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...
A fuzzy logic based irrigation system enhanced with wireless data logging applied to the state of Qatar
In arid regions, developing environment and crop-specific irrigation scheduling that reduces water lost via evapotranspiration is a key to a sustainable and better managed irrigation. This paper presents a practical solution based on intelligent and effective system for a field of hyper aridity in Doha-Qatar. The system consists of a feedback fuzzy logic controller that logs key field parameters through specific sensors and a Zigbee-GPRS remote monitoring and database platform. The system is easy to deploy in existing drip irrigation systems without any physical modification. For a given crop, the fuzzy logic controller acquires data from these sensors and then applies well-devised fuzzy rules to produce appropriate time and duration for irrigation. All variables are fuzzified using trapezoidal and triangular membership functions. In this fuzzification, Max-Min inference engine and Mamdani-type rule base is adopted in order to make the best decision for each situation. Typical data in summer and winter showed that the controller ensures maintaining the soil moisture above a pre-defined value with non-abrupt oscillations. The system compensates the amount of water that is lost through evapotranspiration as predicted by Penman-Monteith model and hence allows predicting future water consumption. A local station first processes and saves real-time data received from the field controller via wireless Zigbee protocol to finally transmit these data to a remote station via a GPRS link. This enhancement enables tracking system performance in real time and creating a database for analysis and improvement. It follows that the deployment of fuzzy control combined with remote data logging would foster better management of irrigation and water resources in hyper-arid lands such as Qatar.
Removal of Soluble and Particulate Organic Material in Municipal Wastewater by a Chemical Flocculation and Biohlm Processes
Since the major part of the contaminants in municipal wastewater is associated with particles, direct particle separation is an effective way of lowering the wastewater contaminant level. An additional biological oxidation is usually required to remove the residual soluble contaminants. This paper presents the experimental data on the chemical treatment of municipal wastewater by the Jet Mixed Separator(JMS) which can be used as a unit process for physico-chemical treatment. As simultaneous flocculation and sedimentation occurred, the JMS effluent concentration of phosphorus and suspended solids was low in a hydraulic retention time of less than 1 hour. The removal efficiency of TOC associated with particles with a diameter of more than 0.1 µm was also high. The JMS effluent was treated using an upgraded Rotating Biological Contactor to remove the residual contaminants due to the surface adsorption of particulate contaminants and the biological oxidation of soluble organics and ammonia nitrogen. The performance of the combined system of JMS and RBC was very high in producing the effluent with very low concentrations of TOC, phosphorous and suspended solids in a hydraulic retention time of less than 2 hours.