Profiles

DR. AHMED AL-DURRA RENEWABLE ENERGY TO PREPARE FOR THE UAE’S LAST OIL BARREL

Dr. Ahmed Al-Durra Khalifa University Scopus H-index: 29 ORCID ID The UAE has a unique opportunity to advance renewable energy (RE) research and become a pioneering market leader, ideally positioned for its post-oil economy.

This ambition has motivated Dr. Ahmed AlDurra, Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at Khalifa University (KU), to become an awardwinning researcher, and one of the UAE’s most prolific scholars. He has advanced research in applications of control and estimation theory on power systems stability, micro/smart grids, renewable energy (RE) systems and integration, and process control.

Dr. Al-Durra grew up in a tiny city near Al Ain. His parents taught him and his nine siblings to work hard and aim high to serve the nation, which led Al-Durra to become a dedicated student.

“When I was in 7th grade, I realized I needed to be challenged at school, so I asked my parents to send me to Al Ain to attend a better school. I had to catch a ride with my neighbor in the morning, and in the afternoon I would take a taxi to the highway, and then walk the remaining two kilometers home. I did this from grade 8 to 12. You may think this was too hard for a young boy, but I don’t regret it. That experience shaped me and helped make me who I am,” he said.

By the time Dr. Al-Durra graduated from high school, he was among the country’s top students and was selected by the UAE Presidential Office for its Distinguished Student Scholarship to study abroad. With a goal of studying electrical engineering, Dr. Al-Durra enrolled in Ohio State University (OSU), which had the United States’ 17th top ranked electrical engineering program.

“One freezing Ohio morning, I opened my door to find a courier holding a laptop, sent as a gift from His Highness Sheikh Mohamed Bin Zayed Al Nahyan [Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and Deputy Supreme Commander of the UAE Armed Forces] in recognition of my academic performance. I was honored by the gift, which I’ve kept operational since then, and promised to myself to achieve the highest targets to place my country among the top scientific nations,” he recalled.

After receiving his BSc Summa Cum Laude, Dr. Al-Durra stayed at OSU for the remainder of his studies, pursuing postgraduate studies in electrical engineering through a scholarship from the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC).

Throughout his studies, Dr. Al-Durra focused his work on control systems and their applications, which are systems that manage, command, direct or regulate the behavior of other devices using control loops.

I also believe that we should avoid wasting fossil fuels for electricity production and automobiles, as both have RE alternatives. We should instead utilize fossil fuels in a more valuable way, for critical applications like petrochemicals and aviation, where we don’t yet have suitable alternatives.

“The beauty of my field — control systems — is that it provides the researcher with the knowledge and advance tools to deal with any system regardless of its discipline. A control system researcher only needs to understand the fundamentals and limitations of the new system in order to blend with the experts of the new discipline and start innovating new control and/or estimation techniques,” he said.

It was through this specialization that Dr. Al-Durra became involved with RE technologies. During his master’s degree studies, Dr. Al-Durra began working on hydrogen fuel cells, recognizing the importance of electrical engineering to the development of RE technologies and their integration. Hydrogen is a type of gas that is viewed as a promising, albeit underexploited, source of renewable energy. In a hydrogen fuel cell, the fuel source is hydrogen gas, which reacts with oxygen across an electrochemical cell to produce electricity, water, and some heat.

“Back then hydrogen fuel cells were a new hot topic, with a hope that hydrogen could be harvested to provide renewable and zero emissions energy for vehicles and other applications. One project at the OSU Center for Automotive Research was trying to achieve good control algorithms to deal with fuel cell systems, and they needed an electrical engineer with a background in control system theory, so I joined and became a supervisor,” Dr. Al-Durra said.

Explaining why he viewed RE to be so important, Dr. Al-Durra explained, “RE is the new direction for energy, which is partly why the UAE has focused on becoming a producer of RE technologies

for the domestic and global market. I also believe that we should avoid wasting fossil fuels for electricity production and automobiles, as both have RE alternatives. We should instead utilize fossil fuels in a more valuable way, for critical applications like petrochemicals and aviation, where we don’t yet have suitable alternatives. We also need RE to delay oil depletion. If we avoid wasting fossil fuel resources for automobiles and electrification, we can buy the necessary time to develop alternatives for aviation and petrochemicals.”

Over the period of Dr. Al-Durra’s postgraduate studies, RE became even more significant for the UAE. In 2009, the Abu Dhabi Government announced a commitment to achieving 7% of the emirate’s total power generation capacity from RE sources. Today the entire country is working towards the UAE Energy Strategy 2050 target of 50% clean energy in the total energy mix.

In 2010, Dr. Al-Durra returned to the UAE to become an assistant professor at the Petroleum Institute (PI), which at the time was a standalone engineering university linked to the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC) and today is a KU research institute.

“When I started at PI, I set a new goal for myself, which was to be the first Emirati professor of electrical engineering in the UAE. I took that target and worked hard to achieve it,” Dr. Al-Durra shared.

Over the course of the next ten years, Dr. Al-Durra pursued that goal with a singleminded purpose. Along the way he has earned many commendations and titles, notable among them was the Sheikh Rashid Award for Academic Excellence, the UAE Pioneers Award, membership to Mohammed Bin Rashid Academy of Scientists, and the

Khalifa Award for Education - Distinguished University Professor in Scientific Research. Dr. Al-Durra also became an editor for the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Transactions on Sustainable Energy and “Power Engineering Letters,” and an associate editor for IEEE Transactions on Industry Applications, the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET) Renewable Power Generation, and Frontiers in Energy Research.

In 2017, Dr. Al-Durra published one of his more widely cited papers titled “Online energy management strategy of fuel cell hybrid electric vehicles based on data fusion approach” in the Journal of Power Sources, which has had 112 citations according to SciVal.

The paper deals with the energy management strategy of a fuel cell hybrid electric vehicle (FCHEV), which relates to the efficiency and performance of the vehicle’s energy storage. It proposed an energy management strategy for three styles of driving – highway, suburban, and city – based on a combination of the parameters from optimized fuzzy logic controllers.

“We validated the proposed method utilizing our FCHEV-hardware-in-the-loop experimental setup in the Energy Systems Control & Optimization (ESCO) Research Lab that I established, and demonstrated that the proposed method can provide the fuel cell power system a relatively stable operation power range to preserve its lifetime, achieve higher efficiency of the

“WE VALIDATED THE PROPOSED METHOD UTILIZING OUR FCHEV-HARDWARE-IN-THE-LOOP EXPERIMENTAL SETUP... AND DEMONSTRATED THAT THE PROPOSED METHOD CAN PROVIDE THE FUEL CELL POWER SYSTEM A RELATIVELY STABLE OPERATION POWER RANGE TO PRESERVE ITS LIFETIME, ACHIEVE HIGHER EFFICIENCY OF THE FUEL CELL SYSTEM, AND THUS SAVING HYDROGEN CONSUMPTION.”

Dr. Ahmed Al-Durra

Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Khalifa University

fuel cell system, and thus saving hydrogen consumption,” Dr. Al-Durra said.

The year 2020 was one of great achievement for Dr. Al-Durra. He was promoted to full professor, included in Stanford University’s list of the world’s top 2% scientists, and won the KU College of Engineering Faculty Research Excellence Award.

More recently Dr. Al-Durra was ranked number 1 by SciVal in the UAE’s top 500 authors by scholarly output over the period of 2011 to 2020, an achievement he attributes to his focus on securing the critical elements and enabling structures necessary for quality research.

“I have been focused on developing strong research teams and establishing state-of-the-art research facilities that can raise the status of the university and country while facilitating research that can be published in top-tier journals. That is why I established the ESCO lab and am leading the Industry Engagement Theme for Advanced Power & Energy Center. This work has enabled me to contribute to the publication of over 250 articles in high quality publications,” he shared.

Having achieved so much in such a relatively short period of time, Dr. Al-Durra has set himself another ambitious target. “I spent 10 years to achieve my goal of becoming the first Emirati professor of electrical engineering. Now, my next milestone is to become the first UAE National IEEE Fellow. This is a prestigious level of membership of the IEEE and is given to only one out of 1000 members. So far, no Emirati has yet achieved this rank, so that is my next goal,” he revealed.

He is also continuing his work to support the UAE’s RE integration goals, with research focused on micro/smart grids, integration of renewable energy systems and storage devices, and transportation electrification.

“To paraphrase His Highness Sheikh Mohamed Bin Zayed Al Nahyan ‘if we do the right investment today, we will celebrate the moment we load our last barrel of oil.’ To prepare for that moment, one of the challenges is to come up with solutions for RE integration to the current grid and how to plan and use energy storage schemes optimally. We can capture solar energy in the day, but we also must store some for use at night and during poor weather conditions,” Dr. Al-Durra said.

DR. ABDUL GHANI OLABI ADAPTING MECHANICAL ENGINEERING TO ACHIEVE GREATER SUSTAINABILITY

Dr. Abdul Ghani Olabi University of Sharjah Scopus H-index: 64 ORCID ID For the curious problem-solver, there can be no better field of study than mechanical engineering (ME) as it can be applied to so many sectors and issues.

That is what Dr. Abdul Ghani Olabi, Professor of Sustainable and Renewable Energy Engineering and Director of the Sustainable Energy and Power Systems Research Center at the University of Sharjah (UoS), believes and embodies. His experience in ME has enabled him to contribute innovative solutions to address humanity’s most pressing needs – sustainability and renewable energy (RE) – through cutting edge research and innovation in fuel cells, energy storage, carbon capture, and biogas production.

Recalling his earliest introduction to ME, Dr. Olabi said, “When I was a child in Damascus, my father had a car parts shop, and my grandfather had factories. I would come home from school and spend time with them, fascinated by their mechanical products and processes. When I was older, our school used to take us on a fieldtrip each semester to see an industry, like machining. There, I saw how important industrial devices were to society, and found them complex but interesting. That is why I decided I would also work in the field that produced and maintained those devices – mechanical engineering.”

To Dr. Olabi, ME represented an understanding of the devices and technologies that make the world run, and an opportunity to contribute to innovation that could advance human progress.

“Mechanical engineering is the mother of engineering, in the same way that physics is the mother of science. Physics provides all the laws that govern our world, and ME translates those laws into engineering. When you study ME, you gain a foundational training that you can apply to so many industries and problems. You can build on your ME foundation to contribute to nearly any sector, as I have done with sustainability and renewable energy” Dr. Olabi shared.

In 1979, Dr. Olabi enrolled in the Damas University in Syria to study ME, gaining his bachelor’s degree in 1984. After working in education for a few years, he joined the Italian automobile manufacturer, Fiat, where he worked as a mechanical engineer at their research center in Orbassano, Italy. It was there that Dr. Olabi discovered his passion for RE fuel systems and storage, which drives him to this day.

“At Fiat I was working in design and modelling and came to be involved in Fiat’s car fueling system development for hydrogen and other alternative fuel systems. This was something that really appealed to me, though at the time we did not understand climate change like we do now. Even then I could see the value in

developing a car that ran on alternative RE fuel,” he recalled.

After working at Fiat for four years, Dr. Olabi decided to pursue more advanced studies. He enrolled in Dublin City University in Ireland, gaining his Master’s in mechanical engineering in 1990, followed by a PhD.

Upon graduation with his doctorate in 1993, Dr. Olabi was hired by Dublin City University as a member of the ME faculty, where he remained from 2002 to 2013. Soon after joining, he established the Sustainable Energy and Environmental Protection (SEEP) Conference to provide researchers and practitioners with a forum to share their recent developments on the topic.

Explaining the impetus behind establishing the conference, Dr. Olabi said, “Engineers can move from one sector to another, especially when they see a problem they feel strongly about. I believe in the importance of sustainability through the advancement of sustainable or renewable energy, so I focused my ME research on it, and I established SEEP because I felt we needed to think about the environment, and a major way to protect the environment is to develop and use RE.” There have since been 13 conferences of SEEP.

During his time at Dublin City University, Dr. Olabi began to make great strides in his hydrogen fuel cell research. In 2012, he filed his first patent for an innovative use of

“AS ENGINEERS, WHEN WE WANT TO INNOVATE, WE LOOK AT EVERY COMPONENT WITHIN A DEVICE. WE TRY TO SEE WHERE WE CAN MAKE IMPROVEMENTS TO THE EXISTING DESIGN OR EVEN SUGGEST NEW DESIGNS AND COMPONENTS.”

Dr. Abdul Ghani Olabi

Director of the Sustainable Energy and Power Systems Research Center and Professor of Sustainable and Renewable Energy Engineering at University of Sharjah

a foam membrane in a hydrogen fuel cell to reduce cost and improve efficiency.

Fuel cells are devices that use chemical energy to produce electricity. In hydrogen fuel cells, the cell is supplied with hydrogen and oxygen, which are passed through a specialized membrane to extract an electron from hydrogen, which produces electricity. While some fuel cells are built to rely on provided hydrogen, Dr. Olabi has been working on fuel cells that produce their own hydrogen from renewable energy. This requires the use of an electrolyzer device, which uses electricity to break down hydrogen dioxide into its component elements of oxygen and hydrogen. The low temperature electrolyzer devices typically used in automobiles – the proton exchange membrane – are very costly and not very fuel efficient. Dr. Olabi and his collaborators sought to remedy these shortcomings by redesigning one of the principal components of the electrolyzer, the flow plate, which separates each cell in the electrolyzer stack.

Dr. Olabi shared, “The chemical reaction in a fuel cell transforms oxygen and hydrogen to produce electricity and also produces water, but that water reduces the energy efficiency of the cell. To reduce that effect, we decided to replace the expensive flow plate with a special foam material that could produce the same function while removing the water. We did modelling, simulation, and experimental testing on our design, and found that it improved energy efficiency by 20-25%, allowing our device to be much cheaper than the conventional ones.” By 2016 the research team had been awarded patent protection by European, British, American, and international patenting offices for their innovation.

“As engineers, when we want to innovate, we look at every component within a device. We try to see where we can make improvements to the existing design or even suggest new designs and components. That is why we are continuing work on improving the hydrogen fuel cell and have filed three further patents that can achieve 10-15% further efficiency,” he said.

In 2013 Dr. Olabi joined the University of the West of Scotland as a professor and founding head of its Institute of Engineering and Energy Technologies. During that time, he expanded his work in biogas production and began working in solar and energy storage systems, which he continues to explore today.

In 2018 he published a paper titled “Pre-treatment methods for production of biofuel from microalgae biomass” in the journal Renewable and Sustainable

Energy Reviews, which has 43 citations on SciVal. The paper deals with a mechanical pretreatment method proposed by Dr. Olabi and his collaborators to improve the production of biogas from algae.

In biogas production, the algae-based biomaterial is exposed to a bacteria sludge in a low-oxygen environment, where the bacteria consume the biomaterial to produce biogas. That biogas is then collected and used like any natural gas to produce electricity.

“We examined the biogas production process and its components and realized that algae are very fibrous, and those fibers need to be broken down so the bacteria can consume more material and produce more biogas. In response to this, we designed a new mechanical treatment for biomass material that breaks down the fiber before we add the sludge to generate the biomass, to ensure more of it can be consumed by the bacteria. This has increased the biogas yield by 20-25%,” Dr. Olabi shared.

In 2018, Dr. Olabi became Professor and Department Head of Sustainable and Renewable Energy Engineering at UoS and Visiting Professor at Aston University. Since then, Dr. Olabi has been working to capitalize his focus on sustainable energy and the environment and the UAE’s focus on RE and sustainability.

Over the past 15 years, the UAE has been ramping up its development and integration of RE, with increasingly ambitious RE integration targets. UAE

While some fuel cells are built to rely on provided hydrogen, Dr. Olabi has been working on fuel cells that produce their own hydrogen from renewable energy.

Energy Strategy 2050, launched earlier this year, has a goal of increasing the contribution of clean energy in the country’s total energy mix from 25% to 50% by 2050 and reducing the power generation carbon footprint by 70%.

“When I moved to the UAE, I was amazed to see the educational programs, research, and major projects focused on sustainability and RE. It has been really inspiring to work in a country that has such a strong focus on RE and sustainability,” Dr. Olabi said.

Since joining UoS, Dr. Olabi has established the Industrial Program Advisor Committee to explore research collaboration with UAE government, industry and leading international universities. In September, Dr. Olabi became director of the Sustainable Energy and Power Systems Research Center, which includes five research groups that are focused on RE, energy storage systems, smart grids, biomass, and nuclear energy. His scientific contributions were recently acknowledged by the Stanford University list of the top 2% of scientists, in which he was ranked first at UoS and among the top in the UAE.

“My plan is to establish an industrial advisory board for the center that brings together government and the private sector, so that those working in RE and power systems can support, advise, and collaborate. This will enable us to establish strong partnerships between government, academia, and industry, to do something for the benefit of our research center, our university, the wider UAE, and all” Dr. Olabi shared.

With his foundation in adaptable ME, passion for RE and environmental protection, and track record for innovation, Dr. Olabi is sure to achieve the sustainable impact he so desires.