Al-Zubarah Fort

al ZUBARA Fort

Hello everyone,
We're so excited to tell you about everything we went through today at QU. Well, first of all we started our day on the Morphological Labs where we used the Scanning Electron Microscope in order to study each Plastic Composite that we produced earlier at the Injection Molden Machine. At first we put the samples in a machine called the "Sputter", and there is a gold plate inside it used to prepare the samples for the next phase of putting them in the Nano SEM machine. The Sputter machine works by increasing the conductivity, and the secondary electro emission of the Plastic Composite samples. After that the samples were taken into the Nano SEM machine so they can be studied very well under the microscope. Afterwards, we worked on the water absorption studies of the Plastic samples. First of all we measured the weight of each plastic sample before we put it in the water containers. After weighting them and putting them into different water containers we closed them very well. Samples must be in water for about 24 hours, so we're still waiting for the results. Tomorrow we will look at them and update you guys with the changes that happened to each sample. So don’t miss the report that we're going to post on our wall tomorrow, who knows? You might be surprised by the results ;)

P.S: The whole idea of putting the samples in water is to see the ability for each sample to resist water absorption especially the samples that contains fibers.

Al-Zubarah Team (Ahmad, Mohammad, Rashid) ;)

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Good evening guys,

We are researchers 2012!!

I can’t be more excited to share with you what we’ve done today at QU Labs!! Even though we faced some obstacles but we didn’t give up on doing our best. Well, everything started when we came to MTU at 7:30 and our mentor Mohammad was already waiting for us there. We left MTU and went to the Mechanical Engineering Laboratories in order to work in the Injection Molden Machine. The job of this machine is to produce the Plastic Composites from the Polymer’s Mixtures we prepared yesterday at MTU. Unfortunately, after making our first plastic composite the Machine stopped working for about two hours!!!! And that was a HUGE problem because we had loads of work in such a very limited period of time, but we didn’t give up on finishing our work on time especially because time management is something that is so important to our group. We went back to MTU with the composites that we made so we can start working on them in the Tensile Machine while the other part of our group went back to the Mechanical Engineering Labs so they can complete fixing the mixtures there. The job of the tensile machine is to measure the ability of each Composite sample and see whether it can handle the amount of load “Force” that the machine put on them. By doing that, we were able to find the hardest Composite of all the composites. Later on we used the DSC Machine to investigate the Crystallinity of each polymer sample in addition to using the TGA Machine to investigate the thermal behavior of each composite. Finally we met today Dr. Mariam Al-Maadid and she showed her admiration to our work, she also mentioned that our project is being widely tested by Qatar because of its benefits for the Green Economy that Qatar is looking forward to apply. Meeting her motivated us to work more and more in this project because of our love to Qatar, so we’re really looking forward to get the best of this project.

Hello everyone, today was really a day to remember!!

We are the researchers 2012!!!

From where do we even start? Today was such an amazing day; we worked really hard. Well, we started by extracting the date palm leave fiber. This process required a lot of accuracy. After that we worked on drying the fiber in the oven so it can be used in the second part of the project which was mixing the dried and cut fibers with different types of polymers (Recycled LDPE, HDPE, and PP) and then adding some Malaic Anhydride to the 'Fibers and polymers' Mixture. We did the mixing process more than one time, and every time we repeated the process we used to change the percentage of one of the polymers or the percentage of the Malaic Anhydride in order to put them separately as samples for the next process. We tried to be so careful in this part because all the percentages and measurements must be precise so we can get the best results. Afterwards we mixed each mixture in a machine called the 'Twin Extruder' that turned each mixture into cable-shaped plastics by exposing those to different temperatures and pressures so it can take the shape of a plastic cable. But even that each sample produced a cable-shaped plastics, each one had some properties that differs from the other because of the different percentages that we used earlier for each mixture. Finally we take the produced composites into another laboratory where that injection molding machine was there. This machine is used to turn each mixture into a plastic sample. So the whole Idea of mixing different percentages of Fibers, polymers and Malaic Anhydride was to know which mixture would produce the perfect Plastic sample by using the injection molding machine. If you're curious enough to see what we've done by pictures, so you can get a better understanding of the whole process you can see the pictures that we're going to upload right now!!! Don’t miss the opportunity to be the first who see the exclusive pictures of our work ;;)

Look around you; you’re probably surrounded by your electrical appliances. We should tell you that it’s made out of natural gas and oil. It may sound unconvincing, and we too were not convinced, but when we went on thursday to Mr. Yousef Saleh’s presentation at Shell Company we found out otherwise. He talked about the sources of energy and whether they are renewable and nonrenewable. Also he mentioned the oil refining process and explained the uses of oils. After that he talked about the natural gases and explained how Methane is the most used of all natural gases and how when they extract the natural gases they tend to separate H2S and CO2 which are toxic and harmful to human beings and to the environment as well. Then he talked about a process called “GTL” (Gas To Liquid) where Methane is converted into Liquid. And what was really amazing was telling us that everything that is burnt and release CO can be transformed into oil but still we should look for something that is less polluting and more efficient. Also we have learned that the heavier the object is the more expensive they become to turn them into oil.