Qatar Foundation Annual Research Forum Volume 2011 Issue 1

The debate around carbon emission reduction seems to be hinging on capture and storage despite limited information about suitable sites and associated risks. It is unfortunate that alternatives to underground storage have not been discussed and disseminated for public opinion. This presentation aims at demystifying the broader picture on carbon management and the associated issues. Given the current lack of progress on a large-scale carbon management, it is important to look at alternative carbon sequestration methods that carry less risk but may require further development work. In this context, carbon mineralization using a special chemical reaction approach that aims to solve two environmental problems in one solution has been studied. This approach stems from the fact that the GCC states produce fresh water from desalination processes and therefore reject huge amounts of concentrated brine into the sea and at the same time emit large amounts of CO2 from the massive hydrocarbon industries. These challenging environmental problems are the subject of a qatar national research fund project undertaken at Qatar University. The results obtained indicate that it is feasible to convert a significant amount of captured CO2 into a stable bicarbonate and at the same time reduce concentrated brine reject into the Arabian Gulf. Details of the proposed process will be presented. This is considered as a major contribution given the current status of the carbon conundrum.

Clean air is an essential requirement to protect human health and the ecosystem. Achieving acceptable air quality requires the monitoring of ambient air quality, the setting of standards by the Ministry of Environment (MoE), and the implementation of control technologies.

Air quality is a national priority for Qatar. The Qatar Energy and Environment Research Institute (QEERI) and TOTAL Research Center-Qatar, with their knowledge of local conditions, have set up a joint research pilot project to assess air quality within a 15–20 km radius circle centered on Qatar Foundation. This project will provide the policy maker with air quality monitoring data and real-time pollutant concentration mapping, so that they may develop air quality management strategies.

The pilot project will encompass most of Doha, as well as “background” areas, thus providing valuable information towards understanding the dynamics of air pollution. Although limited in geographic scope, the pilot project will help to understand the potential issues that would be associated with a full-scale project. These issues include assessing the quality of existing data, testing of various research tools and methods, identification and communication with the stakeholders involved. Importantly, the success of this project relies on data availability and quality from existing and forthcoming air quality monitoring stations.

To account for the small-scale variability of concentrations, typically not represented by fixed monitoring stations, a network of micro-sensors is being built. It will provide additional data to assess the influence from specific emission sources, in particular traffic, on air quality. A number of sensors will be deployed at varying distance along the roads. Data from the micro-sensors will be evaluated against fixed monitoring stations data as a performance benchmark.

Kriging is used to produce real-time concentrations maps. This advanced interpolation technique uses auxiliary data such as emissions inventory, land use, or model outputs in order to derive concentration information between measurement points. Kriging output consists of real-time concentration maps constrained by all the available information.

Training and capacity building will be also an important outcome of this pilot project between QEERI and TOTAL, thanks to the participation of students from Qatari universities to the project.

A limestone-plateau of 11,400 sq. km, Qatar continues to import approximately 90% of its food. By establishing a position of foreign dependence, Qatar's food security is at risk due to fluctuating prices (as experienced in 2008) and potential disruptions in supply. The total arable land in the GCC is in the order of 1.7%, resulting in an industry that only accounts for 1–4% of total revenue (0.1% in Qatar). As such, Qatar is only 23% self-sufficient in vegetables, 0.76% in cereal, 23.1% in fruits and 12.5 % in livestock.

At present production outputs, Qatar's self-sufficiency will be further reduced as demand increases. For instance, Qatar's population increased linearly at 14.3 % per year from 2003 (0.71 million) to 2009 (1.6 million) and is expected to reach 3.2 million by 2020 and 4.9 million by 2030 Moreover, inevitable domestic vulnerabilities could hinder the productivity of the domestic system. For instance, temperatures in the Gulf are forecasted to increase by 1.8°C by 2040 leading to desertification, whilst increasing water scarcity in a region already heavily water stressed. It is estimated that 73% of aquifers in the GCC have depleted, whilst locally, aquifers are used 9 times faster than their replenishing rate.

The development of a domestic food system, agro-investment and continued activity in the global market should be considered as critical constituents in any final food security strategy. Sustainable local production presents the core of the Qatar National Food Security Program, which is centred on solar-desalination as a means for water supply. Agro-investment is essential because it allows the importer to benefit from virtual water through the import of water intensive crops. Finally, enhancing purchasing power and diversifying suppliers allows the importer to establish a stronger position in the global market. The proposed food program faces the tough challenge of achieving food security whilst preserving the natural environment. As such, this paper will discuss the dynamic relationship between the food system and its environment, explore its resilience and ultimately put forward a series of recommendations which are aimed at enhancing Qatar's food security whilst considering its environment.

Compared with conventional diesel refining process, GTL diesel offers significant environmental advantages such as less carbon emissions and improvement of air quality. However, the GTL technology often requires intensive energy and resources input.

This paper applies Life cycle assessment (LCA) method to quantify the environmental impacts of gas-to-liquid fuel processes. LCA is a tool for the analysis of environmental impacts of a product or a system, taking into account the complete life cycle of a product. Data are collected from the literature for the current “common practice”. Impact assessment was carried out considering 18 impact categories classified into three damage categories: human health, ecosystem quality and resources.

This paper will present results of environmental burdens of GTL diesel in comparison with biomass biodiesel processes. The results indicate how much of each process's contribution to environmental burdens, thus suggesting where efforts shall be placed in order to improve the environmental performance. Source of the environmental burdens will also be identified and suggestions will be made how the environmental impacts of GTL technology can be minimize through improved design and energy integration.

Amidoximes are an important class of organic compounds featuring a fused amide and oxime functionality and their use as starting materials for the synthesis of valuable heterocyclics and related intermediates enabled wide applications in novel pharmaceuticals, antitumor agents, antimalarial agents, nitric oxide synthase (NOS) substrates, enhanced textile materials, synthetic polymers, and chelating resins. In this work, amidoxime functionality dependent CO2 adsorption behavior is presented. It is showed that amidoxime groups offer new chemical terminals for selective CO2 binding and such previously unknown behavior puts this well-known class of organic building blocks into spotlight for the pursuit of commercial scale CO2 capture and storage. In an attempt to quantify their performance, four representative amidoximes with varying amidoxime content were screened by using high-pressure magnetic suspension sorption apparatus. The highest percent amidoxime functionality present in acetamidoxime was found to show the highest capacity with 2.71 mmol/g. Acetamidoxime also featured a dimerization, which leads to an enhanced adsorption with an increase in temperature. Moreover, polymeric amidoxime showed superior adsorption per surface area when compared to a well-known activated carbon.

This paper presents the results of an experimental work and life cycle analysis of reinforced mortar samples retrofitted with natural, and virgin and recycled polymers. The objectives of this study were to investigate the behavior of retrofitted concretes experimentally, and to compare the defined fiber reinforced concrete samples from environmental point of view using life cycle analysis. The mixtures of reinforced concretes was prepared as control mixture which includes no fibers, natural (palm) fiber reinforced mixture, virgin and recycled polypropylene (PP) and low density polyethylene (LDPE) reinforced concrete mixtures, natural fiber and virgin and recycled PP reinforced concrete mixtures, and natural fiber and virgin and recycled LDPE reinforced concrete mixtures. The experimental tests were performed to investigate the behavior of reinforced concrete samples in such a way that either durable or not. Moreover, those concrete mixtures were also compared using life cycle assessment method according to their environmental effects. Within the scope of the study, GaBi software was used for Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) analysis. Landfilling was considered as reference scenario and compared with filled recycled plastics. A quantitative impact assessment was performed for four environmental impact categories, global warming (GWP) over a hundred years, human toxicity (HTP), abiotic depletion (ADP) and acidification potential (AP) were taken into consideration during LCA. At the end of the study, according to the compressive strength tests results, it was seen that natural fiber reinforced concrete did not perform well at each testing age, and also according to the pore definition test, permeability of natural fiber reinforced concrete was higher than that of the control mixture which means that durability of natural fiber reinforced concrete against harsh environment is very low. Moreover, according to life cycle analysis, recycled polymer fibers reinforced concrete mixtures have lower environmental effect for all impact assessment categories. On the other hand, natural fiber reinforced concrete mixtures has the worst environmental effect, but when the natural fiber mixed with recycled or virgin polymers those concrete mixtures have better environmental effect.

Due to exponential growth of population and consumption of natural resources at an even faster pace, the impact of human behavior on the natural environment is becoming readily apparent. Resources are becoming less abundant, space is becoming more limited, and pollution of air, water, and land are beginning to have a direct impact on the inhabitants of the planet. This paper presents the findings of the study that was undertaken to understand the environmentally significant behavior. The study analyzes the factors that have been found to have some influence, positive or negative, on pro-environmental behavior such as demographic factors, external factors (economic, social and cultural) and internal factors (motivation, pro-environmental knowledge, awareness, values, attitudes, emotion, responsibilities and priorities). The study consist of two parts, part one was a questionnaire-based exploratory study to elicit responses from citizens and other residents. Utilizing suitable sampling technique, responses were collected from a multitude of respondents. This was done to provide representation of various groups residing in Qatar. Based on the findings of the questionnaire study and exhaustive literature review the second part of the study focused on developing an interpretative structural model of the barriers to pro-environmental behavior. The research shows that not all barriers of require the same amount of attention. There exists a group of barriers that have a high driving power and low dependence requiring maximum attention and are of strategic importance and another group that have a high dependence but low driving power. This classification provides a useful tool to policy makers developing strategies to conserve environment so as to differentiate between independent and dependent variables which would further help them to focus on those variables that are most important for inculcating environmentally responsible behavior in the people residing in the state of Qatar.

A new class of treatment processes called Advanced Reduction Processes (ARPs) has been developed and employed for destroying persistent organic contaminants in wastewater. ARPs combine reducing reagents with activating methods to produce highly reactive reducing free radicals. These ARPs have the potential to effectively destroy a wide range of oxidized contaminants such as chlorinated organics, perchlorate, nitrate, nitrite, chromate, arsenate, selenate, bromate and a number of radionuclides. Sponsored by Qatar National Research Fund (QNRF) under the National Priorities Research Program (NPRP), this research is the first effort to chart the boundaries of this new group of treatment processes applied to degrading chlorinated organics by reductive dechlorination. ARPs were applied for destroying 1,2-dichloroethane (DCA) which is detected in industrial wastewaters and sludges in several petrochemical and oil and gas industries. The literature indicates that DCA is very difficult to destroy using conventional treatment processes. This novel approach of ARPs has the potential to effectively destroy this persistent contaminant because ARPs overcome kinetic limitations of conventional processes by producing highly reactive reducing free radicals that can rapidly destroy chlorinated contaminants.

Batch experiments were conducted with all combinations of reducing reagents (4) and activating methods (3) resulting in 12 potential ARPs being evaluated against one target compound (DCA). The reagents evaluated are dithionite, sulfite, sulfide, and ferrous iron. The activating methods evaluated are UV light generated by medium-pressure lamps (UV-M), UV light generated by narrowband lamps (UV-N), and microwave irradiation (MW). Over 90 % degradation of DCA was accomplished using S2O42- as the reducing agent and medium-pressure UV lamp as the activating method. The rate of DCA degradation was rapid indicating that the kinetics would not limit the practical application of ARPs for efficient removal of DCA from wastewater.

CO2 is one of the byproducts of natural gas production in Qatar. High rate of natural gas production in Qatar has led to significant amounts of CO2 production. Release of CO2 into the atmosphere may be harmful from the global warming standpoint. Recent increase in CO2 concentration in atmosphere due to burning of fossil fuels and deforestation may be one of the main causes for acceleration in global warming. Since fossil fuels will be a critical component of world energy supplies for the coming decades, methods for disposal of CO2 that do not involve long residence of CO2 in the atmosphere should be studied.

One of these methods is injection of CO2 in underground saline aquifers. It is generally believed that saline aquifers provide the largest potential for CO2 sequestration. However, the effort required to screen and select saline aquifers for safe and long-term storage is significant. It is also important that screened CO2 storage sites are exploited to their full potential.

In this work, we studied CO2 sequestration potential in Qatar's Aruma aquifer. Aruma aquifer is a saline aquifer in the southwest of Qatar. It occupies an area of about 1985 km2 on land, which is approximately 16% of Qatar's area. We developed a compositional model for CO2 sequestration in the Aruma aquifer. Our model is based on available log data and flow test data from the Qatar Department of Agricultural and Water Research. We modeled CO2 injection at a constant rate for a period of 30 years and monitored the CO2 propagation for 200 years. We identified a suitable CO2 injection rate to keep pore pressure below formation fracturing pressure. We also studied water production at some distance from CO2 injection wells as a possible way to control pore pressure. This method resulted in significant increase in CO2 sequestration potential of the Aruma aquifer. The water produced from this aquifer is less saline than seawater and could provide a good water source in the desalination process. The main source of current Qatar's water usage is desalination of seawater.

Background: The impact of heat stress alone on immune function is complex in nature; however, it appears a core temperature within the range of 37–39±C has little impact on neutrophil, lymphocyte and natural killer cell function. However, during passive heating where core temperature increases outside of this range there is a proliferation in leukocytes and cytokines with the magnitude dependent upon the extent and the duration of the heat stress.

Laboratory and field-based experiments investigating the effect of exercise on immune function have shown moderate levels of training enhances the immune function; however, both high intensity acute and chronic exercise can result in immune suppression. Research has shown that immune suppression is at least partly responsible for the reported increase incidence of infection in athletes, which is influenced by a number of factors including, and possibly a combination of intensity and duration of exercise; and the psychological stress of training and competition.

Given that both passive heating and exercise can have significant effects on the immune function that are based upon the stress experienced, it seems plausible that combined impact of heat stress and exercise stress may have an accumulative effect.

Conclusion: Unfortunately, relatively little is known about the immunosuppressive effect of exercising in extreme temperature. This is an important consideration to individuals completing physical labour or athletes training and playing in an extreme environment such as that experienced during the summer months in Qatar.

We aim to develop an energy-efficient, low-cost desalination technology for creating new, affordable water sources from brackish waters. Since Qatar has extremely limited rechargeable water sources, technologies facilitating safe use of impaired and unconventional water sources are needed. Capacitive deionization (CDI) technology can meet the unique, logistical and economic needs for inland desalination. CDI technology, unlike reverse osmosis and nanofiltration, operates under ambient pressure and can be sustained with renewable energy sources. In this process, ions move to the electrode surface and build up an electrical double layer (EDL) when an external potential is applied. Metal oxide nano-particle coatings are widely used in super-capacitors to increase the capacitance. We are employing fourth-generation CDI technology (i.e., alumina, silica nano-particle coated porous carbon) for brackish water treatment. The presence of oxides together with the functional groups on the carbon surface enhances the ion removal process. Sorption capacity of up to 0.05 mM/g electrode has been achieved for monovalent ions with high reversibility and no obvious loss of capacity in long-term operation. During regeneration, up to 50% of the charge can be harvested. Preliminary results indicate that higher sorption capacity exists for divalent cations compared to monovalent ions. Comprehensive tests are underway for various electrolytes (1:2, 2:1, 2:2) and brackish water samples to cover a wide gradient in salt concentration and ionic composition. This project will lead to the development of low-cost inland desalination systems and can be expected to boost Qatar's scientific profile in global and regional water industry.

While much has been made of sustainable living, green architecture and home design, the vast majority of green home technologies and related environmental innovations have been developed and tested in countries that do not possess the harsh climate found in Qatar. Systems and equipment designed and tested in the UK, for example, would not have been exposed to the heat, humidity and dust commonly found here, and, therefore, their suitability is uncertain. Similarly, there is a data vacuum on the subject of how green home technologies actually do perform in Qatar. Exactly how efficient are some of these technologies and should they be considered as viable alternatives in the support of sustainability planning?

The Green Home Automation Project (GHAP) is an environmental research in which data was collected on the electricity and water usage of a faculty member's villa for a one-year period. The same villa was then theoretically analysed for energy savings using green home automation technologies, energy efficient LED lighting and improved HVAC systems.

A comparative study was performed between the Old Current System (OCS) and the New Proposed System (NPS). Results of the theoretical comparative study showed significant energy savings when compared to the operation of the test villa. Using the suggested improvements, the NPS used 70% less energy for lighting and 40% less energy for HVAC than the OCS. These savings were calculated and compared for a “typical year” per villa.

Phase II of GHAP involved automating the same test villa to determine additional savings that could make the test villa greener. Both the lighting and the air-conditioning was controller via a central controller. Data has been collected over the last six months and indicates a 45% savings in electricity over the previous year.

This real world data supports the conclusion that (1) home automation can substantially reduce energy consumption in the State of Qatar and (2) and that further investigations into other green home innovations that can be automated should be undertaken.

Resource distribution among and within habitats affects the abundance, richness and composition of communities. Yet, the role of resource distribution on species interactions is rarely studied. Generalist predators have the ability to survive extreme conditions by using a variety of foods that allows the population to grow during times of low food availability. Most lizard species are generalist predators, including those of the genus Uromastyx which are mainly herbivores but consume a large variety of plants. To date very few quantitative studies exist on the food and feeding habits of the spiny-tailed lizard worldwide.

The aims of this study are 1) to identify the diet of the lizard Uromastyx aegyptia microlepis, one of the biodiversity flagship species as well as of cultural relevance for Qatar, 2) to report the first data available on the plants consumed by this lizard in Qatar, 3) to help translocation programs directed to the conservation of this species in Qatar.

We examined 371 faecal samples that were collected between March and April 2010 in the Al-Kharrara desert in the south of Qatar. Our results show that in a single month these lizards consumed 34 different plant taxa belonging to at least 17 families, 29 genera and 18 species. Plant diversity was high with up to 19 different taxa found in one single faeces. Animal remains were also found in 26 % of the faeces. We explored the effect of faeces size, sampling day and study zone on the diversity of plants consumed by the lizards and found that all three variables were significantly correlated with plant diversity. Lizards consumed 31% of the plants present in the study area, suggesting that some plants are likely preferred or that grazing-impact by ungulates may affect food availability for lizard populations.

Competition between livestock and native herbivores is a global environmental problem, and livestock management should be implemented for the conservation of native vegetation in Qatar. Conservation efforts in Qatar are constrained by a lack of basic data on the distribution, abundance and population dynamics for nearly all species, and more scientific contributions are needed in the near future.

Thermal desalination process is proven to be robust for large scale installation and meet specific water quality requirement, but it needs high energy cost with serious environmental concerns related to discharge of brine. On the other hand, membrane processes have started gaining market acceptance due to improvement in membrane chemistry, efficient pre-treatment and smaller foot print, but still face many challenges when implemented in high salinity and bio-fouling sea water conditions, like the Arabian Gulf. Current desalination research trend include increasing the top brine temperature in thermal process, combating algal blooms for membrane process, and introducing innovative hybrid processes.

Membrane Distillation (MD) is one of the innovative emerging techniques for desalination of sea water. The driving force in MD is due to vapour pressure difference. The potential advantage of MD process is that feed solutions having temperature much lower than its boiling point under atmospheric pressure can be applied. MD process produces high quality effluent and leverages low grade waste heat and can also be coupled with renewable energy systems. Thus, MD can be efficiently used to recover additional product water from RO and thermal desalination process brines. This will augment the production of water from existing desalination facilities (RO and Thermal) as well as reduce the brine volume discharge and minimize impact to environment. The key challenges in improving the MD process are membrane, process modelling, design, module optimization and recovery of low grade waste heat. A consortium of industry, academic institution, technology providers and water utilities was recently formed in Qatar to evaluate the suitability of MD technology for sea water desalination in the region. The research study is carried out in multi phases including bench scale studies, model development, low grade waste heat evaluation and pilot scale demonstration. Bench scale studies results and evaluation of various technologies will be presented. The project outcome would be sustainable augmentation of water production, reduced environmental impact and capacity building in the State of Qatar.

B. thuringiensis is a gram-positive bacterium which produces, during sporulation, crystalline inclusions containing one or more delta-endotoxins. The latter are selectively toxic against a wide variety of insects, including important pests. Formulations based on B. thuringiensis have been used safely in developed countries as bioinsecticides for agriculture, forestry and disease vector control. This kind of bioinsecticides occupies the first place in the biopesticides world market and is essential for crop protection. The importance of such bioinsecticides and the emergence of new insect resistance cases, promoted worldwide isolation and screening programmes of new strains with particularly high insecticidal activities.

This project aims to develop an integrated approach that will explore activities of new B. thuringiensis isolates from Qatar and the Gulf region, an unexplored region, by performing an important programme of B. thuringiensis strains isolation from Qatar, screening using modern molecular techniques, gene investigation and bioassays.

The screening of 151 B. thuringiensis strains isolated from Qatar, allowed the evidence of strains having different crystal forms. In fact, these strains produce parasporal crystals that have pyramidal, bipyramidal, cubical, spherical and amorphous forms. These results demonstrate the heterogeneity and the fact that they produce different bioinsecticides acting on different insect families. Among these B. thuringiensis strains, only 58 strains produce bipyramidal crystals (38 %).

Similar results were obtained in the laboratory by Al-Zahra Attar and Sara Zakzouk who have screened respectively 199 and 87 other strains and obtained about the same ratio of bipyramidal crystal producing strains. The latter plasmid DNAs were analyzed showing different plasmid patterns. These results demonstrate that the bipyramidal crystal producing strains belong to different families. By PCR and electrophoresis of the amplified DNA fragments, we could predict the nature of the delta-endotoxin coding genes and the delta-endotoxin insecticidal activities. All the studied strain has protease activities except one that is protease minus. Such is very rare among Bacillus thuringiensis strains, but exists in Qatar. This strain is of high industrial value, since preventing proteolysis of delta-endotoxin and secreted active proteins and enzymes and could be considered as a suitable host for stable heterologous gene expression and protein secretion.