# Materials For Harsh Environment (MHE)

**Source**: https://www.hbku.edu.qa/en/qeeri/materials-unit/mhe
**Parent**: https://www.hbku.edu.qa/en/qeeri/materials-unit

## Overview

This initiative engineers advanced materials that adapt to extreme conditions, delivering
sustainable, high-performance solutions across energy, water, environment, and critical
infrastructure.

## Projects

- NEWIRE - Novel Materials for Energy and Water
  Infrastructure Resilience
- HERMES - High-Efficiency Materials for Energy
  Conversion and Storage
- INSPIRE - Integrated Study of Pigments, Inks, and
  their Resilience in early Qur’anic manuscripts through experiments and AI-enabled
  preservation.

This project focuses on advancing material performance, corrosion
mitigation, and degradation prevention across critical
industrial, water, and energy infrastructure in Qatar-relevant
harsh environments. It addresses key challenges of material
degradation, such as coating failure under insulation and
environmental exposure, chloride stress corrosion cracking of
corrosion-resistant alloys, hydrogen embrittlement in both
conventional and additive manufacturing materials for renewable
energy systems, and microbiologically influenced corrosion (MIC)
in Seawater Reverse Osmosis (SWRO) plants. The project combines
experimental studies, rapid inhibitor screening, and field
exposure testing to develop robust frameworks for protecting
infrastructure integrity and water quality. It also investigates
advanced methods for predicting and preventing corrosion through
AI-driven models and multi-scale data integration. Key
activities include optimizing corrosion inhibitors for Qatar’s
brines, understanding hydrogen absorption in materials,
improving coatings for extreme environmental conditions, and
developing sustainable energy solutions, such as CO₂ capture
materials and catalysts for sustainable aviation fuel. The work
will lead to the creation of predictive models, validated
corrosion testing standards, and guidelines for material
selection, contributing to international standards and providing
real-world, field-ready solutions for corrosion control in water
and energy infrastructure. The project ensures the improvement
of resilience of infrastructure via the employment of reliable
materials and methodologies to enhance system longevity and
performance in extreme environments.

The project aims to advance energy solutions by developing and
integrating innovative materials and device architectures. It
covers:

- Enhancing photovoltaic (PV) conversion efficiency through
  the incorporation of cutting-edge technologies, such as
  metamaterials, rectennas, and perovskite-based systems.
- Improving module durability by introducing advanced
  anti-dust and anti-reflective (AR) surface treatments to
  combat soiling and abrasion in harsh environments.
- Investigating, modeling, and mitigating the degradation
  mechanisms of batteries operating under extreme desert
  conditions.

This project serves as a critical bridge between laboratory-scale
material innovations and real-world performance by leveraging
field-deployable mini-modules and fostering bilateral
collaborations to validate outcomes under operational
conditions.

This project integrates non-destructive material analysis,
accelerated aging and mechanism studies, and an AI-curated
database to preserve Islamic manuscripts, focusing on iron gall
ink and verdigris while expanding to broader pigment/ink
families in early Qur’anic and related manuscripts (8th–12th
c.). It will survey and analyze inks/pigments in situ with
portable instruments, reconstruct and test lab replicas, model
degradation under controlled environments, evaluate and optimize
stabilization treatments, and operationalize a searchable
database (Kateeb) tied to QNL metadata, delivering conservation
guidelines, spectral libraries, and capacity-building with Qatar
museums and QNL. The plan complements the technology and AI, and
the preventive conservation and materials analysis working
groups proposed with QLM, QRDI, and QM, and leverages advanced
characterization methods, including XRF, Raman/FTIR/XRD, and
QNL/QEERI labs. Outputs include curated datasets, validated
protocols, and practitioner training that position Qatar as a
regional leader in conservation science.