Qatar Foundation Annual Research Conference Proceedings Volume 2018 Issue 1

Desalination is one of the most promising technologies to mitigate an emerging water crisis. Thermal desalination and reverse osmosis are two of the most widely employed desalination technologies in the world. However, these technologies are energy intensive. In countries like Singapore which lack natural water and energy resources, it is imperative to develop innovative energy efficient technologies to strengthen the energy – water nexus. Clathrate hydrate based desalination (HyDesal) is one such technology. Clathrate hydrate based desalination (HyDesal) process is based on a liquid to solid phase change by employing a suitable guest gas/ gas mixture for the phase change. In the HyDesal process, water molecules form cages around a guest gas/liquid component effectively rejecting salts present in the brine solution at temperatures slightly higher than normal freezing temperature of water. These crystals when dissociated or melted are essentially fresh water and the guest component can be re-used for the process again. While HyDesal process was proposed almost 70 years ago, it was never commercialized primarily due to the high energy requirement for low temperature operation, slow hydrate formation kinetics and inefficient hydrate crystal separation from brine. Recently, we reported an enhanced hydrate formation kinetics in fixed bed reactor with silica sand as porous media when hydrate is formed from gas mixture consisting propane as co-guest. Based on the ability of propane to draw dispersed water from sand bed towards the gas phase for hydrate growth, we proposed a conceptual hydrate based desalination (ColdEn-HyDesal) process employing fixed bed reactor configuration to minimize the energy requirement. The ability of propane as a co-guest to draw water from the silica sand bed can be effectively used for the HyDesal process to address the slow kinetics and effective separation of the hydrate crystals. In this presentation, our state of the art prototype design and optimized process conditions will be presented. With our innovative reactor design, we carried out water recovery experiments to find the suitable guest gas mixture containing propane as co-guest. The other constituent in the gas mixture employed were methane, argon, nitrogen and carbon dioxide. Further kinetic experiments were carried out to optimize the silica sand particle size, bed height. Our recent knowledge on enhancing the kinetics of hydrate formation and innovative approach to offset the refrigeration cost for the HyDesal process can be applied to efficiently desalinate seawater to produce potable water. With our innovative reactor design and utilizing waste LNG cold energy, HyDesal can be a sustainable solution for desalination. The ColeEn-HyDesal process utilizing waste LNG cold energy will have a huge impact globally as well due to the expanding number of LNG terminals and the potential to mitigate the potable water issues.

Qatar is a hyper-arid country located in the Middle East suffering extreme water scarcity. More than 99% of municipal demand comes from seawater desalination while existing groundwater reserves are under severe pressure from over-abstraction. Despite these water resource limitations, per capita water demand is amongst the highest globally with recent Ministry of Development Planning and Statistics values placing per capita consumption at roughly 550 L/p.d in 2014. Such high demand could be due to a variety of cultural, social and political factors. The Qatar population is unique in its composition, with roughly 85% of the population being non-citizen residents coming from a diverse set of cultures including a large portion of low-skilled labourers. Therefore, promoting conservation in a consistent and effective manner can be challenging. The high average personal wealth in the country may also lead to greater luxury use of water. Cultural and environmental issues may also play a key role. For instance, the majority of the population are adherents of Islam, which has strict ablution requirements for purification prior to prayer and holds a high regard on cleanliness, which in the extreme weather conditions of the Arabian Gulf leads to increased water use for washing. However, the traditional welfare orientated governance of the Gulf States is frequently regarded as a primary cause for high water consumption prevalent in the region. Qatari citizens are granted tariff free use of domestic water on one dwelling while historically residents have been offered a heavily subsidized flat rate of only 4.40 QAR/m3 ($1.21 USD/m3). In 2015, the countries sole water utility provider, the General Electricity and Water Company (Kahramaa), revised the tariffs to various user groups including residents who now pay a tiered structure which still starts at 4.40 QAR m/3, but rises to 5.40 QAR/m3 after the first 20 m3 and has a final tier rate of 9.40 m3 reflecting a cost close to the true cost for supply. This study evaluated the effectiveness of this tariff restructuring by assessing changes in water consumption before and after the tariff changes across 547 residential properties including citizens and residents; flats and villas, and rented vs owned. Metering data was provided directly by Kahramaa following screening to ensure the same tenant was registered for two full years, one year prior and one year following the price restructuring. Data was analysed using SPSS statistical software (IBM), using non-parametric methods due to non-normality of the data. It was found that a statistically significant reduction in water consumption occurred following the tariff restructuring with a total reduction of 17% observed. Surprisingly, the most significant reductions were observed among Qatari rented flats, with resident rented flats and villas the next most responsive to tariff changes. The responsiveness of users was also assessed based on their previous water consumption by considering three groups, low water users (set as the 10th percentile users), medium water users (set as the median water users) and high water users (set as the 90th percentile users). While response varied significantly among household tenant types, overall it was found low water users responded significantly more to the changes in tariffs. This study highlights the importance of tariff use in Qatar as one effective tool to complement a broad and holistic approach to bring domestic water consumption to more sustainable levels and highlights the role tariff changes have on even those exempt from tariffs, possibly through increased discussion, awareness and feeling of responsibility.

Oil producing companies utilize water injection as a common oil recovery method for decades, especially for offshore fields, where seawater is typically used as inject water. Due to the size and complexity of the injection system and the high salinity of the water (∼55,000 mg/L); several challenges are faced during this process including microbial growth, fouling and corrosion in the pipeline. Biofilms accelerate corrosion in a biologically conditioned metal–solution interface. Oil producing companies including those in Qatar use biocides to disinfect the water and inhibit biofilm formation caused mainly by sulfate reducing bacteria (SRB). However, traditional biocides may induce bacterial resistance and/or be detrimental to environment. In this study we synthesized chitosan/ZnO nanocomposite (CZNCs) and evaluated its antimicrobial activity against SRB biofilm in inject seawater. CZNCs showed stable behavior when exposed to higher salt concentrations of inject water. The inhibition of SRB activity was concentration-dependent and more than 73% and 43% inhibition of sulfate reduction and TOC removal, respectively, was observed at 250 μg/mL CZNCs at 10% initial ZnO loading. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) coupled with lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) release assay indicated obvious damages to the cellular membrane which resulted in release of cytoplasmic materials from the bacterial cells. Significant decrease in concentration of EPS extracts was obtained. This work has demonstrated that the exposure of synthesized CZNCs could cause significant SRB anti-biofouling properties. This is the first ever study of antimicrobial potential of chitosan based biocides for SRB inhibition. We are confident that this work will make the scientific as well as the industrial communities to appreciate the application of nanomaterials based biocides. This is the first ever study of antimicrobial potential of any ENM generally, and chitosan based biocides, particularly, for SRB enriched biofilm inhibition. Taking into account tremendous interest to nanomaterials as antimicrobial agents, we anticipate a major impact from a much better material reported in his paper.

Qatar is known as one of the most arid countries in the world with all of the land characterised as dessert which in geographical terms is defined as territory with no surface water. Despite this unpromising situation people have lived on the Qatar peninsula for thousands of years carefully conserving, harvesting and using the scarce water resources. This paper will argue that a better understanding of the conservation and utilisation of fresh water in the past may have implications for the future development of agriculture and water management in Qatar. All the water resources in the past were fed either directly by scarce and sporadic rainfall events or through sub-surface water (fossil water) which formed a fresh water lens floating above a predominantly saline aquifer. The presence of shallow wadis located throughout the country but particularly near the coast are indicative of the occasionally heavy rainfall.This paper will investigate the methods used to provide water to the traditional settlements and more ancient archaeological sites throughout the country. The paper will begin by reviewing the hydrological structure of the Qatar peninsula and its condition prior to the modern over exploitation of water resources from the 1950's onwards. The paper will pay particular attention to the location of settlements around the northern coast where particularly favourable conditions exist as a result of the north Qatar arch. The settlements of the northern coast employed a variety of water catchment methods including modifying shallow natural depressions (rawdhas) to provide either grazing land or in some cases agricultural zones. In some cases such as at Jifara extensive sunken field systems enclosed within mud brick walls were created fed by a series of shallow wells taking advantage of both rainfall catchment and fossil rainwater. In some cases such as at Ruwayda on the north Qatar coast an existing rawdah appears to have been modified to create a garden with trees enclosed by a fortified masonry wall. A variety of well forms were created including shaft wells where water was accessed by buckets or other receptacles lowered by rope (two example of traditional leather buckets with goat hair rope have been found in archaeological excavations in Qatar) and wide shallow stepped wells which allowed direct access to the water either for humans or animals. In the centre of the country access to water has always been more difficult because the freshwater acquifer has been closest to the surface near the coast. As a consequence the majority of human settlement in Qatar has always been close to the coast. Where inland settlement do exist they are usually located either within or next to some geographical feature such as a wadi or a large depression which will act as a catchment area for rainfall. Such settlements are nearly always supplemented with wells which tend to be larger and much deeper than those on the coast. Examples of inland wells include those associated with gardens at Umm Salal Muhammad. The transformation of inland wells with motorised pumps from the 1950's onwards was one of the causes for the depletion and subsequent salinization of the freshwater aquifer in Qatar.In addition to wells and modified rawdahs a number of other forms of water catchment exist. One of the most surprising water sources is the perennial spring (naba‘a) which following periods of heavy or sustained rainfall may result in water literally spring out from the ground. Another unusual source are fresh water springs located off the coast which were traditionally exploited by fishermen and pearl divers. A rare form of water catchment exists in the Jabal Jassasiya rock formations on the north-east coast of Qatar where the natural contours of the rock are modified to form a cistern blocked on one side by a masonry dam. Masonry dams- possibly of medieval date- have also been documented near Umm Salal Muhammad.

The economic theory provides a rationale for linking the energy demand to a number of variables that might affect it. Starting from that, the empirical analyses specify a number of alternative specifications of the energy demands (water, electricity and fuel). For instance, Zarnikau (2003) suggests three possible forms. First, a linear specification involving the levels of the variables, where the energy demand is a linear function of production factors or of other elements affecting demand. The second form is still a linear specification, but where the log-levels of the variables replace the levels. These two forms are coherent with production (or consumption) functions being additive or multiplicative, respectively, in the underlying factors. The third case focuses on the share equations, most common in a production-based framework, where the share cost of energy, over the total cost of production, depends on the production factors in a linear fashion. We provide an estimation for energy demand and forecasting. We will use the Auto Regressive Distribute Lag (ARDL) specification. The ARDL model might be estimated again by least squares methods. Notably, this specification allows computing short-run elasticities, the parameters, as well as long-run elasticities, which can be obtained by standardizing the coefficients by the autoregressive polynomial, i.e.. A further advantage of the ARDL specifications comes from their coherence with the existence of a long-run equilibrium relation across the modelled variables. In fact, if we assume that the variables of interest are possibly cointegrated (and are thus non-stationary in their levels) and also characterized by short-term dynamic, we might recast the ARDL model into the so-called Error Correction Model representation (ECM) for the series first difference.The estimation approach of such a model might follow the bounds testing approach to cointegration of Pesaran and Shin (1999) and Pesaran et al. (2001). Despite its appealing form, the ECM representation of the ARDL model is appropriate when only a single cointegration relation exist across the modelled variables. A more general structure is that associated with Vector Error Correction Model (VECM) where the dynamic of a set of variables is jointly estimated. The estimation and testing for cointegration might follow the approaches proposed by Johansen (1988, 1991, 1992, 1994 and 1995). Moving back to the three approaches listed by Zarnikau (2003), we now briefly discuss the estimation of share equations. This approach focuses on the estimation of the share cost of various inputs with respect to the total cost of production for a specific good. We express energy demand as a function of energy prices, the appropriate price should be a weighted average of the prices of the underlying energy sources (electricity, gas, oil…etc.). The weights might be interpreted as share costs, and therefore the approaches for the estimation of share equations turn out to be relevant in this case, see Fuss (1986). Share equations are nothing more than linear equations for the share of the specific energy source on the total energy demand. However, the crucial aspect to be here considered is the presence of constraints: the shares must be positive and must sum up to one. However, various approaches have been proposed to introduce the appropriate constraints, see for instance the methods by Zellner (1962 and 1963). Further, we can take gasoline price as an indicator for energy price in the demand function. We close this set of methodological approaches by taking into account the use of structural time series methods, see Harvey (1989).Such an approach might be extended with the presence of stochastic cyclical and seasonal components and could represent an alternative approach to classical time series methods.Building on an ARDL specification with a latent trend, Dilaver and Hunt (2011a) provide a scenario analysis for Turkey industrial energy demand and Dilaver and Hunt (2011b) analyze scenarios for residential electricity demand in Turkey. Both studies consider three scenarios, the reference one and two opposite cases representing an increase/decrease in the energy demand due to changes in the production levels, the energy efficiency and the prices. Jiang and Li (2012) provide three different scenarios for the evolution of China energy demand starting from a static long-run relation and using scenarios for the underlying factors. Li et al. (2010) analyze the evolution of energy demand and CO2 emissions in Shanghai under two alternative scenarios, one associated with energy conservation policies. Tajudeen (2015) performs a forecast and scenario analysis for aggregated energy demand. He consider three scenarios, the reference one and two alternatives with increases/decreases in the factors affecting energy demand. Zachariadis and Taibi (2015) provide a scenario analysis for Cyprus energy demand based on different projections of underlying macroeconomic factors as well as in terms of energy efficiency improvements.The estimation and the results wil lbe presented in the conference

A dual stage PRO process has been proposed for power generation from a salinity gradient across a semi-permeable membrane. Both closed-loop and open-loop dual stage PRO system were evaluated using 2 M NaCl and Dead Sea as draw solutions, whereas the feed solution was either fresh water or seawater. The impact of feed salinity gradient resource and feed pressure on the net power generation and water flux were evaluated. The results showed that power density in stage one reached a maximum amount at, but the maximum net power generation occurred at. This result was mainly attributed to the variation of net driving pressure in stage one and two of the PRO process. The dual stage PRO process was found to perform better at high osmotic pressure gradient across the PRO membrane, for example when Dead Sea brine or highly concentrated NaCl was the draw solution. Total power generation in the dual stage PRO process was up to 40% higher than that in the conventional PRO process. This outcome was achieved through harvesting the rest of the energy remaining in the diluted draw solution. Therefore, a dual stage PRO process has the potential of maximizing power generation from a salinity gradient resource by 20%. DSPRO can be combined with desalination plant using seawater brine as the draw solution either in closed-loop or open-loop. This hybridization has multiple applications such as reducing the impact of discharging concentrated brine to sea, energy storage, and increase the recovery rate of the desalination. Power generation by DSPRO will reduce the energy consumption by the desalination processes. Waste heat from power plants can be used for the regeneration of the draw solution in the closed-loop DSPRO. Process modelling has been performed and shown promising results for DSPRO application for power generation. The impact of module configuration, area and length, with relation to draw solution concentration have shown to have significant impact on osmotically driven processes and should be counted for.

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 viable due to the lack of personal income tax, and support for distributed generation through grid access policies such as the Feed-in Tariff and Net Metering is not available. The goal of this study is to address this gap by analyzing the impact of home ownership, the falling cost of PV, the reduction of electricity subsidies, the introduction of a carbon tax, and the diffusion of innovation on the residential adoption of solar PV technologies in Qatar. Our objective is to develop a social simulation platform that helps policymakers and other stakeholders assess the optimal regulatory framework to promote the adoption of building-integrated PV systems in Qatar and other countries which share a similar geographical, political, economic and social context. We present an agent-based model for residential adoption of solar photovoltaic (PV) systems in the state of Qatar as a case study for the Arabian Gulf Region. Agents in the model are defined as households. Each household corresponds to a dwelling in the Al Rayyan municipality of Qatar that is either owned (by citizens) or rented (by expatriates). The objective of the model is to evaluate PV adoption in terms of these two household cohorts under diverse regulatory and incentive scenarios. In the present state of affairs, only Qatari citizens can own property in Al Rayyan and Qatari households are exempt from electricity charges. Therefore, home owners are Qataris who have free electricity, while renters tend to be expatriates who pay for electricity. The more competitive the cost of electricity from residential PV systems is as compared to the electricity tariff, the more likely are household agents to adopt solar PV. Several factors can contribute to make the cost of electricity from residential PV more competitive, including:the falling cost of PV due to increasing technology maturitythe reduction of subsidies for electricity and the gas used for electricity productionthe introduction of a carbon taxthe extension of the electricity tariff to Qatari householdsthe neighborhood effect, which implements peer effects on the diffusion of PV innovation as a percent discount on residential PV cost.We compute solar PV adoption as resource limited exponential growth. Households adopt solar PV with a probability established by the logistic function in (1), where L is a scaling constant, e is the natural logarithm, x is the cost of electricity from residential PV systems and k is a parameter which determines the slope of the adoption curve. We set L = 1 to normalize the output of the logistic function as a probability. For the k parameter, we select a value (k = 0.59) that in the null-hypothesis scenario yields a PV market share that is equivalent to the innovator cohort of adopters in Rogers’ adoption/innovation curve (2.5%) [5]. According to Rogers, “innovators are active information seekers about new ideas”, who are close to the scientific community and other innovators, have financial liquidity, and are willing to take high risks to pursue their vision. The rationale for restricting adopters to innovators in the null hypothesis scenario is that only eco-warriors with financial means and high technology awareness would adopt in the absence of incentives, with high PV costs.(1) f (x) = L / 1+e^( − k∗x) At each simulation tick, each household agent that has not adopted yet, is presented with the opportunity of doing so. Adoption is determined randomly according to the output of the logistic function in (2): a random probability p is generated, and if the probability of adoption as calculated by (1) is greater or equal to p, adoption occurs.We analyze three alternative simulation scenarios:Scenario 1 — Business as usual: no measures are introduced to incentivize PV, the neighborhood effect is active, and the price of PV falls due to increasing technology maturityScenario 2 — 40% of gas and electricity subsidies are curtailed, the neighborhood effect is active, a carbon tax of $8/tCO2e is introduced, the price of PV falls due to increasing technology maturity, and citizens continue to have free electricityScenario 3 — same as scenario 2, with the variant that citizens too pay for electricity. As baseline, we establish a null hypothesis scenario, which is the same as scenario 1, except that the price of PV does not fall due to increasing technology maturity. Details of the simulation results are provided in the attached file to this submission. Our study suggests that Qatar's residential PV adoption is strongly promoted by the falling cost of PV and can be further facilitated through the reduction of electricity subsidies and the extension of the electricity tariff to Qatari households, which are currently exempt. The introduction of a carbon tax can also play a role in accelerating residential PV adoption, if above $8 per metric ton of carbon dioxide equivalent. The ensuing PV adoption rates would help facilitate the national targets of 2% electricity production from solar energy by 2020 and 20% by 2030. References: [1] Zhao, J., E. Mazhari, N. Celik, Y.-J. Son. “Hybrid agent-based simula- tion for policy evaluation of solar power generation systems”. Simulation Modeling Practice and Theory 19, (2011): 2189–2205. [2] Paidipati, J., L. Frantzis, H. Sawyer, A. Kurrasch. “Rooftop photovoltaics market penetration scenarios”. Navigant Consulting, Inc., for NREL: February, (2008). [3] Drury, E., P. Denholm, R. Margolis. “Modeling the US rooftop photo- voltaics market”. In National Solar Conference 2010, 17–22 May 2010, Phoenix, USA, (2010). [4] Graziano, M. and K. Gillingham. “Spatial patterns of solar photovoltaic system adoption: the influence of neighbors and the built environment”. Journal of Economic Geography 15, (2015): 815–839. [5] Rogers, E. M.. Diffusion of innovations. New York, Free Press of Glencoe, RS(N), (2010)

Aquifers are important sources of water in arid areas, where no surface water exist. Estimation of groundwater recharge from rainfall is a big challenge for hydrogeologists, due to the high uncertainty involved. It is even harder to estimate recharge in arid areas, due to high variability of meteorological parameters in space and time. Unlike recharge in humid and sub-humid areas, recharge in arid areas occurs indirectly after rainfall-runoff accumulates in low lands such as land depressions and recharges the aquifer. A new method for recharge estimation in arid areas has proposed in this study based on soil-water budget model and utilizing geoprocessing tools in GIS. The method uses Digital Elevation Model (DEM), land-cover and rainfall distribution to estimate runoff accumulation in depressions. The soil-water budget model is then applied to estimate the groundwater recharge in areas of runoff accumulation. The geoprocessing tools in GIS such as flow direction and flow accumulation in Spatial Analyst were utilised. The application of the proposed methodology in GIS makes it easy to cover the entire area of study, and to run maps algebra. The method was applied to the entire area of Qatar. The proposed methodology was applied on Qatar as a case study. The spatial resolution of raster maps was 350 by 350 m and the temporal resolution is one day. Data requirements for this study include daily records of rainfall, Digital Elevation Model (DEM) for topography, soil-moisture holding capacity, land-use map and potential evapotranspiration. Recharge is calculated for each cell and summed to provide the total amount. The proposed methodology was applied on the entire country of Qatar using the hydrological year 2013-2014 and daily time steps. This year was selected because enough daily rainfall data was available for this period, with a good coverage of the entire country. Results obtained in this study for the hydrological year 2013/2014 show the total groundwater recharge is approximately 14 million m3, and concentrated more in the northern part of Qatar. The method can be applied on any arid region.

This paper deals with the modeling of a regional energy system, based on the example of Qatar, over a time horizon of 35 years or more, taking into account the possible transition toward a smart city paradigm of the Doha region and the probable climate regime that could result from COP21 and the coming rounds of international climate negotiations. The impact on the energy system of a transition toward smart city could take many forms: (i) by providing two-way communications between consumers and electricity producers, the smart city will foster demand response and distributed energy resource management; (ii) new forms of demand for energy services will materialize in the transport, housing and service sectors that could contribute to lower the environmental footprint of the energy sector; (iii) the smart-grid connection of distributed energy resources and the possibility to provide secondary reserve through grid storage and distributed system service, like e.g. reactive power compensation, will facilitate the penetration of variable renewable energy in the energy system. Qatar is the world-class leader in the export of liquefied natural gas (LNG). It has also access to crude oil reserves. As the economy of Qatar developed, as in other Gulf countries, the energy system expanded assuming an unlimited supply of very low cost fossil fuels. However, the very economic success of the gas and oil exporting countries in the Gulf region is starting to impose a limit on this form of development of the energy system. The share of gas that is used in the region and thus not available for export is increasing sharply. The local pollution due to the burning of fossil fuels in transport, residential, service and industry sectors, has to be curbed. Finally, at COP21 in Paris, more than 160 nations, including Qatar, have agreed to reduce GHG emissions in order to reach a goal of limiting the temperature change at the end of 21st century at 1.5oC. At COP21 Qatar has made a commitment to reduce its per-capita emission level, which is one of the highest in the world. To deal with these challenges, the Gulf countries count on a substitution from fossil fuel source to variable renewable ones (as well as some extent to nuclear power generation in UAE, KSA and Iran). This is exemplified by the location of IRENA headquarters[1] in Abu Dhabi, inaugurated in May 2015. Indeed, harnessing wind and solar energy sources seems promising in the region, with some caveats due to intermittency of wind blowing and sand storms reducing the efficiency of solar panels. There is another game changing phenomenon represented by the drive toward smart cities. The cities in Gulf countries are very modern and they are ready to embrace the smart city paradigm and concept. Abu Dhabi and more generally the UAE, Qatar and Saudi Arabia have announced pilot projects for fully integrated “smart-city” districts. The development of the “internet of things”, which characterizes smart cities, will translate for the energy system into a development of smart-grid connected, distributed energy resources and this should help tremendously the penetration of variable renewable energy sources. The model ETEM-SC[2] used in this research has been designed to help in assessing the policies that could be used to define, up to the horizon 2050, an environmentally friendly energy system in Qatar. ETEM-SC is a technology rich cost-efficiency model, which permits an exploration of the future of the regional energy system under different environmental and economic constraints. The model is derived from the shell-model ETEM (Energy-Technology-Environment-Model), developed at ORDECSYS[3]. This shell has a structure of a linear program, as in MARKAL, MESSAGE or TIMES, with an extensive description of technology and energy choices in the region into consideration. The new additions that have been made for our purpose (SC for Smart Cities) concern: (i) the modeling of constraints and options at the power distribution level, due to the introduction of smart grids, distributed energy resource and demand response; (ii) the consideration of the impact on demand for energy services of the development of a smart city environment, and (iii) the explicit consideration of uncertainty in the scenario building, through the use of stochastic programming and robust optimization techniques. Some technical aspects of these modeling advances have been described in two parent papers (Babonneau et al. (2016a) and (2016b)). The present research will focus on the description of the scenarios for Qatar that result from the use of this model. These scenarios are based on publicly available data and should not be considered as a representation of the energy policy of the state of Qatar. The purpose of this exercise is to demonstrate the potential offered by ETEM-SC to assess the possible penetration of variable renewable energy in regional energy systems with smart-city development, in order to reduce drastically the GHG emissions. [1] The International Renewable Energy Agency. www.irena.org [2] Energy Technology Environment Model-Smart-Cities. [3] See www.ordecsys.com for details.

See e.g., https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/es_20170531_hahnregulation.pdfPower to the People: A New Trend in Regulation Robert Hahn, Robert Metcalfe and Florian Rundhammer* * Mr. Hahn is Professor and Director of Economics at the Smith School, University of Oxford. Mr. Metcalfe is a Postdoctoral Research Scholar at the Becker Friedman Institute, University of Chicago. Mr. Rundhammer is a doctoral student in economics at Georgia State University. We would like to thank Jonathan Ashley, Harry Bush, Paul Joskow, Clement Lapeyre, Stephen Littlechild, Matthew O'Keefe, Cathryn Ross, Anna Rossington, Jon Stern and Dale Whittington for very helpful feedback. This research was funded by Ofwat and by the Smith School at Oxford. The authors, and not the institutions with which they are affiliated, are responsible for the findings of this research and any remaining errors. © 2017 by the authors. All rights reserved. Abstract This paper traces a new development in regulation that encourages utilities to engage more directly with their customers. We make four contributions: First, we perform the most comprehensive analysis to date of how regulators are using customer engagement, and offer a simple model for understanding different customer engagement initiatives. Second, we review assessments of customer engagement. We find that there are no quantitative, empirically robust assessments of the effectiveness of customer engagement as a regulatory tool. Third, we develop two detailed case studies of an energy regulator and a water regulator that are in the forefront of customer engagement efforts. We find that there is no direct link between the engagement strategy used and the economic incentives received by a firm. Finally, we propose a framework for improving the customer engagement process. The new framework relies on microeconomics, modern tools of program evaluation, and supplying the regulated firm with direct incentives to do customer engagement.

Measurements of recycling steel slug at Qatar steel using low-level gamma-ray spectrometry and calculation of risk factors. M.S.Al-Kuwari 1, M. Hushari 2 and K E Hassan3 1Environmental and Municipal Studies Institute, Director 2Radiation and chemical protection department Ministry of environment, Doha-Qatar 3Transport Limited company TRL Correspondent author: Mohammad Hushari, P.O.Box7634 , Doha-Qatar. Tel w :(+974)44139476 Fax (+974)44207000 Mob :(+974)77991059 Email: [email protected]. Abstract Steel slug are final by-products in the steelmaking process pose an environmental hazard for worker near slag dumps. The objectives of the study were the employment of high-resolution low-level gamma-ray spectrometry. The measurements of natural occurring radioactive material (NORM) as well as of the artificial isotope 137Cs, in many types steel slug such as Steel Slag loss aggregate, Asphalt Mix (100% steel slag with 4% Bitumen), slag, 50% Gabbro with 4% Bitumen, and Concrete cube (50% steel slag, 50% gabbro have been done using mentioned γ spectroscopy. The value of NORM material was reduced when they mixed with gabbro. The recycling of slag from the steel production industry is a common practice in all over the world. Slag from integrated steel production plants run by Qatar Steel is processed storage in area not far from the factory. It has therefore been assumed in this study that all slag is storage. Different ratio of steel slag, gabbro and asphalt used in road construction, most of this ratio accepted from radiation risk point of view, but the ratio of 50% of Gabbro and 4% of Bitumen with asphalt used as road base was the most acceptable from regulatory body. Construction of 200 m road was done at Mesaieed city at Qatar its mechanical and strain stress measurements was conducted by specialist in civil engineering, then many core sample from the surface to the bottom of road to measure (NORM) radioactivity have been taken and radiation dose at the site were carried out. The measured activity and hazards indices in asphalt mixing with slag lies within the word permissible values. Thus the used of recycling steel slug can replace at least 50% aggregates in highway construction and concrete

Known to be one of the most arid regions in the world, the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) is particularly vulnerable to climate-induced impacts on water resources and food production. Despite this alarming situation, promoting adaptive governance strategies to deal with such increased hydrological risk remains a low priority for most of political leaderships in the region. It is increasingly clear that adaptation to climate change and environmental sustainability are closely linked to water availability and food production added to a set of social, economic and political factors. In most of the MENA countries, climate change is likely to lead to reduced rainfall and consequently a real threat to food security in what are already dry regions. In certain cases, an intensification of the water cycle has caused more extreme floods and droughts in some countries of the region. Generally, climate change acts as a “threat multiplier” increasing existing vulnerabilities among already vulnerable and poor populations and existing threats to security, and can indirectly rise risks of violent conflict in the region. It is worthy to note that climate impacts will not be equally distributed, and much will depend upon national resources and adaptive capacities which is one of the main focus of the study. Thus, we will attempt to delineate the expected and dynamic impacts of climate change and environmental sustainability on food-water poverty and analyze how the political, economic, and institutional drivers may have shaped governance responses in the region. The linkage between food-water poverty and environmental sustainability hasn»t got a significant policy attraction that generally in favor of livelihood of the poor, which is broadly influenced by climate change, food security challenges and poor access of improved water resources. These challenges and defies commonly encountered by less developing countries, while some MENA countries has no exemption to escape out from this food-water poverty nexus owing to inappropriate socio-economic and environmental action programs of sustainable development. Contrariwise, some others countries in the region, mainly the oil-dependent countries, have been able to overcome such challenges, at least in the short run, primarily thanks to their oil resources and the rent that these generated. In addition, we will endeavor in the current study to examine the dynamic nexus between climate changes, environmental sustainability and food-water poverty in a panel of selected MENA countries over the recent decades. To do this, we will use various empirical models such as pooled least squares regression, pooled fixed effects, and pooled random effects regression techniques. The data on food-water poverty, environmental sustainability and climate changes indicators for the set of selected MENA countries, comprising low and high oil-dependent economies, from 1980 to 2013 are taken mainly from World Development Indicators published by the World Bank (2014) and International Financial Statistics published by the IMF (2014). It»s noteworthy that the considered countries are chosen according to data availability. In order to keep the maximum number of countries possible in the empirical analysis, the forward and backward interpolation technique will be used to fill the gaps between the two periods. In this study, we»ll use five dependent variables (response variables), including three food poverty indicators and two water poverty indicators that were separately regressed with the set of explanatory variables in the panel of the considered countries. These variables were chosen giving their broader coverage of food-water poverty and environmental sustainability indicators in the region. In the empirical analysis, we»ll attempt then to estimate two simple non-linear regression equations, similarly to Ozturk (2017) [1], to understand the food-water nexus, by using a set of explanatory variables of environmental sustainability and climate changes such as the rainfall indicator, the annual average temperature, agricultural value added, forest area, carbon dioxide emissions, GDP per capita, inflation, the consumer price index. Three food poverty indicators will be used as dependant variables, i.e., the depth of the food deficit (kilocalories per person per day), the household final consumption expenditure per capita (constant 2005 US$), and the prevalence of undernourishment (percentage of population). While in the second model devoted to water poverty, percentage of population without access to water sources and percentage of population without access to sanitation facilities will be used as the two dependant variables. The first step is using the conventional panel unit root tests to assess the stationary properties of the selected variables. In this regard, different panel unit root tests will be used to check the order of integration of the given variable»s series. After that, we»ll use the Johansen Fisher panel co-integration tests to evaluate the null hypothesis of no co-integration against the alternative hypothesis of co-integration relationships between variables. In order to get robust inferences, the study will use three separate panel regressions, comprising the panel least squares regression, commonly known as the ‘common constant method’; fixed effects, commonly known as the ‘least squares dummy variables (LSDV)’; and random effects model, commonly known as the ‘Dynamic Model’. The food-water poverty is a buzzword that is generally used by the policymakers to assess the insufficient intake of food calories per day and lack of regular access to water resources among households across countries. In order to understand the food-water poverty nexus in the MENA region, one may look deeply and separately to the main factors that may affect such two linked issues over the time. The real contribution of the study is then to investigate over the high and low oil-dependent countries in the region, the main determinants of food-water poverty that affected mainly by climate changes and environmental sustainability indicators. In this context, it»s substantially required to investigate this relationship for sound policy interventions, in favor of livelihood of the poor and most vulnerable population groups, that should help to reduce the food-water poverty taking into account the most severe challenges facing the majority of countries i.e. climate changes and environmental sustainability. [1] Ozturk, I. (2017). The dynamic relationship between agricultural sustainability and food-energy-water poverty in a panel of selected Sub-Saharan African Countries. Energy Policy, 107, 289-299.

The thermal desalination by Multi-Stage Flash (MSF) and Multi-Effect Distillation (MED) desalination plants are dominantly used in Qatar due to their maturity and reliability in dealing with the harsh seawater conditions of high (TDS, Seawater feed temperature, SDI, and HAB). Realizing the benefits and challenges of the thermal, there is a room of improvement to reduce energy consumption. Qatar Environment and Energy Research Institute (QEERI), Hamad Bin Khalifa University (HBKU) and Qatar Electricity and Water Corporation (QEWC) took initiative to improve the overall efficinecy and perfomance of thermal deslaintion plants in Qatar. In this work, a novel design and compact MED evaporator will be presented. The expected reduction in heat transfer area will reduce the capital cost of the evaporator as well as the footprint of the MED desalination plant. The present work describes a novel MED evaporator according to the GCC2016-31325 patent. The tubes are arranged in a way to allow generated vapor to flow in a smooth and minimized route to the following effect. The vapor route is designed to avoid shear losses and breakdown of film liquid around the tubes (dry zones) that will eliminate vapor entrainment, which will reduce brine carry over. Since there is no cross flow within tube bundle hence, eliminating the need for demister and vapor boxes. A well-developed Visual Simulation Program (VSP) is used to perform comparison between commercial MED desalination plant (63 MIGD, Rass Laffan, Qatar) and proposed novel design. The evaporator distillate production rate, seawater feed conditions (temperature and salinity), and heating steam conditions are specified as input to the software. The number of effects and the tube specifications are specified as input. The VSP software calculates the required steam consumption flow rate, the heat transfer area for each effect, the condenser and preheaters. The capital cost of the desalination plant was calculated using recent bidding of commercial desalination projects and the updated market material price. Process simulationm shows that, for a given gain output ratio of (GOR = 9), the required heat transfer area of novel evaporator is 20% less than of existing evaporators design due to thermal losses reduction. Moreover, the thermal losses reduction in novel evaporator were calculated via simulation and are in the range of 30% to 60%. Furthermore, removal of demister in novel MED evaporator decreases evaporator width by 65%. However, novel evaporator height is almost 1.25 times of the convnetional. In fact, the novel evaporator cost is 20 % less than that of the convnetional evaporator due to significant reduction of the evaporator width and vapor box. In addition to that, a 3D-CFD simulation have been conducted using COMSOL Multiphysics v.5.2a on the vapor route of the novel MED evaporator, to be compared with that of the convention MED evaporator. The engagement with QEWC to offer a site equipped with seawater intake/outfall, electricity will be highlighted. The detailed design of the pilot test, fabricate, installation, commission of MED pilot test of 25 m3/day at Dukhan will be used to develop the proof of concept.

Background Hydrogen sulfide (H2S) is a highly toxic and corrosive gas generated as a byproduct in both upstream and downstream operations in the oil & gas industry. If H2S is present in water streams, its removal is generally required before water disposal or reuse. At gas processing facilities in Qatar's North Field, wastewater containing H2S, referred to as sour water, is generated during natural gas conditioning and processing. These sour water streams need to be treated before disposal or reuse and that is currently achieved using conventional sour water strippers. With recent advances in membrane materials and fabrication techniques, there is increasing interest from both academia and industry to adopt membrane-based separation processes. For H2S removal from sour water, hydrophobic membranes contactors are believed to be a cost-effective alternative to conventional sour water strippers. In a membrane contactor, the feed stream containing H2S flows on one side of the hydrophobic membrane while a receiving stream flows on the other side. As opposed to other membrane-based processes (e.g. reverse osmosis, microfiltration), the hydrophobic membrane in this application does not perform any selective separation but instead facilitates mass transfer of H2S gas by providing a large surface area to pass through. The receiving solution acts as a trap which also enhance the driving force required to maximize mass transfer. Membrane contactors have been commercially used for the treatment of natural gas but not for sour water. In the past decade, most published literature focused on removing carbon dioxide (CO2) and H2S from natural or flue gas streams. The removal of dissolved gasses such as oxygen and ammonia from aqueous streams has also been studied with successful commercial products and applications. To the author's knowledge, the application of membrane contactors for H2S removal from sour water has not been investigated, which presents the basis for this innovative research. Objectives The overall objective of this project was to evaluate a novel adaptation of membrane contactors for H2S removal from process water generated by onshore gas processing operations located in Ras Laffan Industrial City. A hollow fiber membrane contactor was used to remove H2S from sour water using sodium hydroxide (NaOH) as a receiving solution. The caustic solution immediately reacted with H2S gas converting it into sodium sulfide according to equation 1: H2S+2NaOH –> Na2S+2H2O (1) The rapid conversion of H2S to sodium sulfide in the receiving solution maximized the H2S concentration gradient and hence gas mass transfer through the membrane. Once the sulfide was trapped, ultraviolet (UV) light was applied to oxidize the sulfide to other sulfur species (thiosulfate and sulfate). This oxidation step enabled the receiving solution to be safely disposed, at the appropriate pH, without the risk of H2S release. Methodology A custom-built bench scale unit was used to evaluate H2S removal rates as a function of the feed sulfide concentration, pH and temperature, as well as the sulfide oxidation rate by UV light. For the experiments, a hollow fiber membrane contactor (Minimodule G543, Liqui-Cel, Membrana, 3M Corp., USA) was selected as the separation module and process water collected Qatari gas processing facilities was used as feed solution. The feed water, pretreated to remove suspended solids, had a pH of 8, H2S concentration of 100 mg/L and a total organic carbon content of 60 mg/L. Experimental data were compared with mass transfer equations developed for gas transfer through microporous membrane. Results Results showed that hydrophobic membrane contactors are effective in removing H2S from sour water. The removal rate is directly proportional to the mass transfer coefficient and sulfide concentration in the feed solution. Feedwater pH had an impact on the mass transfer coefficient as well as the removal rate since the H2S speciation in water is pH dependent. At low pH ( < 4.5) the majority of the sulfide was present as volatile H2S gas, enhancing the mass transfer across the membrane. At pH above 8, the mass transfer rate decreased significantly due to the small amount of volatile H2S in solution. Test results indicated that the mass transfer coefficient was proportional to the sulfide speciation in solution. At pH 4, the measured mass transfer coefficient was 0.243 cm/min while at pH 7 it was 0.090 cm/min for experiments performed with actual process water. Feedwater temperature also impacted the mass transfer rate, with higher rates achieved at higher temperatures since the H2S diffusivity increases with temperature. At 45 oC the mass transfer rate was 0.336 cm/min, while at 25 oC was 0.243 cm/min. UV light oxidation experiments showed that sulfide can be converted first to disulfide and then to thiosulfate and sulfate. The conversion from disulfide to thiosulfate is slow when only UV light is used; however, aerating the receiving solution enhances the conversion rate. When UV light alone is used, the oxidation of sulfide to disulfide follows a first order reaction with a rate of 0.015 min-1. When UV was combined with aeration, the oxidation also followed a first order reaction with a rate of 0.035 min-1 (more than 2X higher compared to UV alone), converting the sulfide to thiosulfate and sulfate. Outcome This is the first evaluation of membrane contactors for the removal of H2S from sour water from oil and gas operations. Qatar can be one of the primary beneficiary of this technology since large volumes of sour water are generated during sour gas conditioning and processing in the North Field. This process can also be applied in other operations worldwide and could have a major impact on how sour water is treated in the petroleum industry. The authors had already filled a patent application on this technology (publication # US2016/0355414) and plan to work with the Qatar Science and Technology Park (QSTP) to identify a possible startup company that may be interested in further developing the technology.

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 negatively imaged as highest CO2 per capita emitter. The reading of the highest CO2 per capita has affected Qatar's ability to attract green investments and to improve the country's attraction in the tourism market. Qatar's position as the leader CO2 per capita has made it unattractive for investors both internally and externally because of the perception that the investment would not be ‘green’.The per capita emissions are a result of two main factors: the total absolute emissions and the total population. Two major and significant factors, consumption and population, should be taken into consideration when discussing the total absolute emissions for Qatar: The assumption for this equation is that the population uses all the produced energy, which is the denominator. This assumption is a disadvantage to Qatar due both to its low population and the fact that it is an energy producer. CO2emission would be much lower for Qatar if a consumption-based accounting system was used for the calculation of the per capita value. The use of emissions accounting measure is of vital importance to individual countries. There are two feasible carbon emissions accounting units: production-based accounting and consumption-based accounting systems. Production-based accounting is linked to economic system boundaries (greenhouse gas emissions from resident institutional units, analogous to gross domestic product). It involves measuring the emissions occurring within a country's boarder and does not take into account production chains extended across boundaries. An illustration of a production-based system examines the emissions generated from fuel purchases and allocates them the country producing the fuel, not the country consuming the fuel (OECD, 2016). While the Consumption based accounting system is related to how much this country emit for its domestic uses. Data are more difficult to obtain for the consumption-based approach because the computations are more complicated to compile as it relies on input-output tables, which includes all steps in production from raw material extraction through the final assembly and ultimately the final sale of the product (General Secretariat for Development Planning, 2009).The controversy comes in determining responsibility: is it the player initiating the polluting process (consumer) or the player producing the pollution (producer)? Consumption-based measures are preferred by developing countries while production-based measures are preferred by developed countries. Qatar is unfairly portrayed as the highest carbon dioxide emitter in the world in terms of per capita measures. Qatar's carbon footprint takes into account Qatar's energy production rather than the country's domestic consumption. The main argument of the paper is to discuss Qatar's CO2 emissions per capita compared to other reporting measures, and to examine the difference between using a consumption based CO2 emissions accounting system versus a production-based one for Qatar. The paper discusses the complications of using a production-based accounting versus a consumption-based accounting system for Qatar carbon dioxide emissions calculations. The research applies both of Quantitative and Qualitative Analysis. The Quantitative analysis is related to roughly re-estimate Qatar's CO2 Per Capita emissions figure based on Consumption based accounting system. The qualitative analysis focuses on creating different comparisons to compare Qatar's CO2 emissions in terms of different reporting measures to three different categories. First category is comparing Qatar's emissions against GCC countries; These countries have the major common attribute that they are mainly dependent on oil and gas revenues, simlliar demographic location, weather and lifestyle. The analysis outcomes of this catogry illustrates that KSA has the highest emissions for CO2 intensity and for the absolute emissions. The second comparison catogry is comparing Qatar's CO2 emissions against major Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) producers which are Austailia and Malsyisa. This compariisons showed that Australia has the highest emissions of Absolute CO2, CO2intensity as well as the emissions per GDP. The third catogry was to compare Qatar's position related to the major global emitters, such as China, India, Russia, and USA. This comparison resulted in China having the highest absolute emissions, CO2Intensity as well as emissions per GDP. The Analysis outcome of the comparisons highlights that Qatar is not the highest CO2emitter in terms of absolute CO2 emissions, emissions intensity, and emissions per GDP compred to the GCC countries, major LNG producers and the world largest emitters. Qatar has the highest CO2 emissions per Capita due to two main factors: Qatar is the largest LNG producer and Qatar has a relatively small population when comapred to other countries. Qatar is a developing country, it is the largest LNG exporter and it has third highest natural gas reserves in the world. Qatar makes an indirect contribution to mitigating the impact of climate change, which is done though exporting a clean form of energy, i.e., Liquefied Natural Gas. Even though Qatar is a major contributor for the supplying the world with clean energy, Qatar has taken other initiatives to minimize its carbon emissions. Continuous research and development will be a key element to Qatar overcoming the climate change challenges through Research and Development Centres. In summary, the research paper has four main sections. The first section of the paper includes a background on climate change, its impact and mitigations. The second section discusses Qatar's global position using different CO2 emission reporting measures, including Absolute CO2emissions (kt), CO2emissions per GDP (kg per PPP$ of GDP), CO2intensity (kg per kg of oil equivalent energy use), CO2emissions per capita (metric tons per capita). The third part explores Qatar's CO2 per capita calculation incorporating the consumption-based accounting system and assessing the complications of using a production-based accounting versus a consumption-based accounting system for Qatar carbon dioxide emissions calculations. The last section covers Qatar's clean initiatives and offers recommendation towards net zero emissions and improving Qatar sustainability figures.

We investigate the effects of the presence of trace (100 vppm) H2S on the corrosion behaviour of plain carbon steel and its various micro-alloyed counterparts in a CO2 saturated (sweet) brine (0.5 M NaCl) environment, in a high flow regime (1000 RPM), at 80oC in a slightly acidic environment (pH 6.6). Potentiostatic current transients indicate that the presence of trace amount of trace H2S in a predominantly sweet regime, where the partial pressure ratio of CO2 and H2S (pCO2:pH2S) is ∼10000:1, shows a very different corrosion behaviour for both plain carbon steels and as well as micro-alloyed steels. In presence of trace H2S, current density starts dropping much earlier compared to H2S free standalone CO2 environment. Trace amount of H2S also induces faster passivation of the corrosion scale, especially for alloys with relatively high Mo (0.7 wt.%) and Ni (1.4 wt.%) content, suggesting that Mo and Ni have a strong effect in presence of trace H2S. On the basis of available literature, we speculate that the effects observed in presence of trace H2S is due to the formation of Mackinawite which forms on the steel surface immediately via solid state reaction and micro-alloying with some specific elements catalyzes the formation of mackinawite and/or assists formation of more stable sulfide phase(s), causing a faster current drop and passivation. Modeling of the hypothesis is currently in progress. Keywords: Micro-alloying, CO2 corrosion, Flow effect, RDE, Plain carbon steel, Cr-Mo-Ni steel. Figure: Potentiostatic current transient for various plain carbon and micro-alloyed steels. Condition - pH: 6.6, Temp: 80oC, Flow: 1000 RPM, @ anodic over potential: Open Circuit Potentials (OCP) +150 mV

Conventional seawater desalination processes like the multi-stage flash (MSF) and multi-effect distillation (MED) are environmentally unsustainable. They consume large amounts of fossil fuels which are a major cause of climate change. Further, desalination plants discharge highly concentrated brine which can cause eutrophication and damage the marine life. Qatar, being a country that faces freshwater scarcity, is highly dependent on desalination for municipal water consumption. On average the daily production capacity of all desalination plants in Qatar is 1.5 million cubic meters per day. This incurs heavy costs on both the economy and the environment. It is expected that by 2020, desalination fuel costs will reach $2.55 billion. Conventional desalination can be made more sustainable by integrating it with solar energy. However, assessing the environmental competitiveness of this solution should be done in a systematic way and reflect the overall system performance. Simplistic models like merely calculating CO2 emissions are not enough and only allow for modest conclusions. Based on a previous literature review by the authors, it was found that the MED process with thermal vapor compression (TVC) is an excellent choice to couple with solar thermal energy that is provided from a concentrating solar collector. The authors also developed a configuration for solar-driven MED with TVC that is simpler in component choices and relies 100% on solar energy to provide the superheated steam required for the MED-TVC process. A model was developed for a 7-effect MED-TVC pilot plant and was validated with actual plant data. Current literature on desalination mainly focuses on membrane technologies and almost completely neglects thermal desalination. In the Arabian Gulf region, thermal desalination is predominant and hence it is required to assess its sustainability from a view point and further investigate how coupling renewable energy can reduce the environmental impacts. This work quantifies the environmental impacts of solar desalination in Qatar using life cycle assessment (LCA). Our work is based on the proposed MED-TVC solar-driven plant. The objective of this study is to assist decision making by providing information about the potential environmental impacts of solar desalination, propose system improvements and suggest references for comparison between different renewable energy-driven desalination processes in general. We identified five impact categories: global warming, freshwater eutrophication, water use, mineral resource scarcity and fossil resource scarcity. GaBi tool was used to carry the LCA. Ecoinvent database, GaBi databases, academic literature and expert opinions were used to construct a comprehensive life cycle inventory for the plant. ReCiPe method was used to assess potential impacts in the five categories. This method was used because it includes characterization factors unique to Qatar and also because it was widely used in the literature hence comparisons can be made. The functional unit was 1 m3 of freshwater at the plant. The results of the LCA are then computed, grouped and weighted. Comparisons with similar desalination systems are also made. The findings of this work are highly relevant to Qatar National Vision 2030 as they provide detailed findings on the environmental impacts of solar-desalination which is a promising solution for the problem of water scarcity in Qatar.

The properties of traditional materials are primarily determined by their atomic or molecular arrangements, which are typically difficult to modify due to constraints on sub-continuum forces in their material lattice and relatively closely packed microstructure. Engineered metamaterials, however, have been shown to allow properties that significantly expand and outperform those of the universe of existing materials. Lattice materials, whose structure is made up through tessellation of a fundamental geometrical unit cell can be seen as analogs of natural crystals and thus serve as an excellent template for metamaterial development. Abundant free space inside cellular structures make imparting real-time geometrical changes in their underlying structure much easier and since the overall properties of lattice materials are directly linked to the geometry of the underlying unit cell, it becomes possible to herald materials capable of reversible change of properties through physical stimuli. In the present work introduce a new class of lattice materials, where a controlled simultaneous folding of the lattice walls results in a significant size reduction while preserving the overall shape of the original lattice. This reversible folding scheme results in 67 and 50% reduction in size at each level for lattices with triangular and square grid topologies, respectively, while the design enables multiple levels of folding to achieve a desired final size. This high degree of geometrical and micro-structural change can yield a correspondingly wide bracket of mechanical and multifunctional behavior. We also study the elastic properties and the phononic band structure of the lattice at different stages of folding, using analytical and finite element methods. This size-changing concept provides an alternate technique for controlling the underlying topology rapidly and reversibly through simple collapse or expansion of the base lattice. Such dramatic change of size points to potential applications for deployable structures, which can simultaneously benefit from the inherent lightweight and multifunctional characteristics associated with lattice architectures.

Conjugated polymers (CPs) are emerging active materials for electronic and optoelectronic devices, such as organic solar cells, thin-film transistors, light-emitting diodes, as well as optical and amperometric sensors. There has been an intensive worldwide research effort on the development of stable, organic semiconductors as potential replacements for amorphous silicon, the benchmark large area, amorphous semiconductor. ID TechEx, the UK-based market research company, “estimates that over the last two decades global investments into plastic electronics technologies exceed US $10 billion, and predict that this will grow to almost US $25 billion by 2020”.1 The ecological and commercial motivation to implement the use of plastic electronics is compelling. Recently, such efforts have facilitated the development of thin film transistors for backplane applications such as e-paper. The ability to operate in ambient atmosphere without costly and rigorous encapsulation barriers to avoid water and/or oxygen is an important step towards commercialization. Despite ever increasing numbers of newly developed conjugated polymers, the performance of CP thin films in optoelectronic devices prepared by the current fabrication methods has been rather limited largely due to the disordered structure. Liquid crystalline polymers (LCPs) have been widely investigated for various optical, mechanical, and electrical applications due to their unique ordered nature. In general LCP design, rod-like mesogens having a large aspect ratio are connected through somewhat flexible linker units to form a main-chain or as a side chain LCP to a flexible polymer. This design allows good molecular interactions between mesogens, but prevents regularly structured crystal formation. Therefore, it is highly desired to devise a novel and universal molecular design strategy to achieve lyotropic liquid crystalline CPs that can be easily processed to form a macroscopically assembled and aligned structure. The synthesis of well-defined conjugated molecules/polymers is a considerable synthetic challenge that many excellent research groups have addressed over the last decade or so. A particularly promising class of potential donor/acceptor materials for use in organic electronics for solution processed polymers is the promising Indacenodithiophene (IDT) unit. Herein we will report our synthetic efforts in the development of innovative polymeric materials containing a suit of wisely selected side chains and having different bridging atoms by replacing IDT with indacenodithiozole (IDDT) system. When incorporated into small molecules or polymers, this structure affords very narrow band-gaps capable of harvesting a large percentage of the solar flux. References; (1) http://ukplaticelectronics.com, C. G.-U. P. E.

Steam reforming is used for the production of hydrogen or other useful products from hydrocarbon fuels such as natural gas. Reforming is the process in which steam at high temperature reacts with the fossil fuel to form Syngas (CO+H2). The steam methane reformer is widely used in industry for the production of hydrogen. It has the advantage that the energy released from the combustion of hydrogen is almost four times as the energy released from the combustion of methane. In the present study, modeling and analysis of the steam methane reformer is carried out while utilizing the energy via solar tower. In the conventional modeling systems, solar based steam reforming is studied only for a single point in time and the dynamic ?uctuations in the solar energy is not taken into account. Therefore, the performance metrics calculated are not necessarily representative of the actual performance of the solar reforming cycle since the performance will obviously be effected by the amount of solar input. In the work, herein, a solar steam reformer is modeled by considering the real-time data for Direct Normal Incident (DNI) irradiation for the city of Doha. As very high temperature is required for reforming, a solar central receiver tower is incorporated which can achieve high temperatures as much as 1300°C. The solar steam reformer is integrated into a solar receiver tower, surrounded by a field of heliostats, such that the solar is directly irradiating the solar reformer. The steam reformer and solar receiver tower is modeled and in-house code on Engineering Equation Solver (EES) software is written for performing the simulations. The system is analyze based on an annual performance so that the fluctuation of solar supply is taken into account with the cycle performance. The performance of steam methane reformer is studied for three representative days of the year that is 29th April, 15th May and 11th August. The performance characteristics of the steam methane reformer is analyzed in terms of methane conversion (Methane Conversion =  (xCO+ xCO2)/(xCO+ xCO2+xCH4), where x is the molar concentration) and molar concentration, while incorporating the solar energy data. For 29th April, the peak incident energy is observed at around 1300 hours and the maximum methane conversion (Methane Conversion = 1) takes place at same time due to high solar irradiation. As for the molar concentration of different species, a maximum hydrogen presence in the peak solar irradiance, and the minimum amount of steam and methane is observed. CO presence tends to increase as well, at solar peak hours whereas the CO2 presence does not vary much and almost remains constant most of the time. Similar trends is observed for 15th May while as for 11th August due to no overcasting and continuous solar irradiance, a smooth trend of solar irradiance and consequently a smooth trend of methane conversion and molar concentrations is observed. The steam methane reformer with the solar receiver tower is effectively converting the methane during the solar hours of day. The study provides information about the performance characteristics of the steam methane reformer.

Microbial Influenced Corrosion (MIC) is a process influenced by various microorganisms especially by sulfate reducing bacteria (SRB) which affects the kinetics of corrosion procedure under anaerobic conditions. About 20% of the annual corrosion damages of metals may be produced by microbial activities especially due to anaerobic corrosion influenced by SRB. MIC is the main contributor of corrosion problems and a leading cause of pipeline failure in oil and gas industries. SRBs are main microorganisms that can anaerobically generate sulfide species causing biocorrosion in the injection networks. Moreover, the produced H2S gas is toxic, corrosive, and responsible for a variety of environmental problems. Additionally, the presence of SRB can result in health and safety risks to workers due to sulfide production. In order to prevent this, oil-producing companies use high concentrations of biocides to disinfect the water and inhibit excessive biofilm formation caused mainly by (SRB). However, traditional biocides may be harmful to environment by forming harmful disinfection byproducts. Also the biocide treatment having other disadvantages like low efficiency against biofilms, release of disinfection byproducts and its high cost. Theses disadvantages can be solved by the use of green biocides including nanomaterials which has very low toxicity, environmental acceptability, safety and ease of use etc. Several nanomaterials have been utilized to inhibit the growth of different microorganisms and can be a possible alternative for controlling SRB biofilm and its corrosion. Here, we introduced an environmentally benign approach to use a green biocide; chitosan-ZnO nanocomposite against SRB induced MIC towards carbon steel. The nanoparticles of chitosan and ZnO were prepared independently and treated together to form the chitosan-ZnO nanocomposite. The nanocomposite was synthesized with different percentage of ZnO initial content and characterized by SEM, TEM, FTIR, TGA etc. The average size of chitosan nanoparticles were in between 40-60 nm and it clearly shows the distribution of ZnO NPs in the chitosan nanoparticles matrix. The particles in chitosan-ZnO nanocomposite were found with almost spherical morphology. The electrodes were made of carbon steel S150 was used for all the experiments. S150 carbon steel electrode of exposed area of 8 mm diameter used for the corrosion experiments after hot mounting process followed by polishing and grinding process. The electrodes were incubated with SRB containing media with and without nanocomposites and kept in a shaking incubator at 37° under inert atmosphere. The effect of the chitosan-ZnO nanocomposite on corrosion inhibition was studied by varying the concentrations of nanocomposites under optimized bacterial concentration and experimental conditions. The surface features and the elemental analysis of the biofilm and corrosion product were evaluated by SEM as well as XPS in different time intervals and compared with the control samples. The surface features of the corroded electrodes was investigated by SEM and profilometry after removing the corrosion product by using a simple chemical treatment procedure. The effect of chitosan-ZnO nanocomposite on corrosion behavior of carbon steel against SRB was investigated by electrochemical impedance spectroscopy, corrosion potential, polarization resistance and polarization curve measurements at different time intervals. It was found that the chitosan-ZnO nanocomposite inhibits the SRB biofilm formation and corrosion. The results of the electrochemical analysis showed that the chitosan-ZnO nanocomposite (10% ZnO content) at 250 ppm concentration having highest corrosion inhibition and can be used an effective corrosion inhibition agent against SRB induced MIC. References Wang, H. F., et al. Materials Chemistry and Physics 124, 791-794, (2010).Vanaei, H. R., et al. International Journal of Pressure Vessels and Piping 149, 43-54, (2017). Xu, D. et al. Engineering Failure Analysis 28, 149-159, (2013).