Qatar Foundation Annual Research Conference Proceedings Volume 2016 Issue 1

Qatar is a country with huge potential for solar energy applications due to its reasonably high global horizontal radiation value. Further, solar energy can be used to reduce the demand on fossil-fuel generated electricity hence creating more revenues for Qatar from its natural gas resources. Currently, the residential sector consumes 57% of the total electricity consumption in Qatar. Moreover, Qatar has one of the Read More

1. Background Depleted uranium (DU) has been used extensively during weapons testing and recent military conflicts. All three main isotopes of U (235U, 236U, 238U) are radioactive. The firing of depleted uranium (DU) weapons during conflicts and military testing has resulted in the deposition of DU in a variety of sand-rich environments. Iraq, a near neighbor to Qatar, has received extensive (400 tons) DU contamination from t Read More

Cyanide is one of anions of concern due to its high toxicity. It causes death at a low dosage (2.6 mM) and the allowable level should be lower than 1.9 mmolar according to World health Organization (WHO). Cyanide contamination in the environment comes from many sources as metallurgy, gold mining, cyanide fishing, manufacturing acrylonitriles and related polymers, and natural sources. Cyanide also is present in some fo Read More

The main objective is to contribute via this study, in solving an environmental issue and helping Qatar in finding suitable water resources; useful in agriculture. Qatar faces diverse water challenges; the number one that threats here is scarcity as water is not renewable. Due to scarcity of good quality water, reusing of low quality and contaminated water is highly increasing in Qatar. The main source of water in Qatar is desalinat Read More

The state of Qatar has a strategic location within the heart of the Arabian Gulf, the richest oil area in the world. Its extensive coastline (700 km) is experiencing some of the most radical environmental conditions in the world's oceans including extreme temperature, high UV irradiance as well as high evaporations. These extreme conditions are pushing many marine biota to function close to their physiological limits. On the top of Read More

Lack of sufficient oxygen within sewer networks leads to anaerobic bioprocesses occurring, including hydrolysed organic degradation by methanogensis and sulfate reduction. These anaerobic processes produce methane, a greenhouse gas twenty-one times more potent than carbon dioxide; and hydrogen sulfide, a toxic and corrosive gas responsible for severe sewer corrosion and public odour nuisance. These gases Read More

In the past decades, microbial fuel cells (MFCs) have been intensively studied in order to provide sustainable and environmentally friendly wastewater treatment concurrent with energy harvesting. A highly porous, highly efficient, light-weight, and inexpensive 3D sponges consisting of interconnected carbon nanotubes (CNTs) were developed as anodes of MFCs in order to allow more efficient microbe-to-anode electron Read More

Microalgae biomass is considered as one of the promising alternative feedstock for biofuel production. The biomass productivity of some of the microalgae can exceed an order of magnitude compared to any other terrestrial plant. Apart from nitrogen and phosphorus, iron is one of the major elements that must be provided to microalgae culture for high density biomass production. The amount of iron that is required pe Read More

Nowadays, global fresh water shortage is becoming the most serious problem affecting the economic and social development. Water treatment including seawater desalination and wastewater treatment is the main technology for producing fresh water. Membrane technology is favored over other approaches for water treatment due to its promising high efficiency, ease of operation, chemicals free, energy and space saving. Read More

Liquid wastewater streams that contain nitrogen must be treated before being discharged into the environment to prevent eutrophication. Already there are several existing conventional treatment technologies that can remove the nitrogen from the wastewater in combination of multiple processes. Depending on the processes involved, a fraction of nitrogen will be released to the atmosphere. On the contrary, there are s Read More