Abdeslam Taleb

Non-revenue water is a major pressure on drinking-water resources in semi-arid regions, where every cubic metre lost has already been abstracted, treated and pumped. This study evaluates a two-year active leakage control programme carried out by the national utility in Aïn Aouda, a Moroccan town...

Machine learning is increasingly proposed for leak detection and localization in water distribution networks. Yet performance varies with evaluation practice, and the spatial precision attainable from sparse telemetry remains unquantified. We measure the full inference hierarchy, from detection and severity through zone and nearest sensor to the pipe, on a calibrated pressure-driven Moroccan district network with ten pressure and five flow sensors. Evaluation uses 648 scenarios and five tree-ensemble classifiers under a leakage-controlled protocol. Performance decays monotonically with spatial granularity: detection reaches an area under the precision–recall curve of 0.901; severity and zone reach 0.774 and 0.700; nearest-sensor accuracy falls to 0.423 (0.185 system level); and top-5 pipe accuracy is 0.122 over 171 candidates. Three diagnostics attribute the losses to the sensing layout rather than the algorithms. System-level accuracy factorizes as conditional skill times coverage; a zone oracle lifts top-5 accuracy only to 0.170; and pipe ranking stays near its full-layout value across six sensor configurations. Feature attribution shows a hydraulically faithful detector dominated by flow-deviation features. Results provide a calibrated reference for sparse pressure-flow monitoring; pipe-level inference is reframed as a pre-localization step for acoustic survey, with sensing coverage the binding priority.

Night flow falls from 76.2 to 35.7 L/s over two contract cycles and rebounds at a measured 17.1 L/s per year between them. Performance-based contracts are increasingly promoted for water loss reduction in middle-income countries, yet empirical evaluations of contracts remunerated on the minimum night flow are largely absent from the peer-reviewed literature. This study evaluated a two-year performance-based leak detection and repair contract covering a 212 km network with 15,500 service connections in Ain Aouda, Morocco, using 39 validated measurement nights across 14 campaigns, a georeferenced register of 1,229 repaired leaks, matched-site pressure records, and fully observed cost records. The contractor reduced the minimum night flow from 76.2 to 45.7 L/s on schedule; leakage then rebounded to 55.6 L/s within six months, yielding a natural rate of rise of unreported leakage of 17.1 L/s per year, before a second campaign reduced night flow to 35.7 L/s (a 53% reduction). Night pressures at matched sites were stable or lower during the rebound, excluding a pressure artifact and making the estimate conservative. With a measured night-day factor of 19.0 hours, the economic intervention interval from observed costs is 3 to 8 months as a central estimate, against 19 practiced, and the incremental cost of active leakage control lies below the utility's full cost of water. Design recommendations are proposed for night-flow-indexed contracts.

Enhancing the energy efficiency of administrative buildings is a critical factor in advancing global energy sustainability. This research introduces a methodology for refining thermal loads and minimizing energy consumption through computational simulations using the HAP (Hourly Analysis Program) tool. The primary goal is to transform an energy-demanding administrative structure into an environmentally sustainable and high-performance facility. A comprehensive assessment of the building’s initial state uncovered structural inefficiencies influencing its energy demand, particularly regarding insulation, air circulation, and lighting. By incorporating advanced architectural and engineering solutions, including upgraded insulation, LED lighting implementation, and optimized HVAC system configurations, the findings indicate a considerable reduction in energy usage. This study emphasizes the necessity of integrating ASHRAE regulations and computational simulation methodologies in advancing building energy performance.

Currently, industrial water pollution represents a significant global challenge, with the potential to adversely impact human health and the integrity of ecosystems. The continuous increase in global consumption has resulted in an exponential rise in the use of dyes, which have become one of the major water pollutants, causing significant environmental impacts. In order to address these concerns, a number of wastewater treatment methods have been developed, with a particular focus on physicochemical approaches, such as adsorption. The objective of this study is to investigate the potential of a bio-based material derived from olive oil pomace (OOP) as an environmentally friendly bio-adsorbent for the removal of methylene blue (MB), a cationic dye commonly found in textile effluents. The biobased material was initially characterized by determining the point of zero charge (pHpzc) and using scanning electron microscopy (SEM), X-ray diffraction (XRD), and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR). Subsequently, a comprehensive analysis was conducted, evaluating the impact of specific physicochemical parameters on MB adsorption, which included a thorough examination of the kinetic and thermodynamic aspects. The adsorption process was characterized using Langmuir, Freundlich, Brunauer-Emmett-Teller (BET), and Dubinin Radushkevich (D-R) isotherms. The results suggest that the equilibrium of adsorption is achieved within ca. 200 min, following pseudo-second-order kinetics. The optimal conditions, including adsorbent mass, temperature, bulk pH, and dye concentration, yielded a maximum adsorption capacity of ca. 93% (i.e., 428 mg g⁻¹) for a pomace concentration of 450 mg L⁻¹. The results suggest a monolayer adsorption process with preferential electrostatic interactions between the dye and the pomace adsorbent. This is supported by the application of Langmuir, BET, Freundlich, and D-R isotherm models. The thermodynamic analysis indicates that the adsorption process is spontaneous and exothermic. This work presents a sustainable solution for mitigating MB contamination in wastewater streams while simultaneously valorizing OOP, an agricultural by-product that presents risks to human health and the environment. In conclusion, this approach offers an innovative ecological alternative to synthetic adsorbents.

The aim of this study is to purify industrial textile effluents by treating two types of commonly encountered dyes: blue maxilon (BM), of cationic nature, and black eriochrome (NE), of anionic nature. We intend to employ an innovative approach based on the adsorption of these dyes onto a novel vegetal biomaterial derived from Aleppo pine fibers (FPAs). A kinetic and thermodynamic study was conducted. The effect of some physicochemical parameters on both dye adsorption and FPAs was also evaluated. The modeling of the adsorption results was performed using Langmuir, Freundlich, Temkin, and Dubinin Radushkevich (D-R) isotherms. The results indicate that the equilibrium time strongly depends on the initial concentration of the two dyes, being 60 min with pseudo-second-order adsorption kinetics for both dyes. Adsorption isotherms under the optimal conditions of adsorbent mass, temperature, medium pH, and dye concentration were used to determine the maximum adsorption efficiency, which was close to 93% and 98% for BM and NE, respectively. The results also show that the adsorption of both dyes on FPAs fits well with Langmuir’s model. The thermodynamic study indicates that the adsorption of both dyes on FPAs is spontaneous and exothermic in nature for BM and endothermic for NE.

Groundwater salinity is a serious problem for water quality in the irrigated parts of arid and semi-arid regions, especially in the aquifers of Berrechid, Morocco. This study used a variety of techniques, including the Water Quality Index (WQI) and World Health Organization (WHO) recommended...

This study aims to study the impact of environmental stresses on the chemical compositions of essential oils and the content of secondary metabolites of the plants most used by the rural population: Thymus vulgaris, Mentha pulégium and Rosmarinus officinalis. The results of the study indicate that the percentage of secondary metabolites increased in the second year when temperature and water pressure increased by 50%. Specifically, coumarin increased from 3.94% to 9.23%, saponins increased from 6.17% to 7.78%, tannins increased from 2.90% to 6.12%, alkaloids increased from 6.72% to 15.95%, and flavonoids increased from 7.42% to 12.90%. However, in the fourth year, the temperature continued to increase, and water availability decreased by 75%, leading to a decrease in the rate of secondary metabolites. Coumarin decreased from 9.22% to 6.15%, saponin decreased from 7.80% to 6.79%, tannin decreased from 6.11% to 4.16%, alkaloids decreased from 15.95% to 10.45%, and flavonoids decreased from 12.90% to 9.70%. Similar results were observed for the essential oil yield, which increased in year two from 3.57% to 3.84% and decreased in year four to 1.04%. The same pattern was observed for Mentha pulégium and Rosmarinus officinalis. The gas chromatography analysis of the three essential oil samples showed that the majority of the compounds of the three plants were modified under the conditions of climate change. For Mentha pulégium, pulegone was found to represent the highest proportion in sample two (73.3%), followed by sample one (71.1%), and finally, sample three (61.8%). For Rosmarinus officinalis, the majority of compounds were cineole and camphor, with cineole representing 36% in sample two, 45.89% in sample one, and 43.08% in sample three, and camphor representing 21.44% in sample two, 21.56% in sample three, and 17.44% in sample one. For Thymus vulgaris, the majority of the compounds were Thymol and Carvacrol, which underwent approximately the same modifications as the majority of compounds in the other two plants. The results indicate that environmental stresses can lead to significant changes in these compounds, which can affect the medicinal and aromatic properties of these plants. The findings of this study highlight the need for more research to understand the impacts of climate change on plant species and the potential implications for human health and well-being.

Industrial pollution discharges from washing fuel oils pose severe problems for the environment, particularly for the marine environment receiving these discharges. This work evaluates the biological treatment performance of wastewater (90 m³/h) rich in organic matter with low biodegradability using a sequential batch reactor (SBR) on a laboratory scale. The test using SBR was carried out for 25 days on a continuous cycle of 24 h (30 min of filling, 17 h of aeration, 4 h of anoxia, 2 h of settling, and 30 min of emptying). The feasibility of alternative sources of microorganisms from urban wastewater. The performance of the batch sequencing reactor was evaluated using turbidity, total suspended solids, chemical oxygen demand (COD), biological oxygen demand (BOD), ammonium, nitrate, and phenol as indicators. The results obtained showed that the COD/BOD ratio and the pollutant load vary from one campaign to another. The removal efficiency of COD, BOD, TSS (Total suspended solids), ammonium, nitrate, and phenol varies from 81%, 91%, 72%, 100%, 52%, and 63%. Thus, SBR-type treatment could be an interesting way to reduce pollution due to its simplicity, less space occupation, low energy consumption, and not requiring highly qualified personnel.