No 156: The UAE is the only country in the world to have a Ministry for Happiness.

Even if everything had gone according to plan I knew I was cutting things tight. My plane was due to land in Abu Dhabi at 730am on Sunday morning and 90 minutes later I was supposed to be chairing a workshop for a roomful of important government dignitaries. This was one of the key kick-off events for the nationwide Innovation Week across the UAE and it had more people attending who needed to be referred to as ‘Your Excellency’ than I have ever encountered, but then again I don’t get out much. There were representatives from many of the UAE’s important Ministry’s, including Energy, Climate Change and Infrastructure. Ministry of Happiness was, unfortunately, unrepresented.

My plane landed on time and customs was a breeze. It was in the taxi where things unravelled. The venue was the Sharjah Centre for Astronomy and Space Sciences. Now don’t get me wrong, Sharjah is a lovely Emirate with many great features, but one would not immediately expect it to have a cutting edge, state-of-the art space centre. Bearing this in mind, you might think that local taxi drivers would know of its existence. You would be wrong. I tried two different drivers, both of whom swore they knew the venue before I got into the cab, only to recount this important fact 5 minutes into the journey. When we eventually located the venue it turned out to be a huge golden-domed building in its own massive parkland grounds. It was just the sort of imposing infrastructure that a local might have noticed, especially given the 3 foot high lettering around the rim of the golden dome which proudly read 'Sharjah Centre for Astronomy and Space Sciences'. 

I eventually arrived 15 minutes late, just at the point where my Isle colleagues who were already on site and had been holding the fort in my absence were debating kicking off without me. Rest assured that this lack of faith in my ability to be fashionably late will be fully addressed at their next performance reviews.

There then followed an intense 3 hour workshop exploring novel and innovative technologies that could help the UAE address some of their water related challenges. Slightly unusually for an arid county one of the key themes we had been asked to explore was Flood Management, which is becoming an increasing issue in the UAE (‘Yes Mr Trump, you are right. Climate change is a figment of our overly fervent imaginations…’). One of the technologies we presented was a world exclusive: we showed a video of a large scale flooding trial using a fantastic new product from Neptune Solutions Ltd (http://www.neptunesolutions.co.uk). A less discerning viewer might have regarded the video exclusive as 2 minutes watching water flow down a muddy field in outer Manchester but this would be missing the point. It was a demonstration of one of the boldest, most innovative and cost effective means for flood control/defence. It is worthy of a blog in its own right. The audience were appropriately impressed and I am sure are busy booking their flights to Manchester so they too can experience the delights of standing in a wet field the in the north of England, with howling gales and horizontal rain while watching murky water cascade down a hillside into an immovable barrier.  

Unusually for a workshop we managed to hold onto our audience. An unacknowledged rule of all conferences and workshops is that is that the more senior the attendees the more likely it is that they will gently slip away during the session. The key is to not take this as a personal affront, these are busy people with packed diaries.

Perhaps it was a reflection of the quality of the workshop content, or perhaps they were beguiled with our novel presentational style (we toyed with doing some of the presentations through the medium of dance then wisely opted for something slightly more conventional) but we started with 45 people in the room and 3 hours later we still had 42 engaged and happy. Within hours the Ministry of Energy (MOENR), our client, had their press machine in full swing (see attached).

Then again, perhaps it was the free lunch that encouraged people to stay. Or the special post-lunch VIP tour from the  Director of the Planetarium (I learnt a swathe of new facts I will share with my Scout Group, whether they want them or not). Whatever it was I don't mind. All that really matters is that the attendees were happy, and that my client was happy. The fact that my colleagues and I were also happy was just a bonus.

No wonder the Ministry of Happiness didn't attend. Their work was complete. 

No 155: It is called SPACE for a reason….

I am not a real man. I can’t fix shelves, I don’t know (or care) how the combustion engine works, and I have no opinion on the best driving route from Basingstoke to Cheltenham on a Sunday afternoon. I have long been content to lack these  masculine traits. However, sometimes just sometimes my failings come back to haunt me. As the Assistant Scout Leader for my local troop I was recently asked to lead some badge work. I find backwoods survival skills frustrating (‘just use a match!’) and I am hopeless at anything that requires hand/eye coordination (such as archery). This significantly narrows my field of badges.

Earlier this year I had successfully enthralled the troop with my one party piece: a session on water and wastewater treatment (see Notes 123 and 124). Unfortunately the troop foolishly concluded this meant I possessed hidden depths of knowledge. My protestations to the contrary were seen as modesty. If only they knew the truth. Mrs Clark could have told them just how useless I am.

Faced with the challenge of finding something that would engage and educate yet not be too practical I eventually decided upon the Astronomy badge. Over the course of the next 5 weeks I will attempt to engage twenty-five 10 – 14 year olds in the majesty of the universe. Week 1 went surprisingly well.

In order to see how much the children knew already I invited each patrol to act out how the sun, earth and moon interact with each other. With the possible exception of when the Earth kicked the Moon because his flailing arms were getting too close, their basic level of knowledge was higher than I had expected. They could even name all the planets (obligatory schoolboy laughter at Uranus). Perhaps most worrying was when I asked the other three other leaders to act out the ‘right answer’. They ended up in a confused huddle in the corner of the room. On the plus side between them they could cook a delicious three course meal in the Arctic with just two pieces of wood and a bag of broccoli.  

Next, using a football (200mm diameter) as the sun, I got the scouts to select from an array of smaller spherical objects (ping pong balls, tennis balls, etc) those which they felt best represented each of the planets in our solar system. As expected everyone chose objects too large. There was a lovely jaw drop moment when I revealed that, on this scale, the earth was just a tiny bead (2mm across) and our biggest planet, Jupiter, was nothing more than a small cherry tomato (16mm in diameter).

My final exercise was to give them a sense of the massive distances across space. Taking turns each child placed the Bead Earth and the Tomato Jupiter at appropriate distances from our Football Sun. With each attempt I confirmed if they were better or worse than the previous guess. Inevitably we ended up outside. With our football sun balanced precariously on the gate we started walking up the road. At 21 meters we positioned our Earth in orbit. It was another 185m before the Cherry Tomato was finally positioned correctly. Had we wanted to place Neptune it would have involved another half kilometre of walking. Our solar system really is huge.

As a final question I asked the scouts where, on this scale, would our next nearest star (Alpha Centuri) be? The guesses came thick and fast. In the High Street? By the train station? Eventually one of the more exuberant children who has a natural tendency to misbehave and is invariably being chastised for being disruptive, chirped up with the biggest distance he could imagine: FINLAND! Imagine his delight at learning he was the nearest. On the scale where our sun is a football, Alpha Centuri would be 5200km away.

Next week: Telescopes!

These Notes and previous editions can be found at http://notesfrompiers.blogspot.co.uk/

No 154: Today I was a Moroccan research scientist. Tomorrow I will be a Spaniard.

Late last Friday my phone rang. It was my good friend Frank Rogalla, Head of Innovation at Aqualia in Spain. He sounded agitated.  ‘Are you going to the IWA Congress in Brisbane next week? Can you do me a favour?’ As it happens I was just boarding a plane in SE Asia for Australia where I was scheduled to spend a couple of days at the Congress. ‘Of course’ I replied, somewhat foolishly.

Frank is the leading a glorious research project investigating whether it is possible generate energy from wastewater by growing microalgae and then feeding the harvested algae into an anaerobic digester. The project started in the laboratory back in 2010, has worked its way through pilot and prototype testing, and there is now a 2 hectare demonstration scale site, complete with a 2300m3 digester, being constructed in Southern Spain.

It is a fantastic project, involving Aqualia (Spain), the Univ of Southampton (UK), the Fraunhofer Institute (Germany), BDI (Austria), Hygear (the Netherlands) and, slightly left field, Volkswagen (Germany). Two papers were due to be presented at the IWA Congress but for various last-minute reasons neither speaker could make it. Could I, Frank asked, step in and help?

Now what I know about algae can be written on the back of a matchbox. Or rather, what I knew about algae last Friday could be written on a matchbox. A crash course over the weekend (what else would one want to do when faced with a sunny weekend in beautiful Brisbane?), combined with a couple of calls with Frank brought my knowledge to a level where I felt I might just about do justice to the hard work done by others and (perhaps more importantly) not look a complete fool.

My back up plan, much like the one I use every day, was to resort to egotistical showmanship if things got a bit sticky.

So today I was Dr Zouhayr Arbib, a distinguished Moroccan research scientist. I presented his work, which shows that you can indeed generate lots of energy using their method. Rather than consuming 0.5kw of power to treat a m3 of sewage you can generate 3kw. That is truly impressive. I wallowed in the glory that came from the audience and even managed to field the (8!) questions, subtly choosing to talk about the biogas generation part of the project (which I know and understand) rather than the algae harvesting (which I don’t).

Tomorrow I will be Dr Ignacio de Godas and I will be presenting his work. I am particularly looking forward to explaining the slide that has the following equation on it:

My back-up strategy may need to be more refined than that of today. Adopting a bit of distracting showmanship isn’t going to be enough. Instead I shall assume a strong Spanish accent, possibly with a Catalonian lisp. I will be fiery and passionate and act in accordance with such a sweepingly Mediterranean stereotype that no one will dare ask me anything difficult. Wish me luck. 

No 153: Water or Films? Which gives the best return? Maybe just write a children’s book instead.

I don’t normally mix with people from the film industry, but this week was an exception. Yesterday I had coffee with a man who has managed to forge a career investing in the somewhat quirky mix of blockbuster movies and, separately, water technologies.  Indeed, the meeting my friend was having directly after our meeting was with Barbara Broccoli, daughter of Albert Broccoli and the current producer of the James Bond films. One of the many interesting facts I gleaned from him was that Idris Elba is ‘a shoe in’ for the next 007 role. You heard it here first.

I couldn’t help but ask my new-found friend which gave the best returns to him as an investor: water technology or films? Before sharing his response I should tell you that his water technology investments include a rather clever sensor for the water network that provides early warning signals of contamination. It is very neat and has applications in a variety of countries and industries.

In answering he looked me straight in the eyes and without hesitation or embarrassment confidently asserted that he has ‘not made a penny’ out of his water investments. A little bit of me died.

Other celebrity moments from this week include me having breakfast with David Beckham. And when I say ‘having breakfast’ what I actually mean is I was sitting in a café having a breakfast meeting with the CEO of PA Consulting, Alan Middleton when David entered the café behind me. Alan, quick as a flash, got out his phone and managed to capture a picture of me with the sporting hero (see attached). David might not remember meeting me, but I will never forget our special moment together. Last night I shared the photo with the youngsters in the scout group I help run. They already see me as a hero (obviously) and this photo of my celebrity connections merely confirmed my status as someone they would love to emulate. (As a complete aside, one of the children last night guessed my age as 26. I felt superb for all of 10 minutes, until I realised that if you are 13 then 26 is probably seen as positively ancient. It was their way of simply saying ‘you are very very old’)

Back to my water/film investor friend, I asked him how his film investments were going. He was more positive about these, saying he typically made a 10-15% return. He then gazed into the distance and said, somewhat wistfully ‘I have actually started writing a children’s book. I think that is what will make me really happy’.

Personally, I am sticking with water technology. 

No 152: My urine is green. That can’t be good.

This week I have been in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, a city where size matters. They have the biggest flag pole in the world (170m), the tallest water fountain in the world (260m) and are currently constructing the tallest building in the world, Jeddah Towers. At 1km high Jeddah Towers will be just 49cm taller than the current tallest building in the world (the Burj Khalifa in Dubai). If you are going to spend $5bn then you really don’t want to be ‘the second tallest’ so those extra few centimetres truly matter. We drove past the construction site (see photo below). It doesn’t look overly impressive at first glance but look closely and you get a sense of the scale; those tiny objects on the side of the picture are massive cranes. See also attached the artists impression of the final structure. Oh yes indeed. Jeddah is a city where size matters.

Towers in Aug 2016                                            Artists Impression of final Towers

We are about 10 miles from Mecca and, as luck would have it, our trip coincided with the Hajj, the annual Muslim pilgrimage. It was suggested that we could perhaps visit the holy site disguised in a burka. We sensibly rejected this offer on cultural sensitivity grounds. Also my colleague, Dutchman Erik Driessen, is 7 foot tall and likely to attract attention. Whilst abandoning him to explain himself to the Saudi authorities would be mildly amusing it would have created unpleasant amounts of paperwork.

If you head 60km south of Jeddah into the desert you will come to an Industrial Zone. Between here and the Yemen border is 500 miles of hot, unforgiving desert. This is where we have spent the week, undertaking a technical audit of, yes you guessed it, the biggest soft drinks facility in the world. It is run by a fantastically dedicated team from Sibco, one of the largest Pepsi franchisees in the world, and it is, quite simply, staggeringly enormous. The $0.5bn+ plant is going through commissioning but when fully operational will consume over 500,000,000 litres of water every hour. A giant sized lorry packed with 7Up, Pepsi, and all the other delicious Pepsi brands will leave the site every 4 minutes (there is a taxi-rank type car park for 100 such lorries). The sheer scale of it is awe-inspiring. It knocks spots off the big flagpole, bigger fountain and biggest building as a tourist attraction.

It is however ridiculously hot. Step outside the air conditioned office and, literally within seconds, you are pouring with sweat. After just 3 minutes you are soaked to the skin in your own perspiration. Our days have involved spending a couple of blisteringly hot hours on-site, returning to the safety of our temporary office to write up our notes/re-hydrate/dry. We then repeat this until the day ends.  Shirts dry quite quickly but once your underpants are soaked through they tend to stay wet all day long. Having constantly wet nether-regions is a special feeling I have not encountered for perhaps 45 years.

Some water issues are common the world over (leakage, energy control, sludge). Some are region specific (unusually high manganese levels in the Red Sea feed water, climatic conditions which cause rapid corrosion of all metal components). Everyone we have met, from the local desalination operators Sawaco to all Sibco staff/subcontractors has welcomed us and is working tirelessly to get the facility up and running on time. After all, there are 28 million thirsty Saudi’s out there and they need their Pepsi.

Above the urinals is a little sign with colour chart for you to compare with your urine. It ranges from light yellow (‘good’) to dark yellow (‘drink more’) to green (‘drink more now’) to red (‘Something is seriously wrong. Find a hospital and find a psychiatrist’). No matter how much I drink I can’t seem to shift from light green. I feel (and no doubt look) like a shrivelled prune. Yet our main client contact, Duncan Munro, has been here almost 3 years and looks suspiciously younger than he did when he worked in London for Fullers Brewery.

Perhaps it’s a Soft drink vs Beer thing? Perhaps it is due to the sunshine? I hope not, either way I am in trouble. Next week I am on holiday in Southwold, UK. I intend to spend the week enjoying the balmy 20 degree C temperatures, sitting on the painful gravel beach next to the deliciously grey and cold North Sea drinking copious amount of the local Adnams ale. It is a classic Englishman’s holiday. I might not end the week looking any younger but my urine will at least be back to normal.

These Notes, and previous editions, can be found at http://notesfrompiers.blogspot.co.uk/