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This study investigates the interactions between climate change and human health with a particular focus on Qatar, using the DPSIR (Driving Forces, Pressures, States, Impacts, Responses) framework. Key drivers, including economic development and population growth, contribute to increased greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, exerting pressure on Qatar's climate through rising temperatures and altered precipitation patterns, as modeled by the MIT Regional Climate Model (MRCM). The findings reveal critical gaps in understanding the state of climate-health interactions, including insufficient disease data, incomplete climate-health linkages, and significant research gaps. These limitations hinder targeted responses to climate-sensitive diseases, which have shown an increase over the years. The study identifies the pathways through which climatic shifts contribute to immediate health risks, such as heat-related illnesses and respiratory conditions, as well as long-term impacts, including chronic diseases and mental health challenges. Despite Qatar's efforts through national and international strategies, the DPSIR analysis highlights the urgent need for enhanced research, improved data collection, and tailored actions to address these challenges. Strengthened adaptation, resilience-building, and emission reduction strategies remain essential for safeguarding public health in the face of accelerating climate change.

Among the carbon capture technologies, oxy-fuel combustion is more competitive in terms of efficiency and cost. However, pure oxygen is required for oxy-combustion, and the oxygen separation from the air by conventional methods is costly and energy-intensive. Ion transport membranes (ITMs) have shown considerable improvement in energy efficiency. The current ITMs suffer from low O2 permeation flux required for practical fuel conversion rates. The experimental and numerical methodologies are not much developed in studying the ITM integrated reactors. Therefore, using a porous medium can give much insight into the technology. Understanding the flow dynamics and combustion properties inside an oxygen transport membranes reactor (OTMR) is of utmost importance to developing efficient systems. Most studies have focused on analyzing face-to-face horizontal porous plate reactor designs. A horizontal reactor’s flame structure and buoyancy effect are substantially different from that of a vertical reactor. Hence, the current study aims to investigate oxy-methane combustion in a vertical face-to-face porous plate reactor to mimic the performance of an OTMR using computational fluid dynamics (CFD). Axial and transverse temperature profiles and species concentration profiles are analyzed concerning the feed inlet flow rates, inlet temperature, and oxidizer ratio in this work. The outlet and maximum temperatures vary from 1,587 K to 1,621 K and 1,751 K to 2,341 K upon increasing the oxidizer ratio from 0.20 to 0.35; correspondingly, it shows that the maximum temperature within the reactor is significantly affected by the oxidizer ratio. In the vertical OTMR, the maximum and outlet temperatures are lowered by 82 K and 53 K, respectively, compared to the horizontal one because of the uniform temperature distribution in the former case. This research will help to improve reactor design for OTMR applications. Further investigations on the flame structure and static flame stability are required for a better understanding and insight into the reactor design.

Date palm trees play a crucial role in the provision of essential nutrition by producing date fruits and are widely cultivated in Qatar. The processing of date fruits generates substantial quantities of carbon-rich date stone possessing remarkable energy potential. This inherent energy can be harnessed by applying pyrolysis techniques, which facilitate the production of many products with commercial value. Despite being a novice process, microwave (MW) pyrolysis has emerged as a promising avenue for converting biomass waste into eco-friendly biofuels. Nonetheless, the adoption of this new approach necessitates a comprehensive exploration of its ecological implications, warranting a meticulous life-cycle analysis (LCA) to ascertain its environmental footprint. As a result, using GaBi software, this study compares the life-cycle environmental impact of conventional and microwave-aided pyrolysis processes of date stone waste. The study also assesses the techno-economic analysis of the two processes. The physical and thermal analyses of the date stone waste indicated that the biomass is a high-energy source (Net calorific value-15.6 MJ/kg). While the life-cycle assessment indicated that MW pyrolysis has a greater implication on climate change (14.94 % more), ozone depletion (14.29 % more), ionizing radiation (14.36 % more), and photochemical ozone production (14.44 % more) than conventional pyrolysis. This demonstrates that conventional pyrolysis is less harmful to the environment than MW pyrolysis. The techno-economic analysis infers that conventional pyrolysis mode is superior to MW pyrolysis for the valorisation of date stone waste in terms of profitability, financial stability, and overall success.

The population growth, rising living standards, and climate change impacts will considerably affect the energy needs for the built environment in the coming decades. Because of the climatic changes, the shift in humidity levels and dry/wet bulb temperatures would change the required energy to maintain the same spatial comfort conditions. Furthermore, the heating load may be lowered due to the higher winter temperatures; however, the cooling load will be significantly augmented for some regions. Thus, it is imperative to quantify the impacts of building heating and cooling loads concerning climate change. This will help emphasize increasing energy capacity, improving efficiency, and developing energy policies to reduce and adapt to the climate change implications. The present study focuses on analyzing the recent works addressing and exploring the effects of climate change on the built environment’s energy consumption. This paper examines and discusses the accepted approaches and projections of building energy change. The survey shows that the estimations of heating/cooling loads are significantly affected by the type of building, city, and other regional factors. Finally, the challenges associated with predicting building energy requirements are presented and discussed.

Carbon capture, storage, and sequestration are crucial for mitigating climate change's adverse effects. To limit global temperature rise within the 2 °C target, it is essential to implement both artificial and natural carbon-capturing techniques and utilize renewable resources. Natural carbon sinks serve as vital resources for CO2 reduction, but quantifying their carbon sequestration is complex due to potential CO2 release from the upper ocean. Accurate assessment requires detailed modeling of interacting natural processes. This review critically examines various natural carbon pools, methodologies, and modeling techniques for carbon accounting, particularly in urban landscapes. The strengths and limitations of each approach are analyzed, leading to specific recommendations. Socio-economic benefits associated with natural carbon sinks are also presented. Ground and field measurements are found to be the most accurate methods, while accounting methods tend to be study-specific. Additionally, satellite earth observation, drone, and airborne measurements have significant potential for enhancing ecosystem analysis, assessment, and mapping. By comprehensively assessing these factors, this review contributes to the development of effective strategies for carbon accounting and management in diverse environments.

In this time of increasing consciousness of global warming and the likelihood that fossil fuels – particularly crude oil and natural gas – will become less available and more costly, all countries are looking at their options for maintaining energy supply over the coming decades. The formation and adoption of cutting-edge, cost-effective, and efficient biomass-to-energy technologies will meet a sizeable portion of Sudan’s energy needs and have a positive cascading effect on other economic sectors as part of the overall effort to better utilize all forms of biomass for the efficient provision of energy in Sudan. This study looks at the major opportunity to produce energy from sewage wastewater in Khartoum State in Sudan. The sewage wastewater and the associated biomass are estimated and analyzed for heat and electricity production. It was found that the biogas generated from treatment plants in Khartoum State could produce about 94 MW and 188 MW of electricity and heat, respectively. In addition, the social and environmental aspects are also discussed.

Sudan is a large African country with a land area of 1.882 million km2 and a population of 43 million people. The country has a fast-growing population, consistent migration from rural to urban areas, raised per-capita demand for power and fuels, and falling fossil-fuel production. Additional baseload or on-demand energy sources are needed to supply the Nile Valley system. The increasing silting of the different hydroelectricity dams is a problem for the future availability of hydroelectricity generation. Non-recyclable combustible municipal solid waste and other urban organic waste streams can be used to provide low-emission baseload electricity and a cost-effective supply of heat for industry. These wastes, which have the potential to be used as feedstocks for energy production, have already been gathered together in enormous quantities. The current landfill disposal method is becoming increasingly expensive, and it leads to several negative environmental impacts, such as methane emissions and air and water pollution. This research looks at how the non-recyclable combustible fraction of waste collected in Khartoum State can be used to generate considerable amounts of energy and industrial heat while reducing the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. This might be accomplished by employing and adopting efficient technologies that are extensively used elsewhere in the globe, as well as securing the additional benefits of more permanent jobs, fewer fossil fuel imports, and improved national resource security for Sudan.

The considerable growth of the renewables’ shares in the energy market paves the way towards United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 7. Solar photovoltaics (PV) are more economically viable amongst other renewables because of their lower, easier installation and reliability. However, the PV, like other renewables, is more vulnerable to climatic conditions. Currently, the monofacial leads the PV market; however, it is expected that the bifacial PV will be dominant as it offers more energy yield at a lower cost. It is thus crucial to analyze the PV performance concerning climatic conditions. The merits of this study include: (i) the performance of bifacial PV for the climate change scenarios is analyzed, which is lacking in the literature; (ii) detailed monofacial and bifacial PV mathematical models are developed to estimate the PV output; and (iii) the comparison is made between monofacial and bifacial PVs performance and their dependence on climatic conditions. The climate model is used to predict the ambient conditions for the years 2050 and 2080. The average hourly responses of solar irradiance and energy yield are presented and analyzed.

The Persian Gulf hosts densely located desalination plants that represent 50% of the global seawater desalination. The salinity levels in this gulf, especially in Qatar, are very high because of constant brine discharge and the shallow seawater (∼35 m depth). With the growing population, more desalination plants need to be installed to meet freshwater demands. The rising salinity levels and the ambient and sweater temperature will raise the specific energy consumption to produce a unit distillate because of climate change. Furthermore, the brine discharge affects the marine ecosystem and deteriorates the soil and groundwater quality. Thus, it is imperative to design and innovate a low or zero liquid discharge (LLD or ZLD) desalination system to mitigate climate change impacts and guarantee a safe marine environment. One such ZLD system is proposed and assessed in this study. The multi-effect desalination (MED) with higher top brine temperature (75 °C) is integrated with humidification dehumidification (HDH) system for brine concentration. In the final stage, the salts are removed via an evaporative crystallizer using thermal energy. The performance ratio (PR) with top brine temperature and temperature difference across each evaporator is evaluated and discussed. Finally, the specific energy consumption of the ZLD system is analyzed for different operating conditions.

Due to Qatar’s increasing population and electricity consumption worldwide, several countries have started taking measures to reduce the carbon footprint associated with the growing energy demand. Furthermore, the climate in hot and humid countries like Qatar is becoming warmer over the years. This causes electricity consumption for cooling to increase, causing a rise in carbon emissions. Research is still being conducted on how renewable sources, along with other measures, can be optimally applied and how they can be integrated into building design to reduce energy consumption. Especially in Qatar, the application of renewable energy into buildings is more complex and limited. The purpose of this research is to test whether the application of demand-side management for a residential villa would efficiently reduce its annual energy consumption, hence reducing the environmental impact. This paper studies the energy demand of a residential villa case in Qatar for a reference year using Design Builder as an energy modeling software and proposes an optimum system for photovoltaics (PV) integration using HOMER software. The results show that PV integration on the villa rooftop reduces the energy demand and is found to be an economically and environmentally attractive solution.

Multi-effect desalination (MED) uses less energy and has a smaller footprint than other thermal desalination systems. The MED plant consists of cascaded horizontal-tube falling film exchangers (HFFE), offering improved heat transfer at lower liquid loads. The MED plant’s current working temperature range is 40 °C–65 °C, for which 6–8 HFFE can be used. However, this limit can be extended to 5 °C–85 °C by using new antiscalants and an adsorption vapor compression system. Thus, more HFFE can provide enhanced water production. Furthermore, the heat transfer studies for this range are limited. Therefore, this work presents a 2-D computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model in Ansys fluent v19.0 to examine the film thickness, the temperature distribution, and the heat transfer coefficient for working temperatures of 5 °C, 65 °C, and 85 °C at various liquid loads. It is found that the heat transfer is improved at higher temperatures and liquid loads by 21 %–37 %, which indicates lower energy requirements and better distillate productivity.

With the expeditious economic and population growth, trade, and tourism, artificial island development (AID) has gained interest in overcoming available land limitations in the past decades. The Arabian Gulf is characterized by extreme temperatures and high salinities and is home to diverse marine habitats comprising reefs, mangroves, swamps, and seagrass meadows. However, these ecosystems are witnessing stern pressure due to reclamation activities for AID. The environmental impact assessment (EIA) is extensively used globally to produce sustainable management standards. One such case of environmental concerns associated with the AID was focused on in this study is Qatar's island (QI). A comprehensive EIA was carried out before and during the construction activities. The analyses include meteorology, hydrodynamics, wave climate and bathymetry, seawater and sediment quality, infauna habitat and benthic species, and fish community. Results showed overall median turbidity levels recorded (5.39 NTU at buoy 1) and (2.46 NTU at buoy 2) were within the baseline survey (5.2 ± 11.8 NTU). Before construction, Se and Ba levels were higher according to the sediment quality analysis; however, during construction, the levels were within acceptable ranges per Dutch requirements. In addition, strategic measures and guidelines were proposed, which can be opted for future developments.

Qatar is a peninsular country with predominantly hot and humid weather, with 88% of the total population being immigrants. As such, it leaves the country liable to the introduction and dissemination of vector-borne diseases, in part due to the presence of native arthropod vectors. Qatar's weather is expected to become warmer with the changing climatic conditions across the globe. Environmental factors such as humidity and temperature contribute to the breeding and distribution of different types of mosquito species in a given region. If proper and timely precautions are not taken, a high rate of particular mosquito species can result in the transmission of various vector-borne diseases. In this study, we analyzed the environmental impact on the probability of occurrence of different mosquito species collected from several different sites in Qatar. The Naive Bayes model was used to calculate the posterior probability for various mosquito species. Further, the resulting Naive Bayes predictions were used to define the favorable environmental circumstances for identified mosquito species. The findings of this study will help in the planning and implementation of an active surveillance system and preventive measures to curb the spread of mosquitoes in Qatar.

With the global population set to continue growing, the demand for energy will increase. Fossil fuel resources are in decline, and their use is associated with environmental destruction. This highlights the need for more investment in energy resources that can meet the global demand without harming the environment. Clean forms of energy, such as solar, wind, and hydropower, are both successful and readily available, yet investment in them has fluctuated. The affordability, ease of availability and technological maturity of oil in some regions has contributed to the slow uptake of investment in renewable energy projects. This paper discusses the main barriers hindering investment in clean energy production, highlights crucial incentives that could speed up investment processes, and examines several necessary strategies for the transition from fossil-fuel-based energy to renewable sources.

Abstract The techno‐economic analyses of 67 MW and 144 MW photovoltaics (PV) power plants are performed and the results are compared with the diesel power plants situated in two cities in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The feasibility analysis is conducted with the aim to show the technical and economic viability of replacing the conventional fossil fuel‐based plants with clean production systems in the country. The production capacity of the proposed PV plants based on the single‐axis tracking configuration is around 35% higher than that of the tilted‐fixed configuration, equivalent to a reduction in the production cost by more than 20% for both the plants. PV plants with a tracking system can produce up to 23% excess electricity than the base‐case diesel plants. Moreover, the production costs at the Bisha plant can be as low as 1.77 ¢/kWh, considering the credit resulting from the reduction of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The feasibility of installing a 144 MW PV plant in six cities in the country is also evaluated. The results indicate that the average cost of electricity production is 2.22 ¢/kWh and the average annual reduction of GHG emissions is 462 tCO2/GWh with the replacement of a diesel power plant of similar capacity. The effects of subsidies, feed‐in tariff rates, and electricity export escalation rates are also evaluated.

ABSTRACT: The multi effect desalination (MED) plant comprises of horizontal tube falling evaporators with the operational range of 40°C – 65°C, and can accommodate 8 – 10 evaporators/effects. The operating temperature range is limited by scale formation and condenser temperature. With the recent advances in antiscalants and vapor compression systems, the higher limit can be increased up to 85°C, and the lower limit can be reduced to 5°C. Therefore, more evaporators can be used to augment the amount of desalinated water, and the thermal performance of evaporators for a broader range needs to be assessed. In this study, the heat transfer coefficient at inlet temperatures of 85°C and 5°C, and different liquid loads, are numerically estimated. For this purpose, a two-dimensional CFD model is developed and validated. The computed results demonstrate that the heat transfer coefficient at the impact point is the highest that decreases with the angular position of the tube. The recirculations in the impingement zone enhance the heat transfer because of better mixing. At Ti = 85°C, the heat transfer performance is better due to lower film thickness, recirculations, and broad thermal developing region. For a liquid load of Γ1/2 = 0.09 kg/(m•s), the heat transfer coefficient at Ti = 85°C is 43.5 % higher as compared to that of at Ti = 5°C. Furthermore, the higher operating temperature limit should be increased instead of decreasing operating temperature for improved heat transfer performance.

This paper describes a case study carried out to quantify the benefits achieved from the application of model predictive control (MPC) to regulate the pH in a brine dechlorination process. A mechanistic model of the process was developed and used to design a PI controller with feedforward compensation. The model was also used to quantify the potential benefits of commissioning an MPC controller on the process. Following the analysis with the mechanistic model, the designed MPC scheme was applied to the actual process. Through real-time results, it is shown that the deployment of this controller led to substantial improvements in disturbance rejection capabilities when compared to the existing PI controller with lead- lag feedforward compensator. The improved disturbance rejection led to a reduction in pH variation which resulted in reduced operational costs, more reliable production, and improvement in the efficiency of the dechlorination process.

Falling film evaporators are used in applications where high heat transfer coefficients are required for low liquid load and temperature difference. One such application is the lithium bromide (LiBr)-based absorber and generator. The concentration of the aqueous LiBr solution changes within the absorber and generator because of evaporation and vapor absorption. This causes the thermophysical properties to differ and affects the film distribution, heat, and mass transfer mechanisms. For thermal performance improvement of LiBr-based falling film evaporators, in-depth analysis at the micro level is required for film distribution and hydrodynamics. In this work, a 2D numerical model was constructed using the commercial CFD software Ansys Fluent v18.0. The influence of the liquid load corresponding to droplet and jet mode, and the concentration, on film hydrodynamics was examined. It was found that the jet mode was more stable at a higher concentration of 0.65 with ±0.5% variation compared to lower concentrations. The recirculation was stronger at a low concentration of 0.45 and existed until the angular position (θ) = 10°, whereas at 0.65 concentration it diminished after θ = 5°. The improved heat transfer is expected at lower concentrations due to lower film thickness and thermal resistance, more recirculation, and a higher velocity field.

Greenhouse gas emissions from the combustion of fossil fuels pose a serious threat to global warming. Mitigation measures to counter the exponential growth and harmful impact of these gases on the environment require techniques for the reduction and capturing of carbon. Oxy-fuel combustion is one such effective method, which is used for the carbon capture. In the present work, a numerical study was carried out to analyze characteristics of oxy-fuel combustion inside a porous plate reactor. The advantage of incorporating porous plates is to control local oxy-fuel ratio and to avoid hot spots inside the reactor. A modified two-steps reaction kinetics model was incorporated in the simulation for modeling of methane air-combustion and oxy-fuel combustion. Simulations were performed for different oxidizer ratios, mass flow rates, and reactor heights. Results showed that that oxy-combustion with an oxidizer ratio (OR) of 0.243 could have the same adiabatic flame temperature as that of air-combustion. It was found that not only does OR need to be changed, but also flow field or reactor dimensions should be changed to achieve similar combustion characteristics as that of air-combustion. Fifty percent higher mass flow rates or 40% reduction in reactor height may achieve comparable outlet temperature to air-combustion. It was concluded that not only does the oxidizer ratio of oxy-combustion need to be changed, but the velocity field is also required to be matched with air-combustion to attain similar outlet temperature.