Experimental Study of Oil Deposition Through a Flow Loop

In this article, the effect of temperature, pressure, and flow rate on deposition rate has been investigated by using chemical analysis method for calculating the deposit thickness and comparing to heat transfer and pressure drop methods. To do so, an experimental high pressure flow loop setup was designed and constructed to conduct various experiments. Caliper readings at the end of each test showed the chemical analysis method in comparison to the heat transfer and pressure drop methods is superior for deposit thickness calculation.     

Biosurfactant production under extreme environmental conditions by an efficient microbial consortium, ERCPPI-2

The biosurfactant production potential of a new microbial consortium of Enterobacter cloacae and Pseudomonas sp. (ERCPPI-2) which was isolated from heavy crude oil-contaminated soil in the south of Iran, has been investigated under extreme environmental conditions. The isolated consortium produces a biosurfactant mixture with excessive oil spreading and emulsification properties. This consortium was able to grow and produce biosurfactant at temperatures up to 70 °C, pressures up to 6000 psia, salinities up to 15% (w/v), and in the pH range 4-10. Besides, the optimum biosurfactant production conditions were found to be 40 °C and 7.0 for the temperature and pH value, respectively. These conditions gave the best biosurfactant production of 1.74 g/1 when the cells were grown on a minimal salt medium containing 1.0% (w/v) olive oil, 1.0% (w/v) sodium nitrate supplemented with 1.39% (w/v) K(2)HPO(4) at 40 °C and 150 rpm after 48 h of incubation. The ERCPPI-2 could reduce surface and interfacial tensions to 31.7 and 0.65 mN/m from the original values of 58.3 and 16.9 mN/m, respectively. The isolated consortium produced biosurfactant using heavy crude oil as the sole source of carbon and emulsified the available heavy crude oil up to E(24)=83.4%. The results of the core holder flooding tests at simulated reservoir conditions demonstrated that the oil recovery efficiency due to the injection of the cell-free biosurfactant solution was 27.2%, and the bacterium injection reduced the final residual oil saturations to below 3% at optimum conditions.     

Laser Flash Photolysis of 2,2'-Dithiobls(pyridine N-oxide): Reactivity of N-Oxypyridyl-2-thio Radical

Abstract— Reaction kinetics of radicals produced by the nanosecond laser flash photolysis of 2,2'-dithiobis(pyridine N -oxide) and related compounds have been studied. The transient absorption band at 360 nm was attributed to the radical in which the unpaired electron mainly localizes on the S atom ( N -oxypyridyl-2-thio radical). The reactivities of the radical for conjugated dienes are lower than those of the pyridyl-2-thio radical, suggesting that a considerable unpaired electron density on the S atom delocalizes onto the N -oxypyridine moiety. The addition reaction rate of the radical to the conjugating diene was accelerated with hydrogen-bonding solvents and with addition of the cation, which may stabilize the N+-O^- canonical structure, increasing the unpaired electron density on the S atom. By the photolysis of N -hydroxypyridine-2-thione, the N-O bond was predominantly dissociated producing a pyr-idyl-2-thio radical. By the photolysis of its anion, photoejection took place followed by the N-O bond fission, yielding pyridine-2-thione.     

Effect of low-salinity water on asphaltene precipitation

The effect of low-salinity (1000 to 5000?ppm) and intermediate-salinity (5000 to 40000?ppm) water (MgSO₄, MgCl₂, Na₂SO₄, CaCl₂, NaCl and KCl) on asphaltene precipitation was investigated in this work. The results revealed that all brines intensify the amount of asphaltene precipitation. All cases exhibited initial downward trend followed by the upward trend for the amount of asphaltene precipitation with increasing the brine concentration. A similar trend was also observed for Interfacial Tension (IFT) between crude oil and brine in this study. IFT was tested for MgSO₄, MgCl₂, Na₂SO₄, CaCl₂, NaCl and KCl brines with concentrations of 1000 to 40000?ppm. Finally, experimental results showed that an increase in volume of all brines in the mixture (brine +oil) led to increase and decrease of the asphaltene precipitation in low and intermediate salinity regions, respectively.     

Numerical evaluation of turbulence models for dense to dilute gas–solid flows in vertical conveyor

A two-fluid model (TFM) of multiphase flows based on the kinetic theory and small frictional limit boundary condition of granular flow was used to study the behavior of dense to dilute gas–solid flows in vertical pneumatic conveyor. An axisymmetric 2-dimensional, vertical pipe with 5.6 m length and 0.01 m internal diameter was chosen as the computation domain, same to that used for experimentation in the literature. The chosen particles are spherical, of diameter 1.91 mm and density 2500 kg/m³. Turbulence interaction between the gas and particle phases was investigated by Simonin's and Ahmadi's models and their numerical results were validated for dilute to dense conveying of particles. Flow regimes transition and pressure drop were predicted. Voidage and velocity profiles of each phase were calculated in radial direction at different lengths of the conveying pipe. It was found that the voidage has a minimum, and gas and solid velocities have maximum values along the center line of the conveying pipe and pressure drop has a minimum value in transition from dense slugging to dilute stable flow regime. Slug length and pressure fluctuation reduction were predicted with increasing gas velocity, too. It is shown that solid phase turbulence plays a significant role in numerical prediction of hydrodynamics of conveyor and the capability of particles turbulence models depends on tuning parameters of slip-wall boundary condition.     

Experimental and Theoretical Study of MTBE Adsorption from Polluted Water on GAC and PAC in Continuous Process

Methyl tertiary butyl ether (MTBE) is an organic compound thatis used to increase the gasoline octane number. At the beginning of 1980s, by discovering the undesirable effects of tetra ethyl lead usage in fuel, MTBE began to be used worldwide. But gradually the undesirable effects of MTBE on environment had been revealed. Adsorption is the most conventional and economical technology for MTBE removal from polluted water. In this research, some experiments have been done for studying the adsorption of MTBE on different solid adsorbent in continuous processes. In continuous experiments, the water polluted with known initial MTBE concentration passes through an adsorption column containing two kinds of adsorbent including granular activated carbon (GAC), powdered activated carbon (PAC). By measuring MTBE concentration in exit flow at different times the effect of different operating parameters such as temperature, pH, and flow rate have been studied and the optimum condition have been determined. The batch experimental results have been used to calculate the constant parameters of Langmuir adsorption isotherm equations. A dynamic simulation of MTBE adsorption on activated carbon in an adsorption column has been proposed. The comparison of the experimental data with the values given by the proposed model for similar operating conditions, verifies the accuracy of the proposed mathematical model.      

Prediction of Chemical Inhibitors Efficiency for Reducing Deposition Thickness Using Artificial Neural Network

Prediction of efficiency of chemical inhibitors to mitigation of deposition thickness is a key to developing crude oil transportation process. In this work, a feed-forward artificial neural network (ANN) algorithm has been applied to predict the influence of the mitigation effect of ethylene-co-vinyl acetate (EVA) copolymer and its combination with chloroform (C), acetone (A), P-xylene (PX), and petroleum ether (PE) on the deposition thickness in the pipeline. An optimized three-layer feed-forward ANN model using properties of the oil pipeline such as: inlet oil temperature, environmental (coolant mixture) temperature, oil Reynolds numbers; properties of injected inhibitor such as molecular weight, boiling point, and amount of injection; and time is presented. Different networks are considered and trained using 62661 data sets; the accuracy of the network is validated by 20888 testing data sets. To verify the network generalization, 29 different experiment data sets of four different set of inhibitors have been considered. It is found that the proposed ANN model is an alternative to experimentation and predicts deposition thickness without experimentation, vast information, and tedious and time-consuming calculations.     

Electrolyte-gated transistors based on conducting polymer nanowire junction arrays

In this study, we describe the electrolyte gating and doping effects of transistors based on conducting polymer nanowire electrode junction arrays in buffered aqueous media. Conducting polymer nanowires including polyaniline, polypyrrole, and poly(ethylenedioxythiophene) were investigated. In the presence of a positive gate bias, the device exhibits a large on/off current ratio of 978 for polyaniline nanowire-based transistors; these values vary according to the acidity of the gate medium. We attribute these efficient electrolyte gating and doping effects to the electrochemically fabricated nanostructures of conducting polymer nanowires. This study demonstrates that two-terminal devices can be easily converted into three-terminal transistors by simply immersing the device into an electrolyte solution along with a gate electrode. Here, the field-induced modulation can be applied for signal amplification to enhance the device performance.     

Static magnetic fields aggravate the effects of ionizing radiation on cell cycle progression in bone marrow stem cells

In order to evaluate the influence of static magnetic fields (SMF) on the progression of cell cycle as a monitor of presumptive genotoxicity of these fields, the effects of a 15 mT SMF on cell cycle progression in rat bone marrow stem cells (BMSC) were examined. The cells were divided into two groups. One group encountered SMF alone for 5 h continuously but the other group exposed with X ray before treatment with SMF. The population of cells did not show any significant difference in the first group but the second group that was exposed with acute radiation before encountering SMF showed a significant increase in the number of cells in G₂/M phase. So SMF has intensified the effects of X ray, where SMF alone, did not had any detectable influence on cell cycle.These findings suggest that magnetic fields (MF) play their role by increasing the effects of genotoxic agents and because of the greater concentration of free radicals in the presence of radical pair producers, this effect is better detectable.     

Laser-flash photolysis of naphthyl diselenides; reactivities of naphthylseleno radicals

Transient absorption spectra of 1-naphthylseleno (1-NaphSe˙), and 2-naphthylseleno (2-NaphSe˙) radicals, which are generated by laser-flash photolysis of the corresponding diselenides, were observed. The reactions of 1-NaphSe˙, and 2-NaphSe˙ with 2-methyl-1,3-butadiene and α-methylstyrene were investigated by following the decay rates of these seleno radicals. By both steady-state and laser-flash photolysis, it is proved that these seleno radicals add to alkenes in a reversible manner. The reaction rate constants for such reversible addition reactions were determined by conducting the reaction in the presence of O₂, which traps selectively the carbon-centered radicals formed by the addition reaction of the seleno radicals to the alkenes. The reactivity of 2-NaphSe˙ is higher than that of 1-NaphSe˙, both of which are less reactive than PhSe˙. These reactivities were interpreted with the properties of SOMO calculated by MO method. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Int J Chem Kinet 30: 193–200, 1998.