Water & Environment – Khalifa University

Numerical Modeling of Radionuclides Dispersion in the UAE Environment

Ara Cruz — Wed, 07 Oct 2020 04:51:28 +0000

The aim of this research project is to enhance the capabilities of the UAE to simulate radionuclides dispersion in marine, atmospheric and continental environments taking account for regional and local features. Since UAE has started the nuclear program by constructing four nuclear power plants, UAE is putting intensive efforts in increasing human capability on nuclear safety. This objective is in-line with the Abu Dhabi Economic Vision 2030 as it serves the purpose of the development of a highly-skilled, science-oriented, workforce of UAE Nationals, and it lays the foundations for research & development in the field of nuclear energy safe usage, which not only supports the Plan’s goal of diversification of the Emirate’s economy but also minimizes the impact of this newly adopted sustainable energy source on the natural environment.

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Integrating Satellite Passive Microwave and Optical Data to Enhance the Monitoring of Antarctic Sea Ice

Ara Cruz — Wed, 07 Oct 2020 04:47:03 +0000

Sea ice is an important component of the Earth system being at the interface between Ocean, Atmosphere, and Ice Sheets. Sea ice has been going dramatic changes in recent decades in response to global warming. The primary goal of this project is to develop new gap-filling sea ice products through novel blending of satellite data …

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Integrating Schemes from UAEREP Projects into a Unified Multi-Component Atmospheric Model

Ara Cruz — Wed, 07 Oct 2020 04:42:36 +0000

The goal of this project is twofold: first, to ensure that all the models developed by the UAEREP awardees are deployed locally for research, testing, and ultimate deployment in coordination with UAE NCM. A local modeling platform will be developed to include all models with their associated libraries and forcing data. Second, the different models developed as part of different projects under the UAEREP program will be integrated. This project will pursue the goal of developing a blended version of one model that integrates all the work of the different investigations and incorporates all updates.

Necessary adjustments will be done in the computational facilities at KU to accommodate the deployment of all models. Eventually, all models and the unified multi-component WRF model will be made accessible only to NCM experts along with the obtained results.

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A Novel System for Air Quality Monitoring in the UAE Using Advanced Satellite and Modeling Techniques

Ara Cruz — Wed, 07 Oct 2020 04:40:10 +0000

The goal of this project is to establish a comprehensive and robust system for the monitoring of air quality conditions in the UAE that is based on satellite imagery, numerical models, and in situ observations. These advanced tools will be in the heart of a reliable monitoring system of air quality across the country, which …

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Towards Achieving a Fog-Ready Air Traffic Management System: Numerical Forecast and Satellite Detection

Ara Cruz — Wed, 07 Oct 2020 04:36:58 +0000

The goal of this project is to develop an operational fog prediction and monitoring system to serve operational needs towards a fog-ready air traffic management system. The operational system will provide operation managers with accurate fog formation and dispersion forecasts around Abu Dhabi in addition to satellite-based tools for fog detection and tracking.

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Low-cost Treatment Systems

Ara Cruz — Sun, 26 Apr 2020 05:41:57 +0000

Having access to safe drinking water is one of the essential requirements for sustaining human life. Unfortunately, more than one-sixth of the world population still lack access to safe drinking water. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), more than 1.5 million deaths occurred in children under five years of age due to consumption of unclean drinking water. The production of adequate and safe drinking water is extremely important to decrease the mortality and morbidity.

Currently, the available technologies offered in low income countries who suffer lack of clean drinking water rely on membrane filtration-based systems. However, these technologies require extensive initial cost, are difficult to operate by local people, and require intensive operational cost. Therefore, the development of low-cost treatment systems is of utmost importance. The aim of this study is to create stand-alone, low-cost desalination devices utilizing solar energy to meet WHO drinking water standards. This study will examine the feasibility of solar energy utilized tube collector for drinking water production to remove organics, turbidity, bacteria and inorganics from source water to meet WHO standards.

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Development, Analysis, and Application of Novel Anti-Oxidant Food Packaging Films from Date Seeds

Ara Cruz — Sun, 26 Apr 2020 05:39:48 +0000

The date palm (phoenix dactylifera) is the major fruit tree in the United Arab Emirates, especially in the southern and eastern parts of the nation. Date fruits are marketed worldwide as a high-value fruit crop. However, date seeds of these fruits are discarded as waste and have not generally received much attention due to lack of popularity and commercial application.

The proposed work aims at the development of novel anti-oxidant films from date seeds that could be used as food wrap for processed and packaged food items such as vegetables, meat, and other “ready-to-eat” food items. The films will be developed from the date seed mucilage using glycerol or gelatin (biomaterials) as the plasticizer. The obtained films would be assessed for their preservative properties such as density, water vapor permeability, color, oxygen permeability, total phenolic content, and anti-oxidant activity. The mechanical and thermal characteristics of the synthesized films would also be studied in detail. The influence of the plasticizer concentration on the resulting films would be analyzed critically to identify its optimum value for the enhanced preservative properties for the resulting films. The presence of large quantities of fiber and substantial amount of tannins, resistant starch, anabolic agents, as well as selenium in date seeds assures that the bio-derived anti-oxidant films of the date seeds would also be edible, enhancing the nutritive value of the preserved food. Also, benchmarking the performance of synthesized anti-oxidant films with the commercial and other lab ready films for food packaging would be carried out. Thus, the anti-oxidant films derived from the date seeds would be a promising and potential substitute for the commercial food wraps/papers.

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Through Light-optimized Agrophotovoltaic Systems for Sustainable Dry-land Agriculture

Ara Cruz — Sun, 26 Apr 2020 05:38:38 +0000

The co-location of photovoltaic and crop production—often referred to as Agrophotovoltaic (APV)—is expected to possess a large potential for marginal land reclamation and the enhancement of solar energy production efficiency in the arid and semi-arid regions of the world. APVs have, in fact, the capability of modifying the surface energy budget by enhancing latent heat fluxes (and evaporative cooling) and reducing sensible heat fluxes (and the consequent heating of land and atmosphere), with predicted beneficial effects on PV performance and crop productivity.

However, the actual magnitude of these effects has not been yet quantified in hyperarid climates like the one characterizing the UAE, where extremely harsh environmental conditions could lead to counter-intuitive results in terms of APV potential for evaporative cooling and crop heat stress mitigation. In particular, since PV shadowing is not a continuous process—varying with the time of the day—and can only partially alleviate the effects of heat- and water-stress the actual potential of classic APV systems for evaporative cooling efficiency in hot hyperarid climates remains mainly uncertain, as well as their actual capability for marginal dry land reclamation and remediation.

This project introduces ‘Through light’-Optimized APV systems (TLo-APVs) as a solution to overcome the limitations of intermittent shadowing and traditional PV systems for an efficient implementation of Agrivoltaic in hot-desert regions. TLo-APVs rely on the recently proposed technology of tracking-integrated CPVs, which are able to concentrate direct light while letting through to the diffuse component of light. Where classic PV shadowing cannot mitigate heat-stress all day around, tracking-integrated CPVs are transparent to diffuse light, allowing for a continuous modulation of the
thermal regime below the photovoltaic system. At the same time, diffuse light is able to sustain photosynthesis to attain a higher overall crop productivity—and higher rates of evapotranspiration—when compared with the ones of intermittently screened crops.

Our project hence aims to quantify the TLo- APVs performance and applicability in hot deserts through an intensive field measurement campaign, and the implementation of standard performance statistical measures and ad-hoc models of surface energy closure, plant growth, and transparent PV efficiency under the UAE climatic and environmental forcing. Insolight is a Swiss start-up company, manufacturing translucent, tracking-integrated CPV modules, has expressed interest in supporting the project by providing the needed modules for the field experimental test.

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Observing the Sky Continuously at Very-high-energy Gamma Rays with the Alto/Hiscore Experiment

Ara Cruz — Sun, 26 Apr 2020 05:34:51 +0000

In order to better understand the Universe, it is necessary to observe the sky at different wavelengths of photons and also using other cosmic messengers such as gravitational waves and neutrinos. This has been demonstrated clearly in recent years with the first detection of gravitational wave signals from black hole and neutron star systems, and with the first measurement of astrophysical neutrinos using sophisticated instruments. What we learn from the combined observations at different wavelengths and various messengers surpasses by far the science that can be done with a single experiment. Neutrino and gravitational waves observatories are either operating or under construction both in the Southern and Northern hemispheres. The photon wavelengths are currently covered by several ground-based telescopes and satellite missions in operation. But, there is a missing piece in the multi-messenger puzzle: the community lacks a wide field-of-view gamma-ray observatory in the Southern hemisphere that is capable of observing gamma-rays continuously at energies above 100 GeV (Giga-electronvolt: 109 eV).

The purpose of this application is to set up a collaboration between scientists from Khalifa University in Abu Dhabi (United Arab Emirates), Linnaeus University (Sweden), Aix-Marseille University and the APC/CNRS laboratory (France), the University of Hamburg (Germany), INAF Brera (Italy), and Institute of Cosmic Sciences of the University of Barcelona (Spain) to explore novel detector techniques for the detection of very-high-energy gamma-rays in the energy range from 100 GeV to 100 TeV (Tera-electronvolt: 1012 eV). The idea is to couple the particle detection technique based on water Cherenkov detectors and scintillators used in the ALTO experiment that is currently under development at Linnaeus University in Sweden and the non-imaging Cherenkov technique used in the HiSCORE experiment that is presently under installation in the Tunka valley in Siberia.

The final goal is to install a hybrid detector array based on the two detection techniques consisting of around a thousand detector units for very-high-energy gamma-ray astronomy in the Southern Hemisphere. The proposed project aligns in several respects with the UAE National Space Strategy 2030. The knowledge and expertise gained from this project such as knowledge about gamma-rays/cosmic-rays, Monte-Carlo simulation skills for particle interaction in the Earth’s atmosphere/detector, handling big data and large computer codes, expertise using advanced particle physics software tools such as GEANT4, CORSIKA, and ROOT can be benefited to various projects related to aerospace, space science, artificial intelligence, and data science. At the national level, future collaboration with researchers from other universities in UAE and space-science related projects like the HOPE project (UAE Space Agency) are highly expected.

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Fixed-bed Reactor for Water Microbial Disinfection via Supported Metal Over Kaolin and Metal Oxide Nanoparticles Composites

Ara Cruz — Sun, 26 Apr 2020 05:26:12 +0000

Environmental impact of conventional disinfection techniques (such as chlorination) cannot be over-emphasized. The current technologies are in need for novel materials with limited or no toxicity to the environment and yielding to high disinfection efficiency, as well as design of high-performance reactors to deploy these materials.

The aim of the project is to design a pilot scale fixed-bed reactor where supported silver nanoparticles on kaolin or ZnO-based glass as efficient and sustainable antimicrobial material for disinfection unit operation in wastewater treatment plants. The activities will be run in two phases—scalable production of environmentally friendly biocidal materials and design of a pilot scale fixed bed reactor to test these materials in a condition that mimics real-life applications. These materials to be synthesized and tested are characterized by: a) low cost, b) high efficiency towards recalcitrant micro-organisms; c) low potential to develop antimicrobial resistance; and d) long-term stability.

Material characterization will follow after synthesis, then the materials will be tested for their disinfectant capabilities in a pilot scale fixed bed reactor. The experimental results to be obtained will be validated using appropriate computational transport and kinetic modelling. The performance of the pilot system will be benchmarked with conventional techniques to evaluate its efficiency and large-scale deployment. This project is of great importance to the UAE, because it will bolster its position as a proponent of sustainable development goals (SDGs), especially the 6th SDG, and sustain its mission and vision to build and accomplish sustainable growth and economy.

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Photothermal Heavy Metals Removal from Water

Ara Cruz — Sun, 26 Apr 2020 05:24:33 +0000

In this project, we develop Photothermal Heavy Metal Removal Devices aiming at bringing unmatched scientific understandings and “know-how” toward the achievement of a reliable industrial wastewater treatment technology that offers; high efficiency, large scalable capacity, and the lowest energy consumption. In addition to being powered by an abundant renewable source of energy, the sun. Additionally, the inherent use of the novel solar absorbing membranes developed in Masdar Institute laboratories enables near 100% device efficiency. The current demonstrated membrane solar absorbance efficiency in our laboratories is 97%, outperforming the state-of-the-art solar energy harvesting technologies (solar cells) that are capped by the Shockley–Queisser ∼ 33% efficiency limit for a single junction.

The research team consists of three professors who demonstrate an in-depth understanding of membrane science and solar energy integration. They will work together with a team of one PhD student and one research associate over a period of 36 months to develop the membranes mentioned above and integrate them in a single device. The work proceeds with fabrication, system testing, and demonstration, concluding with scalability and market feasibility.

Till date, the industrial wastewater treatment technologies that have been proposed in the market did not tap on the usage of solar energy. In this project, we develop solar absorbing membranes that can act as a near black-body object and demonstrate an absorbance of 97%, while at the same time treating wastewater through the pervaporation process. These membranes separate heavy metal ions from wastewater using sunlight only, through a process driven by vapour pressure differences and powered by solar and a nanoscopic phenomenon called capillary pumping. Such a device not only outperforms the existing concepts through integrating solar energy absorbance and wastewater treatment in a single step, but also it raises the thermodynamic energy efficiency limits via a blackbody nanoporous capillary pumping membrane.

The project spans over three years with five interlinked work packages. Fabrication will use state-of-the-art electrospinning technology, composite layering integration, and phase inversion/casting to achieve the most robust and reproducible membranes relying on high caliber analytical assessments that the PI’s laboratory offers. We intend to have a more significant impact on the water-energy nexus across the globe.

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Innovative Hybrid Treatment Systems Toward Sustainable Treatment of Oil and Gas Produced Water: Full Design with Feasibility Study

Ara Cruz — Sun, 26 Apr 2020 05:22:19 +0000

Energy security, water scarcity, and environmental sustainability are the most pressing global challenges facing mankind in the 21st century. In fact, the availability of freshwater resources is crucial to those countries that look for sustainable economic development, particularly in aired regions. In the UAE, water desalination facilities provide about 80% of water consumed in the country. Indeed, massive efforts should be invested in research for finding new water treatment and desalination technology and to decrease the overall cost of the available technologies.

This project will contribute directly to the efforts of achieving one of the goals of the Abu Dhabi 2030 plan as it targets the issues related to water scarcity and lack of water resources and reducing energy consumption in the UAE by providing full water management guidelines toward the utilization of oil- and gas-produced water. Oil- and gas-produced water is water trapped in underground formations that is brought to the surface along with oil or gas in extraction operations. The management of produced water is a propriety for the UAE and the oil and gas industry. Indeed, the amount of produced water makes it the largest waste stream by volume associated with the oil and gas industry and makes the disposal of it a grave problem and burdens the operations of oil and gas industry.

This project will open the way to benefiting from the huge amount of waste produced water during the production of oil and gas, through providing: 1) a new innovative way of harvesting energy from the huge salinity gradient of the oil and gas produced water; 2) full sustainable treatment plan based on utilizing the harvested energy to power the required treatment processes; and 3) full feasibility study addressing the cost and environmental impact issues related to current procedure of disposing the oil and gas produced water.

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