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