Conceptual design and numerical analysis of a novel floating desalination plant powered by marine renewable energy for Egypt

The supply of freshwater has become a worldwide interest, due to serious water shortages in many countries. Due to rapid increases in the population, poor water management, and limitations of freshwater resources, Egypt is currently below the water scarcity limit. Since Egypt has approximately 3000 km of coastlines on both the Red Sea and the Mediterranean Sea, seawater desalination powered by marine renewable energy could be a sustainable alternative solution, especially for remote coastal cities which are located far from the national water grid. The objective of this research work is to evaluate the feasibility of a floating desalination plant (FDP) concept powered by marine renewable energy for Egypt. A novel design of the FDP concept is developed as an innovative solution to overcome the freshwater shortage of remote coastal cities in Egypt. A mobile floating platform supported by reverse osmosis (RO) membrane powered by marine renewable power technology is proposed. Based on the abundant solar irradiation and sufficient wind density, Ras Ghareb was selected to be the base site location for the proposed FDP concept. According to the collected data from the selected location, a hybrid solar–wind system was designed to power the FDP concept under a maximum power load condition. A numerical tool, the DNV-GL Sesam software package, was used for static stability, hydrodynamic performance, and dynamic response evaluation. Moreover, WAVE software was used to design and simulate the operation of the RO desalination system and calculate the power consumption for the proposed FDP concept. The results show that the proposed mobile FDP concept is highly suitable for being implemented in remote coastal areas in Egypt, without the need for infrastructure or connection to the national grid for both water and power

Preasymptotic nature of hadron scattering vs small-x HERA Data

We emphasize that recently observed regularities in hadron interactions and deep-inelastic scattering are of preasymptotic nature and it is impossible to make conclusions on the true asymptotic behavior of observables without unitarization procedure. Unitarization is important and changes scattering picture drastically.Comment: LaTeX file, 9 pages; 4 tarred, gzipped and uuencoded figures in a separate fil

Numerical hydrodynamics-based design of an offshore platform to support a desalination plant and a wind turbine in Egypt

Motivated by soial and environmental reasons, water scarcity has become a global top agenda item. Egypt is one of the countries suffering from an acute shortage of freshwater. A promising novel and efficient solution to overcome Egypt’s freshwater shortage, especially in remote coastal areas far from the national grid of freshwater and electricity, is a mobile floating desalination plant (FDP) powered by offshore renewable energy. The proposed new FDP concept powered by an offshore wind turbine needs a special floating platform to provide enough buoyancy to support the weight of the desalination plant and to restrain the six degrees of freedom motions within an acceptable operational limit for a wind turbine. Based on hydrodynamics, the main objective of this study is to select the suitable offshore platform that can meet the novel FDP concept operation’s requirements at a specific deployment location in Egypt. Determining the safe natural frequencies zone necessitates taking into account the new FDP concept operation constraints and the Egyptian environmental loads to select platform far from the dynamic amplifications responses in the structure. Numerical modelling results show that the cylindrical platform with a heave plate configuration demonstrated the best dynamic and static performance for Egypt

Environmentally-driven design of a floating desalination platform (Case study: Reverse osmosis floating desalination platform of Ras Gharib, Egypt)

Floating desalination plants are fairly new technologies and are not as common as the traditional land-based desalination plants. Almost none of the proposed nor installed projects' designers indicates that the design is environmentally driven, and only few designs are environmentally assessed. This paper aims to highlight the significant role of the environmental practices to achieve a sustainable design, where most of the environmental impact assessment procedures are performed prior to the design phase. Throughout the research, comparing alternatives and analyzing the baseline provided reliable technical help in the tasks of selecting the proposed project's location, desalination technology, power source and platform configuration. Thus, detailed technical descriptions of different systems are presented. Finally, environmental impacts associated with the operation of the proposed floating desalination plant in the selected location are assessed to give guidance on the monitoring and mitigation processes necessary to enhance the process performance, minimize the adverse environmental impacts and ensure the project's sustainability

Experimental study on the motion response of an integrated floating desalination plant and offshore wind turbine on a non-ship platform

An on-grid floating desalination plant (FDP), powered by conventional fossil fuel, was recently proposed to support freshwater demands in some remote coastal cities that have electricity grid networks. The aim of this study is to investigate feasibility of integrating a wind turbine into the same FDP platform to be suitable for off-grid services with sustainable clean energy resources. The new proposed concept is a fully self-contained mobile system powered by wind. Using a 1:100 scale model of the proposed concept, an experimental study was performed to investigate the floater's motion behavior in Egypt. According to historical sea statistical data for Red Sea in Egypt and taking combined dynamic responses of turbine and floating platform into consideration, frequency and time history dynamic analyses have been done. Furthermore, the possibility of using five different wind turbines in the same FDP platform was studied for upgrading purposes. Results show that the proposed FDP concept has capability to support all tested turbines and to operate safely in Egyptian environmental conditions. Based on the FDP concept with and without turbine comparisons, there are minor motion changes in heave responses, while pitch and surge responses show major changes in time history analyses due to turbine operatio

Efeito Do Sistema De Plantio E Doses Do Nicosulfuron Sobre A Atividade Microbiana Do Solo

This study aimed to evaluate the effect of atrazine + nicosulfuron on soil microbial activity, under the conventional and no-tillage systems. The experiment was carried out in an area of maize-brachiaria intercropping, where atrazine + nicosulfuron were applied at (1,500 + 10 and 1,500 + 30 g h -1) with a weed-handed area being maintained without prior cultivation and another area without weed control. At flowering, soil samples were collected to determine the rate of CO 2 unfastening, microbial biomass carbon (MBC) and metabolic quotient (qCO 2) using the relation between accumulated CO 2 and MBC. The rate of CO 2 unfastening was lower only in plots without weed control. MBC was higher in the no-tillage system, being negatively affected due to the absence of vegetation. Lower MBC was observed in the weed-handed areas, probably due to the absence of straw. Under no-tillage system conditions, no difference was observed between the soil treatments with herbicide application and those without weed control. It can be concluded that the evaluated microbiological indicators were sensitive to the treatments, showing lower soil disturbance under no-tillage system conditions. However, in crop-livestock integration under the conventional system, the negative herbicide effect increase of nicosulfuron rate

Mapping child growth failure across low- and middle-income countries

Childhood malnutrition is associated with high morbidity and mortality globally1. Undernourished children are more likely to experience cognitive, physical, and metabolic developmental impairments that can lead to later cardiovascular disease, reduced intellectual ability and school attainment, and reduced economic productivity in adulthood2. Child growth failure (CGF), expressed as stunting, wasting, and underweight in children under five years of age (0�59 months), is a specific subset of undernutrition characterized by insufficient height or weight against age-specific growth reference standards3�5. The prevalence of stunting, wasting, or underweight in children under five is the proportion of children with a height-for-age, weight-for-height, or weight-for-age z-score, respectively, that is more than two standard deviations below the World Health Organization�s median growth reference standards for a healthy population6. Subnational estimates of CGF report substantial heterogeneity within countries, but are available primarily at the first administrative level (for example, states or provinces)7; the uneven geographical distribution of CGF has motivated further calls for assessments that can match the local scale of many public health programmes8. Building from our previous work mapping CGF in Africa9, here we provide the first, to our knowledge, mapped high-spatial-resolution estimates of CGF indicators from 2000 to 2017 across 105 low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), where 99 of affected children live1, aggregated to policy-relevant first and second (for example, districts or counties) administrative-level units and national levels. Despite remarkable declines over the study period, many LMICs remain far from the ambitious World Health Organization Global Nutrition Targets to reduce stunting by 40 and wasting to less than 5 by 2025. Large disparities in prevalence and progress exist across and within countries; our maps identify high-prevalence areas even within nations otherwise succeeding in reducing overall CGF prevalence. By highlighting where the highest-need populations reside, these geospatial estimates can support policy-makers in planning interventions that are adapted locally and in efficiently directing resources towards reducing CGF and its health implications. © 2020, The Author(s)

Tracking development assistance for health and for COVID-19 : a review of development assistance, government, out-of-pocket, and other private spending on health for 204 countries and territories, 1990-2050

Background The rapid spread of COVID-19 renewed the focus on how health systems across the globe are financed, especially during public health emergencies. Development assistance is an important source of health financing in many low-income countries, yet little is known about how much of this funding was disbursed for COVID-19. We aimed to put development assistance for health for COVID-19 in the context of broader trends in global health financing, and to estimate total health spending from 1995 to 2050 and development assistance for COVID-19 in 2020. Methods We estimated domestic health spending and development assistance for health to generate total health-sector spending estimates for 204 countries and territories. We leveraged data from the WHO Global Health Expenditure Database to produce estimates of domestic health spending. To generate estimates for development assistance for health, we relied on project-level disbursement data from the major international development agencies' online databases and annual financial statements and reports for information on income sources. To adjust our estimates for 2020 to include disbursements related to COVID-19, we extracted project data on commitments and disbursements from a broader set of databases (because not all of the data sources used to estimate the historical series extend to 2020), including the UN Office of Humanitarian Assistance Financial Tracking Service and the International Aid Transparency Initiative. We reported all the historic and future spending estimates in inflation-adjusted 2020 US$, 2020 US$ per capita, purchasing-power parity-adjusted US$per capita, and as a proportion of gross domestic product. We used various models to generate future health spending to 2050. Findings In 2019, health spending globally reached$8. 8 trillion (95% uncertainty interval [UI] 8.7-8.8) or $1132 (1119-1143) per person. Spending on health varied within and across income groups and geographical regions. Of this total,$40.4 billion (0.5%, 95% UI 0.5-0.5) was development assistance for health provided to low-income and middle-income countries, which made up 24.6% (UI 24.0-25.1) of total spending in low-income countries. We estimate that $54.8 billion in development assistance for health was disbursed in 2020. Of this,$13.7 billion was targeted toward the COVID-19 health response. $12.3 billion was newly committed and$1.4 billion was repurposed from existing health projects. $3.1 billion (22.4$2.4 billion (17.9%) was for supply chain and logistics. Only $714.4 million (7.7$1519 (1448-1591) per person in 2050, although spending across countries is expected to remain varied. Interpretation Global health spending is expected to continue to grow, but remain unequally distributed between countries. We estimate that development organisations substantially increased the amount of development assistance for health provided in 2020. Continued efforts are needed to raise sufficient resources to mitigate the pandemic for the most vulnerable, and to help curtail the pandemic for all. Copyright (C) 2021 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd.Peer reviewe