Cost and Environmental Impacts of Leachate Nitrogen/Phosphorus Management Approaches

Landfill leachate is a challenging wastewater to discharge into municipal wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs), the most common approach for leachate management, due to the presence of contaminants that may affect the performance of the treatment plant. Treatment, disposal, and transportation of leachate are expensive and therefore a concern. Currently, sidestream treatment is becoming increasingly common in WWTPs prior to returning the liquid to the plant influent. For this research, a new treatment scheme is introduced combining centrate and leachate to reduce contaminants, recover phosphorous and nitrogen through struvite precipitation, and reduce energy requirements through anaerobic ammonium oxidation (Anammox). By combining the two waste streams, the respective limited nutrients (nitrogen in centrate and nitrogen in leachate) can be removed in a low cost chemical treatment resources can be recovered. Carbon contaminants and remaining nutrients can be removed in subsequent innovative biological treatment units. The objective of this thesis is to conduct a cost analysis and environmental assessment of the proposed novel treatment approach and to compare it to more traditional landfill on-site leachate treatment approaches (e.g., membrane bioreactors (MBR) and sequencing batch reactors (SBR)). The study was completed with the use of spreadsheet-based models. Spreadsheets have been developed to evaluate treatment costs (Capital + O&M) for both the proposed nutrient recovery/biological and traditional on-site leachate treatments. Transportation costs of leachate to the WWTP have been studied and analyzed by the use of a spreadsheet model as a function of distance. Results suggest that treatment using Struvite – Aerobic Granular Sludge – Anammox (SGA) was higher in cost compared to traditional approaches. However, positive outcomes from this process include: lower N_2 O emissions, lower power consumption, struvite fertilizer, and overall recovery of nitrogen and phosphorus with the combination of centrate and leachate

Perceptions of online fraud and the impact on the countermeasures for the control of online fraud in Saudi Arabian financial institutions

This thesis was submitted for the award of Doctor of Philosophy and was awarded by Brunel University LondonThis study addresses the impact of countermeasures in the control and prevention of online fraud in Saudi Arabia and the influence of the environmental context. Combatting online fraud is facilitated when the public is fully educated and is aware of its types and of the prevention methods available. People are reliant on the Internet; the possibility of being breached by hackers and fraudsters is growing, especially as socialising, online shopping and banking are carried out through personal computers or mobile devices. Online fraud has been described as an epidemic that has spread to most online activities. Its prevalence has been noted to be in regions where there is high adoption of e-commerce, and, along with it, large online financial transactions. The argument is therefore the measures taken are either are inadequate or have failed to effectively address all the issues because of the organisational and environmental context of the country. This research aims to examine online fraud perceptions and the countermeasures designed and used by financial institutions in Saudi Arabia to control and prevent online fraud in its environmental context, to examine the effectiveness/impact of the countermeasures and to examine the factors that may affect/influence the impact of the countermeasures. The qualitative method approach was chosen to ensure balanced coverage of the subject matter. The nature of the research requires a broader, in-depth, examination of the experiences of the participants from their own perspective. Meanwhile levels of awareness are low, because of lack of knowledge and training, a lack of government sensitisation and the religious inclinations of the population. The findings also confirm the efforts of organisations to put in place countermeasures using various technological means, coupled with procedural controls and checks. The measures create obstacles to most customers, who find it cumbersome to engage in online activities because of those procedures and checks. The findings also show two types of regulations: government and organisational rules, with different foci and purposes, which are mostly centred on the monitoring of Internet operations and operational guidelines. The enforcement of rules in the light of prosecuting offenders has also been minimal and passive. The countermeasures of most banks/organisations mostly focus on prevention and detection. However, the findings suggest that the activities in each component and their interrelationships have a collective impact on combatting online fraud. The success of any effort or approach to combat fraudulent activities therefore depends on the activities of the four countermeasure components

Automated Residential Energy Audits Using a Smart WiFi Thermostat Enabled Data Mining Approach

This research has demonstrated the potential of conducting energy audits on large scales by utilizing smart WiFi thermostat data with other available residential data.https://ecommons.udayton.edu/grad_showcase/1008/thumbnail.jp

Emission inventories from Kuwait petroleum refineries and respective ground level concentration of pollutants in the neighboring residential area

The State of Kuwait has three large refineries, namely, Mina Al Ahmadi Refinery, Mina Abdullah Refinery and Shuaiba Refinery. These refineries process and refine Kuwait Crude Oil through different process units. There are many heaters, boilers and flares that form a part of the complicated equipment which enhance the different petroleum processes. Fuel gas is used as a firing fuel for those heaters and boilers. As a result, stack emissions like SO2, NOx, CO are predominantly present in the flue gases and this study focuses on those emissions and their impact on the surrounding residential area. The area of interest will be Umm Al-Hyman residential area. This study accumulates emission inventories from the three refineries and the respective ground level concentration of the pollutants in the neighboring residential area. It also focuses on the impact of emissions from the refinery operations on the ground level concentrations in the surrounding areas by using the inventory model and latest emission factors to provide accurate emission estimates. The models were developed and the results were verified with the actual data from the area of impact. As a result of the findings of the major pollutants, namely SO2, NOx & CO, it is found that SO2 and CO are not exceeding Kuwait EPA Ambient Air Quality Standards for Residential Areas normally. However, NOx is observed to exceed occasionally. Even though, NOx emissions from refineries sources represented by plume models were much less, there is a consistent increase in the measured NOx. Furthermore, in 2007, the measured hourly, daily and annual NOx concentration exceeded the international standard many times. The increasing trend in NOx is attributed to continuous increase in population and the number of motor vehicles. The study will go further step in recommending engineering solutions and best practices to reduce the pollutants concentrations which will help in the reduction of human health risks and protect the environment

Infectious diseases management framework for Saudi Arabia (SAIF)

A Thesis Submitted to the University of Bedfordshire in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of PhilosopyInfectious disease management system area is considered as an emerging field of modern healthcare in the Gulf region. Significant technical and clinical progress and advanced technologies can be utilized to enhance the performance and ubiquity of such systems. Effective infectious disease management (IDM) can be achieved by analysing the disease management issues from the perspectives of healthcare personnel and patients. Hence, it is necessary to identify the needs and requirements of both healthcare personnel and patients for managing the infectious disease. The basic idea behind the proposed mobile IDM system in this thesis is to improve the healthcare processes in managing infectious diseases more effectively. For this purpose, internet and mobile technologies are integrated with social networking, mapping and IDM applications to improve the processes efficiency. Hence, the patients submit their health related data through their devices remotely using our application to our system database (so-called SAIF). The main objective of this PhD project was the design and development of a novel web based architecture of next-generation infectious disease management system embedding the concept of social networking tailored for Saudi patients. Following a detailed literature review which identifies the current status and potential impact of using infectious diseases management system in KSA, this thesis conducts a feasibility user perspective study for identifying the needs and the requirements of healthcare personnel and the patients for managing infectious diseases. Moreover, this thesis proposes a design and development of a novel architecture of next-generation web based infectious disease management system tailored for Saudi patients (i.e., called SAIF – infectious diseases management framework for Saudi Arabia). Further, this thesis introduces a usability study for the SAIF system to validate the acceptability of using mobile technologies amongst infected patient in KSA and Gulf region. The preliminary results of the study indicated general acceptance of the patients in using the system with higher usability rating in high affected patients. In general, the study concluded that the concept of SAIF system is considered acceptable tool in particularly with infected patients

Crossflow microfiltration of oil from synthetic produced water

Produced water is formed in underground formations and brought up to the surface along with crude oil during production. It is by far the largest volume byproduct or waste stream. The most popular preference to deal with produced water is to re-inject it back into the formation. Produced water re-injection (PWRI) needs a treatment before injection to prevent formation blockage. Due to the increase of produced water during oil production in the west of Kuwait, an effluent treatment and water injection plants were established and commissioned in 2004 so that produced water could be used for re-injection purposes. It is estimated that oil wells in the west of Kuwait produce 15 to 40 % of produced water. The main aim of this treatment train is to reduce not only the oil-in-water amount to less than 10 ppm, but also total suspended solids to 5 ppm which is the maximum allowable concentration for re-injection and disposal. Furthermore, with respect to the upper limit for injection, the maximum number of particles between 5 and 8 microns is 200 in 0.1 ml. In practice the number is found to exceed this limit by 10 times..

An IoT Architecture Leveraging Digital Twins: Compromised Node Detection Scenario

Modern IoT (Internet of Things) environments with thousands of low-end and diverse IoT nodes with complex interactions among them and often deployed in remote and/or wild locations present some unique challenges that make traditional node compromise detection services less effective. This paper presents the design, implementation and evaluation of a fog-based architecture that utilizes the concept of a digital-twin to detect compromised IoT nodes exhibiting malicious behaviors by either producing erroneous data and/or being used to launch network intrusion attacks to hijack other nodes eventually causing service disruption. By defining a digital twin of an IoT infrastructure at a fog server, the architecture is focused on monitoring relevant information to save energy and storage space. The paper presents a prototype implementation for the architecture utilizing malicious behavior datasets to perform misbehaving node classification. An extensive accuracy and system performance evaluation was conducted based on this prototype. Results show good accuracy and negligible overhead especially when employing deep learning techniques such as MLP (multilayer perceptron).Comment: This work has been submitted to the IEEE for possible publicatio

Enhanced Performance Dual Stage Pressure Retarded Osmosis

© 2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. A dual stage PRO process has been proposed for power generation from a salinity gradient across a semi-permeable membrane. Both closed-loop and open-loop dual stage PRO system were evaluated using 2 M NaCl and Dead Sea as draw solutions, whereas the feed solution was either fresh water or seawater. The impact of feed salinity gradient resource and feed pressure on the net power generation and water flux were evaluated. DSPRO can be combined with desalination plant using seawater brine as the draw solution either in closed-loop or open-loop. This hybridization has multiple applications such as reducing the impact of discharging concentrated brine to sea, energy storage, and increase the recovery rate of the desalination. Power generation by DSPRO will reduce the energy consumption by the desalination processes. Waste heat from power plants can be used for the regeneration of the draw solution in the closed-loop DSPRO. Process modelling has been performed and shown promising results for DSPRO application for power generation

Privacy Issue: From Static to Dynamic Online Social Networks

Today's societies have become more dependent on social networks in terms of communications and interactions. These networks contain most of the people's activities, which can be public or even personal events. In the last decade, social networks have turned into more prominent platforms in managing and organizing public events. The Egyptian revolution in 2011 and the Ukrainian revolution in 2014 are good reflections of such events. However, it is not known how much the privacy issue of users is revealed in the reality as a consequence of their online interactions. In this work, we investigate the privacy issue in online social networks and its reflection on real life. Our dataset was extracted from the Facebook groups/pages that were involved in the 2019 Iraqi October revolution. Our approach generates a static network using the collected dataset. Then, we investigate the generated static network in terms of detecting potential anomalies. After that, we project the static network (including its characteristics) into a dynamic environment and generate a dynamic network for investigating the privacy issue in the real life. The contribution of this work lies in projecting a real-world static network into a dynamic environment aiming at investigating users' privacy in the real world. Finally, this kind of approach has not been given enough attention in the literature and it is therefore deeply investigated in this article