&P Golfe ltd - Qatar branch , 2 Qatar Petroleum Research & Technology Centre Acid stimulation in carbonates is a reactive trans Read More

The Al Shaheen oil field is located approximately 80 km north-east of Qatar in the Arabian Gulf. The area hosts a highly productive marine environment due to a combination of complex currents and high temperatures. The diverse marine fauna is exemplified by one of the world largest aggregations of whale sharks (Rhincodon typus) that return to this area every summer. The research has demonstrated that whale shar Read More

The purpose of this study is to better understand the geochemical behavior of Re and Os in petroleum in the context of the Re-Os radiometric age dating of petroleum. Rhenium (Re) and osmium (Os) are organophile elements. For this reason, the 187Re-187Os radiogenic system is well adapted to date organic-rich rocks such as source rocks. Absolute datation of source rocks is more particularly important for Petroleum Systems Read More

Sawda Nathil is one of a series of inland depressions that extend nearly continuously from Umm Bab along the Saudi Arabia-Qatar border to Khor Al Adid. Six to eight thousand years ago, these depressions were marine embayments that separated the peninsula of Qatar from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Narrow land bridges connected Qatar, restricting the migration of people and animals. These embayments infilled rapidly Read More

Dolomite is an important constituent of many economically important gas and oil reservoir rocks. Studies conducted in modern environments combined with microbiological laboratory experiments have shown that microbes and their extracellular polymeric substances (EPS) play an important role for the formation of primary dolomite at Earth's surface conditions. These studies showed that, at low temperature, Mg is Read More

The United Nations 2010 Climate Change Conference in Cancun (The Cancun Agreements) reached a verdict on climate change as one of the greatest challenges of our time and that deep cuts in emissions are required to prevent its potentially devastating effects. Energy is currently a vital global issue given the likely depletion of current resources (fossil fuels) coupled with the demand for higher-performance energy system Read More

DNA barcoding, as a fast and reliable technique, has already gained tremendous popularity among the biologists for identification of animals. Like other animal groups, an international consortium named Fish Barcode of Life (FISH-BOL) has been initiated with a target of barcoding all the fish species. DNA barcoding is a molecular approach to identifying species by comparing sequences of a short DNA fragment of an unknown Read More

The Holy Quran and Hadith mentioned more than 50 plants, include wild plants, cultivated plants, annual plants, perennial plants, shrubs and trees. Qatari plant genetic resources facing with many challenges and risks, human activity, desertification, overgrazing, Climate change and global warming. Conservation of plant genetic resources has become the biggest challenge today, this paper focuses initially on ex-situ conser Read More

In Flanders, households, industry, energy and agriculture consume significant amounts of water. As a consequence of the high population density, the water availability is rather low. This causes an imbalance between water demand and water availability. To protect groundwater resources for public water and to prepare for prospective water shortages in relation to changing climate scenarios, De Watergroep, a Flemish water Read More

Rare earth elements (REEs) are a group of fifteen chemical elements in the periodic table. They are 15 lanthanides besides (scandium and yttrium). These elements are commonly found in the same mineral assemblages because of similar physical and chemical properties. REEs are critical for several high technologically industries such as hybrid cars, batteries, electronics, clean energy (wind turbines). The presence of REEs in J Read More

Solar energy conversion in oxygen evolving organisms occurs in two separate reaction center protein complexes called photosystems I and II. In each, light induces the transfer of electrons, via a series of protein bound pigment acceptors, across a biological membrane. The very high efficiency of light induced electron transfer is related to the electronic and structural organization of these protein bound electron accep Read More

With proper treatment to remove organics and inorganics, the produced water (PW) generated during oil and gas extraction can be reused as process water. Biotreatment is generally regarded as the most cost-effective method for organics removal and although widely used in industrial wastewater treatment, PW biotreatment installations are limited. The research described in this paper focused on the aerobic biotreatm Read More

More than 50% of the world's hydrocarbons reserves are contained in carbonate reservoirs. Carbonate rocks have a very complicated and heterogeneous porous structure in comparison with sandstone reservoir rock [1]. To understand the transport processes in any porous medium, we need to enhance our knowledge of the geometry and topology of the porous media [2]. Our understanding of porous carbonate rocks in Read More

The urban heat island, in which air temperatures in urban environments tend to be higher than in rural areas, is a well-known and widely studied phenomenon. During heat waves, the urban heat island is known to exacerbate the impact on population health. Including urban heat island effects in the formulation of heat warnings, climate change adaptation plans is therefore essential and part of a sustainable urban development Read More

A radio-analytical technique for determination of plutonium (Pu) isotopes in soil samples is tested against NIST and IAEA standard reference materials to determine its accuracy and precision for reliable results. The technique is then used in the investigation of 132 topsoil samples, collected from the natural environment of Qatar, to assess the effect of global fallout accumulation of these radionuclides in the region. Read More

European Union's energy goals for 2020, inclusion of aviation in EU ETS since 2012 and the important increase of CO2 emissions in Southern Mediterranean countries, all justify to pay careful attention to the challenges of the carbon constraint at the Euro-Mediterranean scale. The notion of "carbon constraint" stems from the application of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and from t Read More

This work presents a recent progress on the polyanionic phosphate family that functions as cathode materials in sodium ion batteries (SIBs). Firstly, this study will cover vanadium-containing frameworks that show very stable voltage curves in different potential regimes with advantageous behaviors such as single flat voltage plateaus and the presence of intermediate phases that are beneficial for cell kinetics. In the second Read More

Background Marine phytoplankton form the basis of the marine food chain and are essential for the normal functioning of ecosystems. Any disturbance to this component, due to the release and accumulation of toxic compounds can have an impact on higher trophic levels. In this study, we investigate the impact of toxicants on the microalgae isolated from Qatari seawater and cultured under controlled laboratory conditi Read More

Objectives: The purpose of this study is to sequence and annotate the genomes of the entire spix's macaw population "the world's most endangered parrot" at AWWP (of Al Wabara Wildlife Preservation). This data would be used to identify Single Nucleotide Polymorphism (SNPs) that would later be used in population studies of this species. The results would be used to guide future breeding programs to increase the g Read More

In this study sandwich-walled cylindrical shells with aluminum pyramidal truss core of constant curvature suitable for functional applications were fabricated employing an interlocking fabrication technique for the metallic core. The skins were made of carbon-fiber reinforced composites and co-cured with the metallic truss core. Thereafter, axial compression tests on some representative samples were carried out to investiga Read More

Oxide semiconductors have been widely used in the area of sensors, energy conversion, and environmental cleanup technologies; because of their high multifunctional photo-activities. However, the overall performance of oxide semiconductors is influenced by their photocatalytic activities which are highly dependent on physical properties such as crystallinity, surface area, morphology (e.g., shape and porosity), etc. Thus, u Read More

Background Increasing renewable electricity leads to moments of overproduction coupled to points in time for which not enough production is available to fulfill the needs. In a scenario of 100% renewable energy, about 20% of the yearly production will need to be stored to keep the system in balance. Since the Antwerp-Rotterdam-Rhine-Ruhr (ARRR) cluster is the European region where the highest CO2-emissions are measu Read More

Educational buildings form a major part of public buildings in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) as is true for many Middle Eastern countries in the region. As a result of the rapid growth in the KSA, prototype educational buildings are designed with little or no effort towards standards of energy efficient design, and therefore are considered to be one of the highest energy consumers in the country. Educational buildings are uniqu Read More

The role of using Forward Osmosis (FO) or Nano filtration (NF) as a pre-treated method to the existing MSF desalination plants is to reduce divalent ions which cause hard scale deposition at elevated temperature. The separation of divalent ion enables to increase the desalination process temperature greater than 110 0C which consequently increases the plant performance, increase the productivity as well as reduce the Read More

A great challenge for this century lies in cleaning-up the wastewater generated during industrial, domestic and agricultural activities before being released, into the aquatic environment, or reused for another purpose e.g. irrigation. Phenolic compounds among the various organic contaminates found in wastewater require special attention because of their toxic effect on humans and the environment. Their presenc Read More

Desalinated seawater is the primary source of drinking water in Qatar. Among all present desalination technologies, reverse osmosis (RO) has been demonstrated as one of the most feasible processes. However, the main limitation with RO and other membrane-based techniques is costly operation and maintenance associated with membrane scaling, fouling, and degradation. Advanced membranes that enable ultrafast p Read More

Dispersed water droplets in organic liquids are commonly encountered in the oil, chemical and biochemical industries. A typical example is the separation of dispersed water drops in crude oil, in order to prevent catalyst fouling, viscosity and volume increase, and to meet quality specifications of the crude oil. Water drops can be removed from a continuous oil phase by various techniques, such as chemical demul Read More

The Arabian Gulf, surrounded by deserts, is an ideal marine basin to study the effects of nutrient input from dust on primary productivity. We studied the microbial community composition of the water column and sediment using 16S r-RNA gene sequencing, and the activity of photosynthetic microorganisms using pigment analysis and microsensors measurements in February and October 2013 and February 20 Read More

Since children spend a considerable part of the day at school, classroom indoor air quality (IAQ) is a major contributor to their personal exposure. The geographical location of the school, the proximity of outdoor sources (industry or traffic), construction characteristics (including ventilation/heating system), as well as decorations and consumer products, all contribute to classroom IAQ. Considering the potential he Read More

Atomic nanoclusters exhibit large surface to volume ratio which enhances their ability to interact with external materials, thus, they can be utilized efficiently for catalysts and gas sensing applications. Copper (Cu) nanoclusters are a promising system for gas sensing applications, mainly because of its sensitivity and selectivity for H2S [1,2]. In this work, Cu nanoclusters were synthesized using the dc magnetron sputtering and gas- Read More

Little is known to what extent conditions within hyper-arid mobile dunes are permissive of microbial activity. To inform this question, we report measurements of temperature and humidity from probes initially sunk below the avalanche face of a mobile barchan dune in the Qatar desert, emerging windward after 15 months of deep burial. The observations reveal how random precipitation produces widely diverse humidity Read More

There is mounting evidence that the global warming and, consequently, the climate changes are anthropogenic and attributed to fossil fuel consumption. Therefore, it is mandatory to find alternative solutions that can replace current resources. One of those resources is solar energy, and specifically Photovoltaic solar panels. Qatar is a sun-belt country with daily average solar radiation in the range of 5.1 kWh/m2. Nam Read More

A double stage, low volume particle sampler was used to collect PM10 and PM2.5 aerosol particles, both indoor and outdoor. XRF, SEM/EDS, Micro-Raman and XRD techniques were used to identify both the elemental composition and chemical speciation of particulate matter (PM) of both size fractions. The integration of the above techniques has enabled us to identify the constituents of both the coarse and fine fractions of PM Read More

Background: Microsatellite (Simple Sequence Repeat) markers are very powerful tool especially in plant genome analysis because they are locus-specific, co-dominant, highly polymorphic and highly reproducible. However, in date palm only few microsatellite markers are available worldwide so far. Fortunately, more than 1000 new microsatellite markers were developed recently by a research group in ICARDA based on the d Read More

Graphene Oxide (GO) is a promising material for various applications. The team prepared GO from graphite and studied the interaction with different microorganisms. Anti-microbial properties were detected for the prepared GO. Anti-microbial activities of GO was tested against one eukaryotic fungi (Candida albicans) two prokaryotic bacteria Gram-negative bacilli (Escherichia coli ATCC 41570 and Pseudomonas aeru Read More

Surface Enhanced Raman Spectroscopy (SERS) nanosensor for ultrasensitive detection of bromate in drinking water: State-of-the-art and prospective Khaled A. Mahmoud Qatar Environment & Energy Research Institute (QEERI), kmahmoud@qf.org.qa Sergey V. Gaponenko B. I. Stepanov Institute of Physics, National Academy of Sciences of Belarus, Minsk 220072 Belarus, s.gaponenko@ifanbel.bas-net.by The adv Read More

Control of carbon dioxide emissions without significant penalties requires effective CO2 scrubbing from point sources, such as fossil fuel burning power plants, cement factories and steel making. Capturing process is the most costly; hence the research is directed to finding solutions to it. Efficient CO2 scrubbing without a significant energy penalty remains an outstanding challenge for fossil fuel-burning industry where aqu Read More

Few topics are more relevant in current times than energy management. Fast depleting reserves and record-high prices of fossil fuels and global climatic change are forcing a strategic rethink towards the way we deal with our energy needs, across the globe. Better energy management and energy consumption reduction could help Qatar's economy better achieve its sustainability targets. With buildings consuming over 40% Read More

Problem Statement The soils of the Arabian Peninsula in general and the GCC countries in specific are coarse textured. These soils have low water and nutrient holding capacity and high leaching. There is a need for innovative technology that enhances water and nutrient use efficiency and increase crop production. A number of organic and inorganic amendments have been used by various researchers in this regards. How Read More

An initial generic framework for steel industry supply chain sustainability is proposed and enhanced later to reflect the reality of supply chain operations. The Green Supply Chain (GL-SC) framework is based on a simultaneous implementation of environmental and green practices across the supply chain. It also involves methods to recover the product from customer or scrap and to re-use it or re-use part of it through rec Read More

Dates constitute the primary exportable agricultural product in Qatar and current efforts are being made to improve its production. Varieties with desirable morphological traits are usually maintained using clonal propagation leading to the establishment of uniform palm plantations. This practice reduces the genetic diversity among palm orchards and makes them more vulnerable to pests and diseases. The biggest limitat Read More

With the development of practices towards green pavements, many agencies are shifting from the use of the conventional hot mix asphalt (HMA) towards new technologies of warm mix asphalt (WMA). The different techniques of WMA are recently developed to improve many aspects of asphalt works of which to reduce the mixing and compaction temperature, reduce the required energy for production, lessen the emissi Read More

Qataris are increasingly becoming interested in sport shooting at indoor and outdoor areas where lead (Pb) contamination can become an environmental health hazard, especially since high salinity and low organic matter content in the desert environment limit natural Pb weathering. Up to date, no information is available as to the impacts of Pb pellets on the environment in Qatar. Therefore, there is a need to determi Read More

Solar cells based on the hybrid halide perovskite, CH3NH3PbI3, have now reached a confirmed efficiency of 18%, demonstrating a pace for improvements with no precedents in the solar energy arena. Despite such explosive progress, the microscopic origin behind the success of such material is still debated and in particular it is not clear what role the organic component play in the light-harvesting process. We will sho Read More

The increase of soil and water contamination, caused by oil leakages during transportation and storage of petroleum components, present serious threat to human health and the environment. Total petroleum hydrocarbons (TPH) is a commonly used gross parameter for quantifying environmental contamination that is originated by various petroleum hydrocarbons. The characterization of the petroleum contaminate Read More

Background & Objectives The anti-phase currents and the propagation of surface waves on the conventional metallic ground plane placed underneath a radio frequency (RF) coil for high field magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), represent the reasons for the reduction in RF magnetic flux density above this coil (inside the phantom). The objective of this paper is to overcome on the aforementioned problems by replacin Read More

The use of alternative energy is becoming an environmentally friendly option for many countries to reduce the energy bill. Because of its huge generated waste amounts, waste tires are being a good source for alternative energy in some industries that provide safe operation conditions such as cement industry. The study took Jordan as an example to show the advantage of using the waste tires in cement industry. Result Read More