Safety mapping for the transportation of raw sewage by trucks in Bahrain

As the Kingdom of Bahrain's population and development expand, sewage transport outside the national sewer network becomes an ever increasing requirement. Due to the risk associated with sewage transport, an evaluation of industry safety practices has become necessary. Four main factors were selected to make a comprehensive safety assessment model, namely: safety policy compliance, route planning effectiveness, accident management and vehicle reliability. A questionnaire-based study was used to assess compliance to these factors using descriptive and quantitative methods. The study also included a safety mapping analysis to visualize the outcome of the evaluation of the factors of the assessment model. The development and use of indices in analysing both objective and perceptual questionnaire questions and safety mapping, to evaluate the sub-factors of the assessment model, are the main contributions of this study. The main conclusions of this study were: that a safety assessment model is used to evaluate the safety performance level of the sewage trucking companies; that the model developed can be used as a base for a comprehensive safety compliance checklist for raw sewage trucking to be used by the authorities and the trucking companies; and that larger companies uphold the safety principles better than smaller companies

Towards an effective environmental impact assessment (EIA) in the industrial sector of Bahrain, Arabian Gulf

Rapid economic and industrial developments and population growth in Bahrain are associated with increases in energy demand and greenhouse gas emissions. An Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) process has been adopted in the country to address environmental aspects within energy intensive projects such as oil and petrochemical industries. The quality of EIA reports with respect to energy conservation and gas emissions was investigated in this study. The results obtained showed that aspects of gas emissions received more attention than energy conservation. The reports reflected a good (75%) and satisfactory (25%) consideration of air quality. Considering the efficiency and energy consumption aspects, the reports were assessed as satisfactory (25%), borderline (50%) and poor (25%) quality. A framework to be used as a platform to integrate the EIA process, environmental management systems (EMS) and energy management systems (EnMS) was suggested. Enforcement of legislations to ensure efficient use of energy within the industrial sector, adopting strategic environmental assessment (SEA) practice in the country and linking it to energy planning, and encouraging industrial firms to adopt EnMS to play the role of adhering to EIA mitigation measures were recommended

Process simulation and economic analysis of reactor systems for perfluorinated compounds abatement without HF effluent

New and efficient reactor systems were proposed to treat perfluorinated compounds via catalytic decomposition. One system has a single reactor (S-1), and another has a series of reactors (S-2). Both systems are capable of producing a valuable CaF2 and eliminating toxic HF effluent and their feasibility was studied at various temperatures with a commercial process simulator, Aspen HYSYSA (R). They are better than the conventional system, and S-2 is better than S-1 in terms of CaF2 production, a required heat for the system, natural gas usage and CO2 emissions in a boiler, and energy consumption. Based on process simulation results, preliminary economic analysis shows that cost savings of 12.37% and 13.55% were obtained in S-2 at 589.6 and 621.4 degrees C compared to S-1 at 700 and 750 degrees C, respectively, for the same amount of CaF2 production