A Multivariate Analysis on the Influence of Indigenous Crude Oil Components on the Quality of Produced Water. Comparison Between Bench and Rig Scale Experiments

A matrix of 30 crude oils have been analyzed to investigate if there is any correlation between the physiochemical properties of the crude oils and the quality of the produced water. As an approach to study produced water quality, oil. and brine water (3.5 wt%) have been mixed together, and transmission profiles from the separation process have been investigated by means of Turbiscan LAb. The Turbiscan LAb enables the study of stability of colloidal dispersions without any dilution or modification of the sample. The oil-in-water emulsions (30:70) were made by mixing oil and water at low speed to be sure that they separate within a short period of time. Drop size distributions were investigated for all crude oil emulsions by using a Coulter Counter (COULTER Multisizer II). The correlations between transmission profiles and crude oil characteristics were made by using principal component analysis (PCA), a method that helps visualize the most important information contained in a data set and find combinations of variables that describe major trends. A Vortoil K-liner hydrocyclone connected to a mixing rig has been used to separate oil and water in larger scale experiments. The objective with these experiments was to compare the results with separation experiments done at bench scale. Six crude oils have been investigated at the separation rig, and both droplet size distribution and dispersed oil concentration have been performed. The main conclusions from this work are that Turbiscan LAb is a suitable technique to study the separation of oil-in-water with good reproducibility. The results from the multivariate data analysis show that the crude oils group according to if they are light or heavy and according to if they get high or low transmission. From the larger scale experiments it has been shown that the droplet sizes, oil/water density differential, and viscosity have a significant impact on separation efficiency.     

甲醇浓度对Pt/C催化剂氧还原活性的影响

采用半池考察了Pt/C催化剂在含不同浓度甲醇的0.5mol/L硫酸中的氧还原活性(ORR).研究发现,当甲醇浓度为0.1mol/L时,Pt/C催化剂的ORR活性最高,在催化层上热压商品NafionNRE-212膜后也出现同样趋势.线性扫描伏安曲线显示,压膜前后的Pt/C催化剂的ORR活性在含0.1mol/L甲醇的0.5mol/L硫酸中几乎没有变化.电化学阻抗谱结果表明,在该溶液中,Nafion膜的电阻比在其它电解液中低,这可能是导致Pt/C催化剂ORR活性提高的主要原因.有必要关注Nafion膜的这一异常性质并通过特殊设计后用于电池堆,以提高燃料电池性能.     

The Gantry-Tau parallel kinematic machine—kinematic and elastodynamic design optimisation

One of the main advantages of the Gantry-Tau machine is a large accessible workspace/footprint ratio compared to many other parallel machines. The optimal kinematic, elastostatic and elastodynamic design parameters of the machine are still difficult to calculate and this paper introduces an optimisation scheme based on the geometric and functional dependencies to define the workspace and first resonance frequency. This method assumes that each link and universal joint can be described by a mass-spring-damper model and calculates the transfer function from a Cartesian force or torque to Cartesian position or orientation. The evolutionary algorithm based on the complex search method is compared to the gradient-based search function in Matlab integrated optimisation toolbox. Kinematic design obtained by optimisation according to this paper gives a 2D workspace/footprint ratio more than 1.66 and first resonance frequency is more than 50 Hz with components of an existing lab prototype at the University of Agder, Norway.     

Strongly simplicial vertices of powers of trees

For a tree T and an integer k?1, it is well known that the kth power T^k of T is strongly chordal and hence has a strong elimination ordering of its vertices. In this note we obtain a complete characterization of strongly simplicial vertices of T^k, thereby characterizing all strong elimination orderings of the vertices of T^k.     

Longer polyenyl cations in relation to soliton theory

The carotene-like polyenes decapreno-beta-carotene (C50), C54-beta-carotene (C54, first synthesis) and dodecapreno-beta-carotene (C60) with 15, 17 and 19 conjugated double bonds, respectively, were synthesized by double Wittig reactions. Introduction of a leaving group in allylic position failed, and cations were obtained by hydride elimination effected by i) triphenylcarbenium tetrafluoroborate-d15, prepared by a new method, or ii) treatment with trifluoroacetic acid-d. Deuterated reagents were employed for product analysis by 1H NMR. Parallel experiments were performed with beta,beta-carotene (C40). NIR spectra at room temperature and at -15 degrees C were employed for characterisation and stability studies of the cationic products. In CH2Cl2lambdamax in the 900-1350 nm region was recorded. NMR data for the cationic product of beta,beta-carotene obtained by the two new preparation methods were consistent with the two monocations previously characterised. The cationic products of the longer polyenes provided downfield-shifted, broadened signals, compatible with C50-monocation, mixed C54-mono- and dication and C60-dication. Combined NIR and NMR data suggest that the extent of charge delocalisation is limited by the maximum soliton width for cations obtained from linear polyenes with more than ca. 20 sp2-hybridized carbon atoms.     

On the extension of vertex maps to graph homomorphisms

A reflexive graph is a simple undirected graph where a loop has been added at each vertex. If G and H are reflexive graphs and U⊆V(H), then a vertex map f:U→V(G) is called nonexpansive if for every two vertices x,y∈U, the distance between f(x) and f(y) in G is at most that between x and y in H. A reflexive graph G is said to have the extension property (EP) if for every reflexive graph H, every U⊆V(H) and every nonexpansive vertex map f:U→V(G), there is a graph homomorphism φ_f:H→G that agrees with f on U. Characterizations of EP-graphs are well known in the mathematics and computer science literature. In this article we determine when exactly, for a given “sink”-vertex s∈V(G), we can obtain such an extension φ_f;s that maps each vertex of H closest to the vertex s among all such existing homomorphisms φ_f. A reflexive graph G satisfying this is then said to have the sink extension property (SEP). We then characterize the reflexive graphs with the unique sink extension property (USEP), where each such sink extensions φ_f;s is unique.     

A tensor product matrix approximation problem in quantum physics

We consider a matrix approximation problem arising in the study of entanglement in quantum physics. This notion represents a certain type of correlations between subsystems in a composite quantum system. The states of a system are described by a density matrix, which is a positive semidefinite matrix with trace one. The goal is to approximate such a given density matrix by a so-called separable density matrix, and the distance between these matrices gives information about the degree of entanglement in the system. Separability here is expressed in terms of tensor products. We discuss this approximation problem for a composite system with two subsystems and show that it can be written as a convex optimization problem with special structure. We investigate related convex sets, and suggest an algorithm for this approximation problem which exploits the tensor product structure in certain subproblems. Finally some computational results and experiences are presented.     

Corrosion and erosion monitoring in plates and pipes using constant group velocity Lamb wave inspection

Recent improvements in tomographic reconstruction techniques generated a renewed interest in short-range ultrasonic guided wave inspection for real-time monitoring of internal corrosion and erosion in pipes and other plate-like structures. Emerging evidence suggests that in most cases the fundamental asymmetric A₀ mode holds a distinct advantage over the earlier market leader fundamental symmetric S₀ mode. Most existing A₀ mode inspections operate at relatively low inspection frequencies where the mode is highly dispersive therefore very sensitive to variations in wall thickness. This paper examines the potential advantages of increasing the inspection frequency to the so-called constant group velocity (CGV) point where the group velocity remains essentially constant over a wide range of wall thickness variation, but the phase velocity is still dispersive enough to allow accurate wall thickness assessment from phase angle measurements. This paper shows that in the CGV region the crucial issue of temperature correction becomes especially simple, which is particularly beneficial when higher-order helical modes are also exploited for tomography. One disadvantage of working at such relatively high inspection frequency is that, as the slower A₀ mode becomes faster and less dispersive, the competing faster S₀ mode becomes slower and more dispersive. At higher inspection frequencies these modes cannot be separated any longer based on their vibration polarization only, which is mostly tangential for the S₀ mode while mostly normal for the A₀ at low frequencies, as the two modes become more similar as the frequency increases. Therefore, we propose a novel method for suppressing the unwanted S₀ mode based on the Poisson effect of the material by optimizing the angle of inclination of the equivalent transduction force of the Electromagnetic Acoustic Transducers (EMATs) used for generation and detection purposes.