Prediction of the Kinematic Viscosity of Crude Oil Fractions

Abstract

A generalized equation based on modified Eyring's theory for predicting kinematic viscosity of petroleum fractions is proposed in this work. The equation uses two reference fluids including a pair of (C6 and C10), (C10 and C14), or (C14 and C20) for petroleum fractions of molecular weight higher than 70 and lower than 300.

Validity and accuracy of this equation have been confirmed by comparing the obtained results of this equation with experimental data. In contrast to other correlations that require so many specific parameters for oil viscosity prediction, this type of equation requires only molecular weight and true boiling point. The results obtained in this work are in agreement with experimental data with an average absolute deviation (AAD) of less than 5%.     

Scheduling the truck holdover recurrent dock cross-dock problem using robust meta-heuristics

We consider a cross-docking system in which there is no temporary storage and trucks are permissible not to load or unload all of their products but are held and come back to the dock to continue their tasks in case they are needed. Scheduling the trucks in such systems is a nondeterministic polynomial time-hard problem that motivates us to apply two well-known meta-heuristics-named genetic algorithm and electromagnetism-like algorithm for scheduling trucks with the objective of minimizing total flow time of the system, which is achieved through the best sequence of truck pairs. To attain the best robustness of these algorithms Taguchi’s robust design method is employed. To demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed methods especially for large-sized problems, various test problems are solved, and the computational results show that our proposed methods perform better than Yu (2002)’s methods.     

PEEC: a channel-adaptive feedback-based error

Reliable transmission is a challenging task over wireless LANs since wireless links are known to be susceptible to errors. Although the current IEEE802.11 standard ARQ error control protocol performs relatively well over channels with very low bit error rates (BERs), this performance deteriorates rapidly as the BER increases. This paper investigates the problem of reliable transmission in a contention free wireless LAN and introduces a packet embedded error control (PEEC) protocol, which employs packet-embedded parity symbols instead of ARQ-based retransmission for error recovery. Specifically, depending on receiver feedback, PEEC adaptively estimates channel conditions and administers the transmission of (data and parity) symbols within a packet. This enables successful recovery of both new data and old unrecovered data from prior transmissions. In addition to theoretically analyzing PEEC, the performance of the proposed scheme is extensively analyzed over real channel traces collected on 802.11b WLANs. We compare PEEC performance with the performance of the IEEE802.il standard ARQ protocol as well as contemporary protocols such as enhanced ARQ and the hybrid ARQ/FEC. Our analysis and experimental simulations show that PEEC outperforms all three competing protocols over a wide range of actual 802.11b WLAN collected traces. Finally, the design and implementation of PEEC using an adaptive low-density-parity-check (A-LDPC) decoder is presented.     

Passive mode-locking in erbium-doped fibre laser based on BN-GO saturable absorber

A C-band mode-locked fibre laser incorporating a boron nitride-doped graphene oxide (BN-GO)-based saturable absorber (SA) is proposed and demonstrated. The SA is fabricated by depositing multiple layers of synthesized BN-GO nanoparticles onto the polished surface of a side-polished fibre, which is then inserted into an erbium-doped fibre laser cavity to generate the desired pulsed output. The strong nonlinear optical response and light absorption of the BN-GO nanoparticles induces the generation of a highly stable mode-locked pulse at 1567.32?nm with visible Kelly’s sidebands. The pulses have a measured repetition rate of 13.56?MHz and a pulse width of 1.18?ps at the maximum pump power of 280.5?mW. The pulses have a frequency signal-to-noise ratio of ～53?dB, indicating a highly stable output. The proposed laser would find significant telecommunications applications, particularly for dense wavelength division multiplexing systems.     

Preparation and characterization of self nano-emulsifying drug delivery system (SNEDDS) for oral delivery of heparin using hydrophobic complexation by cationic polymer of β-cyclodextrin

Objective: The aim of this study was the preparation of a self nano-emulsifying drug delivery system (SNEDDS) for oral delivery of heparin.

Significance: Preparation of hydrophobic complexes between heparin as the hydrophilic macromolecule and cationic polymer of β-cyclodextrin (CPβCD) was considered for preparation of orally administered SNEDDS in which the drug incorporated in internal oil phase of O/W nano-droplets.

Methods: Hydrophobic complexes of heparin-CPβCD were prepared by electrostatic interaction. The lipophilic feature of complexes was characterized by determining their partition co-efficients. SNEDDS prototypes were prepared by mixing liquid paraffin, Tween 80, propylene glycol and ethanol, diluted 1:100 in an aqueous medium. Central composite response surface methodology was applied for statistical optimization. Independent variables were the amount of liquid paraffin and the amount of Tween 80, while responses were size and poly dispersity index (PdI). Optimized SNEDDS were studied morphologically using transmission electron microscopy (TEM). In vitro release of heparin was studied in the simulated gastric and simulated intestinal media.

Results: The data revealed that in molar ratio 1:3 (heparin:CPβCD), the n-octanol recovery was maximized and reached 67.6?±?11.86%. Size, PdI, zeta potential, EE% in gastric medium and EE% in intestinal medium for optimized nano-droplets were reported as 307?±?30.51?nm, 0.236?±?0.02,?+2.1?±?0.66?mV, 90.2?±?0.04 and 96.1?±?0.73%, respectively. Microscopic images revealed spherical nano-droplets. The obtained data revealed no burst release of heparin from nano-droplets.

Conclusions: The obtained results indicate that SNEDDS could be regarded as a good candidate for oral delivery of heparin as the hydrophilic macromolecule.     

Efficiency assessment using a multidirectional DDF approach

This paper proposes a new efficiency measure that aims at capturing the overall distance to the efficient frontier and not the distance corresponding to a specific projection, as most oriented and non‐oriented methods compute. The proposed approach uses a grid‐based method to sample all possible improvement directions from a given operating point and for each direction it computes a directional efficiency score solving a directional distance function model. This provides information about the distribution of the distance to the efficient frontier. Therefore, the proposed multidirectional efficiency measure does not provide a single efficiency score but a distribution of efficiency scores. The minimum, the median, the Q1 and Q3 quartiles and the maximum can be singled out as representatives of that distribution. The latter corresponds to the closest among the computed efficient targets. In addition to the efficiency score distribution, the associated efficient targets are also provided. The proposed approach can take into account integer and nondiscretionary variables and a preference structure. An application of the method to assess the efficiency of material recovery facilities is presented.     

Mechanical behavior of micaceous clays

This study aims to investigate the effect of mica content on the mechanical properties of clays.Commercially available ground mica was blended with a locally available clayey soil,at varying nica contents by mass of 5%,10%,15%,20%,25% and 30%,to artificially prepare various micaceous clay blends.The preliminary testing phase included consistency limits and standard Proctor compaction tests.The primary testing program consisted of unconfined compression(UC),direct shear(DS) and scanning electron microscopy(SEM) tests.The test results showed that the liquid and plastic limits exhibited a linear,monotonically increasing trend with increase in mica content.The rate of increase in the plastic limit,however,was found to be greater than that of the liquid limit,thereby leading to a gradual transition towards a non-plastic,cohesionless character.The soft,spongy fabric and high water demand of the mica mineral led to higher optimum water contents and lower maximum dry unit weights with increasing mica content.Under low confinement conditions,i.e.the UC test and the DS test at low normal stresses,the shear strength was adversely affected by mica.However,the closer packing of the clay and mica components in the matrix under high confinement conditions offsets the adverse effects of mica by inducing frictional resistance at the shearing interface,thus leading to improved strength resistance.     

Error from Delay Drift in Terahertz Attenuated Total Reflection Spectroscopy

In this article we discuss the influence of temporal stability on the value obtained for dielectric properties of materials measured by terahertz time-domain spectroscopy with particular emphasis on attenuated total reflection. The stability of three different terahertz attenuated total reflection spectroscopy systems is carefully characterized. The formalism for the complex refractive index extraction is presented and the effect of delay errors is calculated numerically. We found that good thermal stability of the terahertz system helps to minimize delay fluctuations and therefore the uncertainty of the resulting complex refractive index.