Qatar Foundation Annual Research Conference Proceedings Volume 2014 Issue 1

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