Thesis (M.Sc.) - Cairo University - Institute of African Research and Studies - Department of Natural Resources

Harnessing of the airborne wind energy is getting very little interest in African countries. This research attempts to fill this gap, especially for the countries of the Western African Coast (WAC) which experience a very high ship traffic pattern in both directions . The impact on health of air pollution from ship emissions is investigated by monitoring the results of selected relevant studies performed by the International Maritime Organization, in addition to some maritime authorities, institutes, universities and research centers in USA and EU. Most of these studies emphasize this impact on the Western African Coast countries in general, and on Morocco and Cote d'Ivoire in particular.The study estimated, using MATLAB codes written by the student, the available wind power resources on WAC for the 30 years between 1985 and 2014. Wind patterns are defined and wind profiles are plotted, as colored figures, for the mean wind speeds and mean wind directions in the atmospheric boundary layer up to 6oo m altitude at specified times of the day in all months of a typical year. This is performed at seven WAC stations: Gibraltar, Casablanca (Morocco), Nouadhibou (Mauritania), Nouakchott (Mauritania), Dakar (Senegal), Abidjan (Cote d'Ivoire), and Douala (Cameroon). These figures could be used in the future as data bases for harnessing airborne wind energy at these locations in addition to other navigational applications. Standard deviations of wind speeds and wind directions at each of the seven studied locations are calculated to emphasize the statistical significance of the collected wind data. In order to predict the magnitudes and directions of the towing- kite traction forces for ship auxiliary propulsion, the two-dimensional lumped-mass model is employed by writing a MATLAB code

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