Qatar Foundation Annual Research Conference Proceedings Volume 2018 Issue 1

Concentrated photovoltaics (CPV) is advantageous as compared to a conventional non-concentrated photovoltaic (PV) system due to its ability to increase PV cell efficiency and replacing expensive PV material with an abundant and inexpensive reflective or refractive concentrator material. In this work, an overall solar to electrical and thermal conversion efficiencies between a concentrated photovoltaic system thermally regul Read More

Redox Flow Batteries (RFBs), among other options, is uniquely suited for large-scale Electrical Energy Storage (EES) due to many advantages over the conventional sealed batteries (e.g., lead-acid and Li-ion batteries). Owing to its design flexibility, flow batteries can meet a wide range of commercial-scale EES applications with varying power-to-energy ratios. In addition, flow batteries have excellent energy efficiency and c Read More

Urban air pollution is an inevitable consequence of the urbanization representing a growing concern to scientists, policymakers and an increasing fraction of the population. Air pollution is an acute problem especially in the developing countries, where the growing population, developing industry and improving life standards are generating environmental challenges. The State of Qatar has witnessed unprecedented rapid Read More

The World Health Organization (WHO) attributes air pollution to 1 in 8 deaths worldwide, where exposure to indoor air pollutants is a significant contributor to incidences of heart disease, respiratory problems, and cancer (WHO, 2014). Since people spend the major part of the day indoors - especially in Qatar -, indoor air quality (IAQ) is a significant factor affecting their overall pollutant exposure via the respiratory-inhalation Read More

The worldwide continuous increasing of population provokes an increasing awareness about the food security. Qatar is one of the first countries establishing a Food Security Strategy Program to satisfy the demand of food and feed. Microalgae is considered as one of the most promising solution based on its ability to produce the essential elements needed for food and feed such as lipids, carbohydrates, proteins... In Qata Read More

Membrane Filtration technique is being accepted worldwide as an environment friendly and energy efficient technique in Desalination Industry as compared to Thermal Desalination techniques. However, the performance of membranes which include permeate flux and rejection is affected by the membrane fouling. The properties of membrane and surface features such as porous structure, hydrophilicity/hydrophobicity charg Read More

Qatar focused on economic development since independence in 1971. The government has over the time established many developments oriented institutions and authorities, including the Supreme Planning Council, General Secretariat for Development Planning and Ministry of Development Planning and Statistics. Since the launch of QNV 2030 in 2008 with its four pillars (human development, social development, economic d Read More

Degrading effect of energy generation from fossil fuel are extensively discussed and debated leading to paradigm shift to renewable energy generation. Energy generation from PV panels is the best alternative for state of Qatar which gets abundant sunlight throughout the year. Development of energy generation from PV panels helps in achieving the notion of “Energy Security”. Energy security refers to availabili Read More

Sustainability is one of the major challenges faced by the industrial sector as it is driven by both environmental and economic factors. Energy demands are increasing and, to date, most of the supply is generated via fossil-fuel combustion, such as coal, gas or oil. However, these processes release greenhouse gases, mainly CO2, that contribute to global warming and other environmental issues. Of the three fossil fuels, for a Read More

Direct methanol fuel cell has attracted worldwide attention as a promising alternative clean energy source due to growing environmental problems. A number of scientific groups are working to develop the fuel cells and make it a viable clean energy option. For fuel cells to be a feasible and economic viable innovation in the materials development, such as new electrocatalyst and polymer electrolyte membranes are required Read More

The constant increase in energy demand necessitates exploration of new oil fields at challenging reservoir environments. A proper selection of the drilling fluid, or a drilling mud, is crucial in minimizing the cost and time required for the drilling process. The circulating drilling fluid aids in cooling, lubricating the drilling bit and in removing the rock cuttings from the drilling well. Water-based muds are widely used as a drilling fluid in Read More

Modeling the diffusion of residential solar photovoltaic (PV) systems in their social, political and economic context is crucial to help policymakers assess which policies may best support adoption. Current models of renewable energy adoption [1, 2, 3, 4] assume regulatory and incentive frameworks that do not apply to Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states, where energy tariffs are strongly subsidized, tax credits are not Read More

Soluble conjugated polymers have nowadays attracted broad academic and industrial spotlight as innovative materials of easy tuneable optical and electronic properties.1 These properties translate into various optoelectronic applications such as organic solar cells, light-emitting diodes (LEDs), and thin film transistors. The pivotal parameters that define characteristics of conjugated polymer based devices are of chemical (struct Read More

About one third of the oil and gas extracted worldwide comes from offshore sources. There is currently thousands of large-scale oil and gas platforms spread across the seas and coastal oceans, from the North Sea to the seas of South Asia. Although their primary purpose is not related to enrichment of biodiversity, gas and oil platforms can act as large and complex artificial marine habitats for a wide range of marine or Read More

Designing Photo Absorbing Materials by Cation Substitutions for Photovoltaics Merid Legesse1, Heesoo Park1, Fedwa El Mellouhi1, Sergey N Rashkeev1, Sabre Kais1, 2, 3, Fahhad H Alharbi1, 3 1Qatar Environment and Energy Research Institute, Hamad Bin Khalifa University, Doha, Qatar. 2Department of Chemistry and Physics, Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana 46323, USA. 3College of Science and Engineering, H Read More

Drilling phase is one of the most important parts of developing a field. The durability of the well and its performance is greatly related to the quality of the drilling. A good drilling will also have an effect on how fast the project can start make profits as the drilling phase become shorter and more efficient. There are number of different factors that can hinder the quality of the drilling job and in some cases stop it or damage the we Read More

Alessandro Sinopoli, a Michael Wasielewski, b Muhammad Sohail. a aQatar Environment & Energy Research Institute, Hamad Bin Khalifa University, PO Box 5825, Doha, Qatar; bDepartment of Chemistry and Argonne-Northwestern Solar Energy Research (ANSER) Center, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois 60208-3113, USA. The use of fossil fuels, especially natural gas, which has a lower carbon burden than oil or coal, will c Read More

The development of nanoscience and technology has devoted significant attention to conducting studies on hollow particles. Among the available materials, mesoporous silica nanoparticles have recently gained attention as potential nanocontainers due to their high stability, large surface area, controllable pore diameter and easy surface functionalization as they can store and release organic or inorganic molecules of different s Read More

Thermal Hysteresis of Palladium encaged inside Mesoporous Silica catalyst for Low Temperature CO oxidation Rola Al Soubaihi 1,2, Joydeep Dutta2 Liberal Arts and Science Program, Virginia Commonwealth University-Qatar, Doha, Qatar Department of Applied Physics, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden Carbon Monoxide (CO) is colorless, odorless gas produced from incomplete combustion of carbon fuel u Read More

Food handling practices (FHP) is one of the most important stage where microbes can be introduced into produce through the infected food handlers or by cross-contamination. The fresh produce market in Doha, Qatar is the major market from which most of the food businesses, restaurants, super markets, and consumers obtain their fresh produce. Produce is handled by workers with no or minimum knowledge o Read More

Study of polyaniline-silver nanocomposite as humidity sensor J. Bhadra, A. Popelka, N. J. Al-Thani, A. Abdulkareem Center for Advanced Materials, Qatar University, Qatar Abstract In this piece of work focus on fabrication of resistive type humidity sensor using polyaniline-silver nanocomposite (PPVA-Ag). Four different nanocomposites using four concentrations of silver (0.5,1.0, 1.5 and 2.0 M) and polyaniline (PANI) dispersed in Read More

Energy policy and security of a country heavily depends on its resources, geography, demographics and economic structure. While most active strategies include the discovery, extraction and utilization (through new infrastructure) of energy resources, a more subtle approach to reduce energy demand and increase energy security is to use the resources more efficiently and conserve them to increase the life span in whi Read More

Energy consumption for air conditioning purposes accounts for 60-80% of electricity used in Qatar. As District Cooling Plants (DCPs) has a potential to reduce energy consumption and CO2 emissions, Qatar and GCC are continuously shifting paradigm towards adoption of DC plants to satisfy the rapidly growing demand in all sectors. However, DC plants usually rely on wet cooling towers for disposing the excess heat to the ambie Read More

The consumption of electricity in residential buildings exceeds 20% in Qatar and can go up to 50% in other hot countries like Kuwait. The air-conditioning systems in hot countries like Qatar consumes around 60–80% of the total energy demand in buildings. This triggers researchers and industry experts in the built environment to explore new avenues towards reducing the cooling load on a building and study influential fa Read More

The paper studies the effectiveness of applying value engineering to concrete mixtures. It was conducted in the State of Qatar on a number of strategic construction projects for the 2022 World Cup projects, in order to generally improve the quality and productivity of ready-mixed concrete used in construction and hydraulic projects. The application of value engineering to such concrete mixtures resulted in the following: Im Read More

Nowadays, many electrical utilities are moving towards self-healing distribution grid. This is realized by adding to distribution system various sensors, intelligent electronic devices (IEDs), phasor measurement units (PMU), sequence of event recorders (SERs), reclosers, detectors, measurement units, automated controllers, and other automation equipment. Those elements provide a continuous stream of data to s Read More

In this work, a new dc-ac converter is proposed for grid integration purposes, namely, capacitor-tapped multi-module dc-ac voltage source converter. The main advantages of the proposed converter when compared with the conventional dc-ac modular multilevel converter (assuming the same voltage rating of semiconductor devices) are: (i) employment of a lower number of semiconductor devices, but with a higher c Read More

Climate change is the most pressing global environmental issue today, with a potentially devastating impact on human development. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports, Qatar is ranked as the highest CO2 per capita emitter globally. Qatar is contributing to the reductions of anthropogenic carbon dioxide (CO2) by supplying the world with Liquid Natural Gas (LNG), yet Qatar is being negativ Read More

The fluid flow and solute transport through fractures in rocks are processes that have importance for many areas of the geosciences, ranging from groundwater hydrology to petroleum engineering. It is well known that fractures play an important role in flow and transport processes through geologic formation and number of environmentally relevant problems require the analysis of mass transport in subsurface systems. As Read More

The geographical and hydrological characteristics and industrial activities of the Arabian/Persian Gulf contribute to its classification as a stressed marine environment. The persistency of some contaminants released by human activity is putting additional pressure on this already fragile system. Several studies have assessed the chemical contamination levels in Qatari coastal sediments but this is one of a few studies tha Read More

The State of Qatar and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) region are located in a hyper-arid area with no rivers, over-abstracted groundwater supply and limited rainfall. Consequently, with the discovery of oil and gas and the associated economic prosperity, the State of Qatar and the GCC region have relied on desalination of seawater from the Arabian Gulf. As of 2013, the GCC region held a 70% share of total global desali Read More

Sulfate Reducing Bacteria (SRB) cause significant damage to marine oil pipelines necessitating the use of biocides for reducing the Microbial Induced Corrosion (MIC) and potential for great environmental harm. Currently, oil companies pump frequent batches of biocides to these under water pipelines without proper quantification of the bacterial population. This is primarily because the existing method for quantifying th Read More

Carbonates and evaporites of Paleogene-age form the shallow-aquifer rocks that mantle most of Qatar, including the Paleocene and Lower Eocene Umm er Radhuma, and the Middle Eocene Rus and Dammam Formations. Nearly complete 10-cm-diameter rock cores have been recovered from boreholes in central and northern Qatar to depths of greater than 120 m. A 40-m section of exposed Rus and Dammam Formation from Read More

Lithium ion batteries (LIBs) have completely captured the portable electronics and electric vehicle market due to their tempting performance. However, due to limited reserves of lithium, the price for lithium is constantly increasing which necessitates to trace out some decent alternative to lithium ion batteries. In this regard, sodium ion batteries are considered one of the best substitutes for lithium ion batteries due to inheri Read More

A common source of contamination of soil and groundwater in arid and (semi)-arid coastal regions are accidental spills of petroleum products, such as crude oil, gasoline, and diesel fuel. Groundwater pollution by petroleum hydrocarbons is a serious pollution problem that poses hazards to water resources and living organisms including humans. After release to the sub surface, hydrocarbons move downward through the aerobic v Read More

Background A range of natural factors, invasive animals and human activity have been severely affecting stability of the ecosystem, resulting in the annihilation of plants habitats and so plant endangerment or even extinction. In Qatar, urgent action needs to be taken to stop decline of desert plant species as well as an effective strategy should be applied to reverse and save these wild endangered plants. Otherwise, they will b Read More

A significant global environmental opportunity of today is finding beneficial reuse for industrial and domestic wastewater through appropriate treatment, redistribution and application. Although industrial wastewater may present various challenges in terms of exotic or hard to treat constituents, finding effective and efficient treatment options and subsequent reuse opportunities will be beneficial for many facets of th Read More

In the recent decades there has been an unprecedented globalization of trade. One of the most important factors that made this possible is the containerization of the supply chain. As a consequence container terminals have become essential for todays globalized economy. The trend of containerization has further extended to the cold supply chain through the use of reefers (refrigerated containers), resulting in a tremen Read More

Fischer Tropsch Synthesis (FTS) is an exothermic chemical reaction in which synthesis gas (or ‘syngas’- a mixture of H2 and CO) is converted into hydrocarbons or value-added chemicals. In this process, a catalyst (typically cobalt based or Iron based) is used in a Fixed Bed (FB) or Slurry Bed (SB) reactor for the conversion process. Qatar hosts both the technologies in its world's largest Gas to Liquid (GTL) facilities (Shell Pearl Read More

Advances in catalyst and electrolyte materials for hydrogen fuel cells are driving performance gains and cost reductions that are helping to bring hydrogen fuel-cell technology to market. Research on new materials is always a combination of synthesis and characterization, where characterization must eventually include incorporation of materials into an operating fuel cell. It is at this stage that research on leading Read More

The response of plant tissue to standard growth media varies widely due to the genetic diversity of the plant cultivars studied. The objective of this research was to determine the effects of micronutrients on date palm growth and which of these micronutrients are critical for improving growth combined with Paclobutrazol or without on in vitro of elongation stage. In vitro growth of two cultivars was determined by varying five tr Read More

This study was carried out to assess hygiene conditions, food handling practices, food safety knowledge of food service providers (FSPs), and the microbial quality of food served in different food service establishments in Doha. Fifty-three FSPs were randomly selected among 200 FSPs. Face-to-face interviews with the food safety managers at each participating FSP were conducted using a survey consisting of 40-questions (dem Read More

Identification of biological agents which is thermo- tolerance is a key success for biological control in the arid regions such as Arabian Peninsula. Date palm is one of the indigenous plants in this region. It can tolerate high temperature and survive the drought. It is expected that microbial communities associated with date palms would have similar characters. It would be reasonable to search for bio-agents from such micr Read More

Energy security is one of the main national concerns, with population's growth and energy demand increase it becomes critical for countries to address the issue. Increasing energy production is extremely costly and could require investments to modify the power network infrastructure that is also expensive. Demand Side Management is a collection of methods and strategies that helps modifying the demand of consumers in Read More

Oil and gas drilling companies spend around 20$ billion annually from which 15% is attributed to material and productive time losses. The most prevalent drilling problems are caused by the Bottom-Hole-Assembly failure which includes drill string and drill bit damage or fatigue failure. During normal operation, to achieve penetration that cannot be met by the drilling motor power section, the bit torque generates an increased Read More

With the increased demand in energy resources, great efforts have been keen to develop advanced energy storage systems. A redox flow battery is a type of rechargeable battery where rechargablity provided by two chemical components dissolved in liquids and separated by a membrane. Energy is stored in the liquid electrolyte in external tanks, rather than in the battery cell. Flow batteries are technically similar to fuel cell Read More

Natural resources face growing demands and constraints in many regions as a result of economic, population growth and climate change. Due to those changes, it is extremely essential to invest towards water and energy nexus integration technologies since integrated thinking and actions can led to achieving a sustainable development and global supply of water and energy. The water-energy nexus and integration has bee Read More

Haloxylon persicum Bunge ex Boiss &Buhse native and rare plant in the state of Qatar known as Ghada, Qadha, Rimth, it's endangered, high palatable species, a favored plant to stabilize sand dunes, conserve water and soil, prevent soil desertification, and improve environmental conditions. It's small tree or shrub to 3 m, trunk 10- 25 cm in girth; stem richly branched, glabrous; young branches slender, green; leav Read More

Electrocatalytic properties of Pt nanoparticles grown on MXene surface Sifani Zavahira, Jaroslav Filipb, Khaled A. Mahmoudc, Jan Tkacd Peter Kasaka,* a Center for Advanced Materials, Qatar University, P.O. Box 2713 Doha, Qatar bDepartment of Environmental Protection Engineering, Faculty of Technology, Tomas Bata University in Zlin, Vavreckova 275, 76001 Zlín, Czech Republic c Qatar Environment and Energy Resea Read More

نظرا لزيادة الاستثمارات و التطور الصناعي والتكنولوجي في عصرنا الحديث فقد ازداد الطلب على الطاقة الكهربائية لذا تقوم دول العالم سنويا بإنشاء العديد من محطات إنتاج الطاقة الكهربائية مما يؤدي بدوره الى زيادة الطلب على الوقود المستخدم لتشغيل محطات إنتاج الطاقة الكهربائية وهو ما يؤثر سلبا على صحة الأنسان والحيوان نتيجة انبعاث غاز ثاني اكسيد الكربون و الغازات الضارة الأخرى الملوثة البيئة والتي تعد أحد أكبر أسباب التغيرات المناخية والاحتباس الحراري. وتعتبر كفاءة الطاقة من أهم التحديات التقنية في عصر Read More