Khalifa University has made significant contributions towards the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal 6: Clean Water and Sanitation. The university’s efforts in this area include:
By actively contributing to clean water and sanitation goals, Khalifa University plays a crucial role in advancing sustainable water management, improving water quality, and ensuring access to safe and affordable sanitation facilities for communities locally and globally.
Below are some examples of Khalifa University’s contributions towards the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal 6: Clean Water and Sanitation:
Center for Membranes and Advanced Water Technology (CMAT): The UAE faces growing water scarcity challenges that require the development and implementation of long-term, sustainable, and integrated capacity in water and membrane technologies that are resilient, energy-efficient, environment-friendly, and cost-effective. In response to this imperative, the Center for Membranes and Advanced Water Technology (CMAT) has been established to fulfill this requirement. CMAT is a research center in which state-of-the-art research activities are carried out aiming at the creation of a strong network with national and international scholars and industries operating in the field of membranes, water treatment and – more in general – environmental remediation, to foster innovation and transfer technologies to the relevant stakeholders.
Our center is built on the principles inspired by our Director’s message Prof. Shadi W. Hasan: “CMAT aims at positioning itself as a regional know-how powerhouse in membranes, desalination, and water technologies. Our mission is to undertake multidisciplinary collaborative research to cover the following themes: Process development for desalination and water treatment, novel membrane development, novel materials and nanomaterials for water applications, thermal desalination processes, and Water microbiology.”
Our framework is shaped by the vision and mission of the center to establish a foundation for our activities and desired outcomes.
Vision: To be a world-leading center with an international collaborative research and development environment focusing on the UAE’s needs.
Mission: CMAT’s mission is to undertake multidisciplinary collaborative research to cover various membranes and water technology-based themes.
The CMAT provides a range of advantages to the KU community, encompassing students, research staff, and faculty members. These benefits include advanced analytical instruments, support for collaborative research, a secure research environment, and extensive research resources. As a result, the number of active users utilizing CMAT has surpassed 100, consisting of faculty members, research staff, graduate and undergraduate students, as well as interns. CMAT currently comprises five well-established laboratories that cover various specialized areas, spanning from material synthesis to membrane characterization and testing. Each lab is specifically designed to meet the unique research requirements of its users. The facility houses a diverse selection of equipment, ensuring that researchers have the necessary tools at their disposal to effectively carry out their experiments.
Following the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (UN’s SDGs), CMAT established five research themes that serve as a platform for clean water production, reuse of recycled water, and water usage reduction. These thematic areas highlight the research conducted that is relevant to our commitment to the UN’s SDGs. They are represented by the following:
Theme 1: Process development for desalination and water treatment
Theme description: Water desalination processes separate dissolved salts and other macro/micro-scale impurities from aqueous feeds such as brackish, seawater, surface sources, and wastewater to produce potable water. Membrane-based desalination and wastewater treatment processes are contemporary technology, and advanced research is continually required to improve their efficiency and reduce energy consumptions. This theme focuses on the development and implementation of membrane-based hybrid processes for sea and brackish water desalination and wastewater treatment. Projects under this theme address critical issues such as water infrastructure, energy use, and the carbon footprint of water consumption, thereby bringing out water and energy nexus integrity towards the water reclamation from seawater, brackish water, and wastewater sources.
Projects related to Theme 1:
Theme 2: Novel membrane development
Theme description: Research activities on membrane technology have been growing tremendously over the past years. Such a technology is considered favorable in various fields including water purification, wastewater treatment, and seawater desalination. The significance of membrane technology is attributed to the numerous advantages such as high-quality effluent, low capital and operational economics, simple to operate, environmentally friendly, less maintenance and small foot print. However, membrane fouling, a phenomenon occurs due to the deposition of organics and biological constituents on the membrane surface, limits the wide implementation of membrane technology in industry. Consequently, the development of anti-fouling as well as high performing membranes seems valuable to overcome such shortages. The commercial value of a membrane is determined by its transport properties such as water permeability and selectivity. Nanotechnology enables a golden opportunity and an effective approach for membrane development via integrating novel nanomaterials in the process of membrane fabrication. Membranes can be synthesized via phase inversion, melt-pressing, electrospinning, solution casting, interfacial polymerization, plasma sputtering, vacuum filtration, and spray or dip coating. Membranes can be porous or non-porous (dense), and can be fabricated in flat sheets, hollow fibers or spiral wound forms. Membranes can be prepared from polymeric and inorganic materials such as ceramic while fine-tuning their chemical, thermal and mechanical properties as per the field of application.
Projects related to Theme 2:
Theme 3: Novel materials and nanomaterials for water and wastewater applications
Theme description:
Advance oxidation process like Heterogeneous Photocatalysis (HP) continue to become more relevant in (waste)water treatment, self-cleaning surfaces, anti-(bio)fouling membranes, among other applications. Due to the inherent limitations of bare inorganic semiconductors like TiO2, (only utilizes about 5% of the solar spectrum) commonly used in HP applications, recent research efforts are geared towards development of multifunctional nanocomposites. Novel nanocomposites made of a combination of semiconductors with different properties can be used in more than one above-mentioned application. The nanomaterials must be able to utilize significant amount of visible light because it favors large-scale deployment of solar photocatalysis.
Development of such nanomaterials has not been attained yet, and all researchers are focusing resources to carefully design and fabricate such advanced nanocomposites with multiple functions. This aim of this theme will be to design, fabricate and test scalable novel nanocomposite materials for water disinfection and environmental remediation, as well as thin films with self-cleaning properties. The fabrication of these novel nanocomposites will be made environmentally benign with green solvents such as ionic liquids or deep eutectic solvents. Ionic liquids are recently gaining attention for use in green synthesis of nanomaterials especially photocatalytic nanocomposites. The use of ionic liquids will ensure good dispersity and strong heterojunctions among moieties of the nanocomposites.
Projects related to Theme 3:
Theme 4: Computational fluid dynamics and thermal desalination processes
Theme description: Thermal desalination by distillation process uses energy to evaporate water and subsequently condense it again. When there is waste heat or sufficient electricity available, as is often the case with refineries and power plants, thermal desalination is an efficient and viable solution. In addition, solar energy can be used as a source of heat for thermal distillation process like solar stills and concentrated solar receivers. Multi Stages Flash Distillation (MSF), Multi Effect Flash Distillation (MED), and Membrane Distillation (MD). Mechanical vapor compression (MVC) is a reliable, cost effective desalination solution for refineries, process industries, power stations and remote development sites where electricity is the only source of power. Freezing desalination (FD) premature desalination process that can be used in integration with other thermal desalination process for desalinate high salt sea water or brine. These desalination processes in addition to any emerging technology that producing pure water based on phase change will be covered under the thermal desalination processes theme. In the UAE, MSF and MED are used compressively in power stations and refineries. MD is also grown in the high saline water areas whether it is sea water or ground water. Thermal desalination is the dominant technology to make seawater potable in the UAE. It is important for the UAE to identify a sustainable desalination solution to meet long-term water needs. Connecting desalination technologies to renewable energy is one solution. Many other solutions can be investigated in this theme, like waste heat recovery technology, new technology, and process efficiency improvement.
Projects related to Theme 4:
Theme 5: Water microbiology
Theme description: This theme will encompass research studies on aquatic microbes (bacteria, fungi, viruses, and protists) that reside in both natural and industrial environments. Aquatic microbes play an important role in driving wastewater treatment processes, biofouling of industrial membranes, and promoting or causing damage to human health. Studying the dynamics of these microbes in these different settings will provide valuable information that can be used to optimize these processes and will also provide information on the general wellbeing and health of the population.
Projects related to Theme 5:
CMAT Achievements
CMAT, being a prominent research center, has achieved significant milestones in the field of water and membrane technologies, demonstrating its dedication to delivering exceptional outcomes. Some of the accomplishments of CMAT are as follows:
Center for Membranes and Advanced Water Technology – Khalifa University (ku.ac.ae)
Sustainable Bioenergy Research Consortium: The Seawater Energy and Agriculture System (SEAS) is the SBRC’s flagship research project. It serves as a research and training facility for the next generation of chemical, water and environmental engineers for the country’s knowledge economy.
The Seawater Energy and Agriculture System (SEAS) is the flagship project of the SBRC, conceived as an integrated and holistic approach to producing bioenergy and biomaterials leveraging marginal resources such as non-arable land and seawater, and renewable energy sources such as solar. This project combines an integrated system of aquaculture, halo-agriculture, and mangrove silviculture to produce sustainable biofuels for aviation and seafood.
The SEAS platform is an integrated process that utilizes marginal resources to create an industrial ecology to provide biomaterials and bioenergy in line with the sustainable development goals (SDGs). Using engineered ecosystems approach to technology development, all subsystems within the SEAS concept aim to maximize upcycling and to minimize impacts, trying to account for all externalities to meet its triple-bottom-line – social, economic and environmental.
