Two Omani innovator’s project wins local, regional and international awards

Muscat: The project “Producing clay oil extracted from date pits and wasted oil from kitchens” by two Omani inventors: Tasneem bint Muhammad Al-Daoudia and Salma bint Salem Al-Sudairiyah, has achieved many awards at the local, regional and international levels.

Tasneem bint Muhammad Al-Daoudia told the Oman News Agency: The idea of ​​the project is to exploit environmental waste by converting date seeds into a material used in drilling oil wells known as clay oil. It aims to find an alternative material that is environmentally friendly, at the lowest cost and with high efficiency, and provides local oil economic opportunities.

She added: The idea of ​​the project came after graduation from the university level, and was the result of continuous effort made in the graduation project, and the obsession with ambition continued to assure us that we were able to exploit this idea in a positive way.

Then came the opportunity to obtain training at Mohammed Al-Barwani Oil Services Company, from which the features were completed. The idea. She stated that the work began with double the effort and more working hours than the main working hours, and the first positive results appeared eight months after the start of the work, and from here emerged the urgent need to preserve this idea and register it as a patent.

She indicated that work on this project began in April 2018 and has continued to this day, explaining that the paths of this work included all the technical, economic and development aspects of the product. To reach all the necessary standards to provide a technically and economically integrated product that is ready to be put on the market.

Regarding the challenges faced by the project, Salma bint Salem Al-Sudairiyah says: “The continuous work, which lasted for nearly five years, was not easy. Rather, we went through many difficulties from the beginning of the idea until its first features emerged.”

She added that among the difficulties are the absence of the necessary technical support, the absence of the necessary laboratory environment, and the absence of moral support due to the absence of an incubator that overcomes these difficulties and gives confidence and a sense of effort.

She stated that despite the difficulties they faced, they tried until they were able to prove themselves in many international and global forums that accepted the idea and gave them the confidence, strength and patience to continue to be the beginning of this project. She stated that the difficulties did not stop at this point, but rather continued beyond that, and represented the importance of raising the project’s efficiency to match its standards with the global product currently on the market. This stage took time due to the absence of completely dedicated supporting expertise and the adoption of this product.

However, it remains Ambition and striving are greater than all these difficulties, adding: With the grace of God, we were able to pave the way to success and prove the worth of the product in a fully technical manner. Tasnim bint Muhammad Al-Daoudia says: “After the project idea achieved its international merit, the doors of support were opened for us in the laboratories of Sultan Qaboos University, the Muhammad Al-Barwani Company, and the Petroleum Development Oman Company, and they adopted this idea from its inception, and it was the first building block on which this project laid its foundations.”

She added: Support for this project was expanded by many government agencies, including the Ministry of Energy and Minerals, the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Investment Promotion, the Small and Medium Enterprises Development Authority, and the Environment Agency, which supported this project with all the incubators and facilities it could.

Regarding the achievements achieved by the project, Tasnim Al-Daoudia said: We represented the Sultanate of Oman in the first international exhibition in the Middle East, which was held in the Arab Republic of Egypt, and we obtained third place in the Middle East level, and participation continued at the Gulf level in the State of Kuwait, and we achieved an advanced position in the level of patents. Gulf.

She pointed out that at the global level, the project won the gold medal as the best environmental project in the world in the competition held in Geneva, Switzerland, and in an international competition in Germany, the project won the gold medal with honors as the best project in the field of youth, and it also won first place. At the Middle East level in the Women’s Innovation Award, it qualified to compete at the global level in the British capital, London.

The project also won the Diamond Award at the international level. The delegation: Tasneem bint Muhammad Al-Daoudiya and Salma bint Salem Al-Sudairiyah, succeeded in the first phase of the project in reaping the investment partnership with Muhammad Al-Barwani Oil Services Company, and now they are in the stage of actual implementation of the project in oil well drilling sites to obtain a certificate of merit and pass into the world of investment and expansion in Production to cover a larger area of ​​the total local consumed value, then the Gulf, all the way to the world, where they are currently working on producing two other products derived from the main product, and they will raise the efficiency of this project economically and technically.