Qatar water challenges
Abstract Qatar has experienced rapid economic growth due to the discovery and production of fuel oil and natural gas (NG). The natural renewable water resources (rainfall and groundwater [GW]) are depleted; and are estimated as 71-m3/per year per capita in 2005. This is far below the water poverty line of 1,000-m3/yca. The GW withdrawal is excessive (compared to replenishment) and is used mainly for irrigation. A very small amount of GW is treated to become potable water and is distributed to consumers. The municipal potable water mainly contains (99%) desalted seawater (DW) and 1% GW. The consumption of DW and electric power (EP) is continuously rising due to the increase in both population and the standard of living. The population have been more than doubled from 2000 to 2010. The DW is produced in power plants generating both EP and DW, and is called Cogeneration Power Desalting Plants (CPDP). These CPDPs are using either: simple gas turbines (GT) cycle or GT combined with steam turbine (ST) to form a...
Inequality in per capita water availability: a Theil's second measure approach
AbstractThis paper puts forward the application of Theil’s second measure in order to investigate international per capita water availability disparities. This index permits disparities to be disintegrated within and between groups of countries in a reliable way. An analysis of 188 countries for the period of 1990–2012 demonstrated three observations: first, decline in per capita water availability disparities is characterized by both within-group and between-group inequality elements; second, between-group inequalities are at present the key contributors of the entire inequality scenario; and third, a comprehensive investigation on within-group inequalities divulges the noteworthy explanatory role played by Middle East countries toward increase in inequalities and countries pertaining to North America and Asia and Oceania toward decline in inequalities.
Fully Integrated Bidirectional CMOS-MEMS Flow Sensor With Low Power Pulse Operation
Leveraging More-than-Moore technology, we demonstrate an integrated CMOS MEMS flow sensor via a very compact system on chip (SoC) that can sense the bidirectional N2 gas flow. Our SoC features a very low-noise instrumentation amplifier that is implemented on a CMOS wafer and serves as a readout integrated circuit for a thermoresistive micro-calorimetric flow sensor which is fabricated on a MEMS wafer. A compact heterogeneous integration is achieved by combining the two wafers via the proprietary InvenSense AlN process. The measured sensitivity of our CMOS MEMS flow sensor is 98 mV/sccm which is three times better than the state-of-the-art counterpart. The flow range measured by our SoC is from −26 to 26 m/s (from −50 to 50 sccm). Moreover, the pulsed heater operation makes this proposed SoC flow sensor a very low power (<9 mW) and, thus, a promising candidate for the Internet-of-Things applications in smart home/green buildings.