Qatar Foundation Annual Research Conference Proceedings Volume 2018 Issue 1

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.