Qatar Foundation Annual Research Conference Proceedings Volume 2016 Issue 1

Plastic electronics has made great commercial and scientific progress over the past decade, predominantly driven by the potential of applications such as organic field effect transistors (OFETs) for flexible backplanes and e-paper, organic light emitting diodes (OLEDs) for large area lighting and displays and organic solar cells (OPV) for large area energy generation.1,2 Much of this work has been motivated by the fact that organi Read More

The implementation of large-scale renewable energy systems (such as solar and wind) in the GCC is widely growing nowadays, particularly in remote areas generation applications where the grid extension is costly. The integration of renewable energy systems into the existing power grids, especially the hybrid ones like hybrid solar wind systems, not only provide a clean environmentally friendly supply of electricity but also p Read More

Hybrid desalination (thermal/membrane) process is a viable solution in Gulf Cooperation countries (GCC). In GCC, large thermal desalination plant, e.g. Multi Stage Flash (MSF) and Multi-Effect-Distillation (MED), exist and will stay in operation through their expected life, (10’s of years) while new large capacity reverse osmosis (RO) plants should be applied to lower the water specific consumed energy and cost. The thermal desali Read More

The date palm tree produces a highly nutrition fruit in harsh environments found in a region stretching from North Africa, through the Arabian Gulf to India. The ability to withstand high temperatures, high salinity water and other environmental challenges makes the date palm an excellent candidate for food security in this region of the world. In 2011 we published the first date palm genome sequence in Nature Biotechnolo Read More

There has been a tremendous proliferation in plastic production in the last five decades due to its low cost and versatile applications. Plastic debris dominates the marine litter globally and has been found in the most pristine environment including the abysmal region of the world ocean. Studies show that over 8 million tons of plastics are dumped in the ocean annually (Gregory, 2009). Plastics are persistent in the environment an Read More

Recent evidence suggests that some densely populated areas of the world will be uninhabitable in the coming century due to extreme climate events (e.g. heat waves, atmospheric pollution, and drought) and due to shifts in microclimate and breathable air, which are directly related to livability. With estimates that over 75% of the global population will be living in cities by mid-century, scholars, practitioners, and govern Read More

Solar radiation in near-real time is of high importance for the integration of PV electricity into the Grid and operation of solar plants. Solar radiation is characterized by a high temporal and spatial variability mainly due to the effect of clouds. In the case of solar energy plants with storage energy system and CSP plants in general, its management and operation need reliable predictions of solar irradiance in the very short term or Read More

Cobalt hydroxide or cobaltous hydroxide or cobaltous hydrate, has attracted increasing attention in recent years because of its novel electric and catalytic properties and important technological applications, for examples in advanced batteries, supercapacitors, solar cells, electrochromics, as an oil additive, it can improve tribological properties [1,2], etc. Cobalt hydroxide nanoparticles were prepared via in-situ electrospinning. Read More

In this review the results of many unclassified homemade optical detectors developed in the last two decades at the research and patents bases in Iraq is demonstrated. These detectors include: CdS doped with Cu (CdS:Cu); CdSe; CdSe:Cu; PbS; and PbSe. They cover a wide range of the electromagnetic spectrum ranging from the solar spectrum to the infrared (0.4-10.6 μm). It is found that for the CdS and CdSe type of t Read More

Qatar has no rivers, thus the main natural water resource in Qatar is the groundwater table. The average groundwater recharge from rainfall is approximately 55.9 million m3/year, in addition to 2.2 million m3/year inflow of groundwater from Saudi Arabia, i.e. the total average renewable groundwater resource is 58.1 million m3/year for the period 1972-2005. Desalinated sea water and treated sewage are non-convention Read More