CATHERINE W GICHUKI

DOHA QATAR National Research Fund (QNRF), Qatar Foundation’s research funding agency, has spent about $24million in the last three years on financing and sponsoring research projects related to carbon capture within and outside Qatar. The carbon capture project falls under QNRF’s National Priorities Research Programme (NPRP). The amount was used to fund 26 projects within NPRP.

Carbon capture and storage refers to technology meant to prevent release of large quantities of CO2 into the atmosphere from fossil fuel used in power generation and other industries.

Speaking on Monday on the sidelines of the two-day Carbon Capture Workshop, organised by Texas A&M University- Qatar in collaboration with Imperial College, London, Omar el Farouk Boukhris, senior manager of Award Administration at QNRF, said the amount was allocated for research by local institutions involving international collaboration.

“Sixty-five percent of the amount remained in Qatar and went into funding projects in Texas A& M and Qatar University. Part of the fund, however, went outside Qatar, for example, to Imperial College, collaborating in terms of science,” he said.

He added, “We have the key players like, University of Toronto, Colorado School of Mines, Arizona State University, University of Oxford, University of California, Irvine, National University of Singapore, McGill, Massachusetts Institute of Technology among others which are doing their own bit, focusing on different aspects of the task like transportation and different capture techniques.” Some of the projects related to carbon capture and undertaken under the NPRP include capture of carbondioxide (CO2) from natural and effluent gas streams and its conversion, theoretical and experimental study of asphaltene deposition during CO2 injection in Qatar’s oil reservoirs, at Qatar University and Texas A&M, respectively.

The CO2 capture and photoconversion to a renewable fuel, CO2 minerisation and reject brine management through chemical reaction, development of new cold asphalt as building material for roads, highways and airports pavement with the ability of reducing CO2 in the atmosphere were other projects funded at Qatar University.

The emission of free coproduction of carbon nanotubes and hydrogen via concentrated solar energy and using Qatar’s sunny climate and seawater to produce microalgae biodiesel and capture of CO2 were other projects funded at Texas A&M University.

The Carbon Capture Workshop that will conclude on Tuesday aimed to give industrial managers, technical advisors, regulators and other attendees from academia and the industry, an overview of carbon capture technology and the status of current research and technical innovation in the field.

Speakers were experts from Qatar, United States and the United Kingdom.