The Viscosity Reduction of Heavy and Extra Heavy Crude Oils by a Pulsed Magnetic Field

Abstract

Ever increasing world energy demand requires the use of all hydrocarbon resources available, especially heavy and extra heavy crude oils, in the near future. However, transportation of these crudes is very difficult due to their high viscosity and low mobility. There are many different methods to reduce heavy crude oil viscosity. Some of these methods are heating, blending, water-in-oil emulsion formation, upgrading, and core annular flow, but each of these methods has several problems. The aim of this research is to investigate a new method to reduce viscosity for pipeline transportation. In this method, asphalt molecules, which are mainly responsible for high viscosity, are aggregated temporarily to micronized clusters while going through a pulsed electric field, causing a reduction of the viscosity. This method does not change the oil's temperature and is very suitable for underwater pipelines. Magnetic fields of 0.03 to 0.3 T were exerted on two kinds of heavy crude oils and viscosity reduction up to 7% was observed.     

Viscosity Reduction of Heavy and Extra Heavy Crude Oils by Pulsed Electric Field

Abstract

The ever-increasing world energy demand would require the use of all hydrocarbon resources available, especially heavy and extra-heavy crude oils in the near future. However, transportation of these crudes is very difficult due to their high viscosity and low mobility. There are many different methods to reduce heavy crude oil viscosity. Some of these methods are heating, blending, water-in-oil emulsion formation, upgrading, and core annular flow. But each of these methods has several problems. The aim of this research is to investigate a new method to reduce viscosity for pipeline transportation. In this method asphalt molecules, which are mainly responsible for high viscosity, are aggregated temporarily to micronized clusters while going through a pulsed electric field, causing a reduction of the viscosity. This method does not change the oil's temperature and is very suitable for underwater pipelines. The authors applied electric fields in the range of 0.5 to 1.8 KV/mm an Iranian heavy crude oil and viscosity reduction up to 7% was observed.     

DENSITIES AND DERIVED THERMODYNAMIC PROPERTIES OF THE BINARY SYSTEMS OF BENZENE WITH BUTYL METHACRYLATE,ALLYL METHACRYLATE,METHACRYLIC ACID,AND VINYL ACETATE AT 298.15 K

Densities of the binary systems of benzene with butyl methacrylate, allyl methacrylate, methacrylic acid, and vinyl acetate have been measured as a function of the composition, at 298.15 K and atmospheric pressure, using an Anton Paar DMA 5000 oscillating U-tube densimeter. The calculated excess molar volumes were correlated with the Redlich-Kister equation and with a series of Legendre polynomials. The excess molar volumes are positive for the four binaries studied.     

Red blood cell stimulation of platelet nitric oxide production indicated by quantitative monitoring of the communication between cells in the bloodstream

ATP is a recognized stimulus of nitric oxide synthase and is released from red blood cells (RBCs) upon deformation. The objective of this work is to demonstrate that RBCs stimulate nitric oxide production in platelets by employing a continuous flow analysis system in which the stream contains both RBCs and platelets. Here, two drugs known to improve blood flow in vivo (pentoxyfilline and iloprost) are shown to increase both the release of RBC-derived ATP and the production of platelet-derived NO. A flow-based chemiluminescence assay (in vitro) was employed to quantitatively determine the amount of ATP released from erythrocytes subjected to flow-induced deformation. Prior to being subjected to flow, erythrocytes were incubated in the absence or presence of 4.8 microM pentoxyfilline or 80 nM iloprost. Erythrocytes obtained from rabbits (n=22) that were subjected to flow released 239 +/- 29 nM ATP. When treated with pentoxyfilline, the ATP released from the flowing RBCs increased to 450 +/- 94 nM ATP. An increase in RBC-derived ATP was also measured for iloprost-incubated RBCs in flow (362 +/- 45 nM ATP). Importantly, platelets that were loaded with diaminofluorofluorescein diacetate, an intracellular fluorescence probe for NO, exhibited increases in fluorescence intensity by 16% in the presence of RBCs treated with pentoxyfilline and a 10% increase when treated with iloprost. When the ATP release from the RBCs was inhibited with glybenclamide, the platelet fluorescence intensity decreased by 25 and 51% for RBCs incubated with pentoxyfilline and iloprost, respectively. In an experiment not involving the RBC, inhibition of the P2x receptor on the platelets (an ATP receptor) resulted in no increase in platelet NO production, suggesting that the NO production in the activated platelet is due to ATP.     

Urinary 2-ethyl-3-oxohexanoic acid as major metabolite of orally administered 2-ethylhexanoic acid in human

Human metabolism of 2-ethylhexanoic acid (2-EHA), which is a known metabolite of important phthalates, was investigated using 2-EHA-contaminated food. The results of our studies reveal that the major catabolic pathway of 2-EHA in human is beta-oxidation. The dominant final urinary metabolite was identified and quantified as 3-oxo-2-ethylhexanoic acid (3-oxo-2-EHA), but only after immediate methylation of the extract from urine and prior to GC-MS analysis. Former studies without the precaution of immediate methylation had found 4-heptanone as the major metabolite, which is obviously an artifact arising from the decarboxylation of 3-oxo-2-EHA.     

Methods of solving reduced lead systems for inverse electrocardiography

In the context of inverse electrocardiography, we examine the problem of using measurements from sets of electrocardiographic leads that are smaller than the number of nodes in the associated geometric models of the torso. We compared several methods to estimate the solution from such reduced-lead measurements sets both with and without knowledge of prior statistics of the measurements. We present here simulation results that indicate that deleting rows of the forward matrix corresponding to the unmeasured leads performs best in the absence of prior statistics, and that Bayesian (or least-squares) estimation performs best in the presence of prior statistics.     

Electrical impedance tomography for piecewise constant domains using boundary element shape-based inverse solutions

Shape-based solutions have recently received attention for certain ill-posed inverse problems. Their advantages include implicit imposition of relevant constraints and reduction in the number of unknowns, especially important for nonlinear ill-posed problems. We apply the shape-based approach to current-injection electrical impedance tomography (EIT) reconstructions. We employ a boundary element method (BEM) based solution for EIT. We introduce two shape models, one based on modified B-splines, and the other based on spherical harmonics, for BEM modeling of shapes. These methods allow us to parameterize the geometry of conductivity inhomogeneities in the interior of the volume. We assume the general shape of piecewise constant inhomogeneities is known but their conductivities and their exact location and shape is not. We also assume the internal conductivity profile is piecewise constant, meaning that each region has a constant conductivity. We propose and test three different regularization techniques to be used with either of the shape models. The performance of our methods is illustrated via both simulations in a digital torso model and phantom experiments when there is a single internal object. We observe that in the noisy environment, either simulated noise or real sources of noise in the experimental study, we get reasonable reconstructions. Since the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) expected in modern EIT instruments is higher than that used in this study, these reconstruction methods may prove useful in practice.     

Using RFLP-mtDNA for the rapid monitoring of the dominant inoculated yeast strain in industrial wine fermentations

The analysis of restriction fragment length polymorphism of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA-RFLP) has been applied as a test to monitor the abundance of the starter yeast strain during industrial wine fermentations without previous isolation of yeast colonies. For white wine fermentations, we performed a rapid assay consisting in taking a sample of fermenting must, purifying the DNA from harvested cells, and obtaining the restriction patterns by digestion with the endonuclease HinfI. The same protocol, but adding an overnight cultivation step before DNA purification, was also applied to red wine fermentations. The results were compared with those obtained from the subsequent characterisation of strains, for the same samples, by analysis of the electrophoretic karyotype of isolated yeast colonies. In all cases, when the inoculated strain was dominant within the yeast population, the rapid assay anticipated the result by showing the coincidence between the restriction profiles obtained from both total cells and the inoculated strain. The results were obtained at 11 or 23 h after sampling for white- or red-wine fermentations respectively. This method allows a rapid intervention of the wine-producer if the presence of the inoculated yeasts has suffered a sudden decrease in any phase of the fermentation process.     

Tunicamycin depresses p-glycoprotein glycosylation without an effect on its membrane localization and drug efflux activity in l1210 cells

P-glycoprotein (P-gp), also known as ABCB1, is a member of the ABC transporter family of proteins. P-gp is an ATP-dependent drug efflux pump that is localized to the plasma membrane of mammalian cells and confers multidrug resistance in neoplastic cells. P-gp is a 140-kDa polypeptide that is glycosylated to a final molecular weight of 170 kDa. Our experimental model used two variants of L1210 cells in which overexpression of P-gp was achieved: either by adaptation of parental cells (S) to vincristine (R) or by transfection with the human gene encoding P-gp (T). R and T cells were found to differ from S cells in transglycosylation reactions in our recent studies. The effects of tunicamycin on glycosylation, drug efflux activity and cellular localization of P-gp in R and T cells were examined in the present study. Treatment with tunicamycin caused less concentration-dependent cellular damage to R and T cells compared with S cells. Tunicamycin inhibited P-gp N-glycosylation in both of the P-gp-positive cells. However, tunicamycin treatment did not alter either the P-gp cellular localization to the plasma membrane or the P-gp transport activity. The present paper brings evidence that independently on the mode of P-gp expression (selection with drugs or transfection with a gene encoding P-gp) in L1210 cells, tunicamycin induces inhibition of N-glycosylation of this protein, without altering its function as plasma membrane drug efflux pump.     

Cyclic voltammetry on n-alkylphosphonic acid self-assembled monolayer modified large area indium tin oxide electrodes

We show stable bonding of n-alkylphosphonic acid self-assembled monolayers (SAMs) to indium tin oxide electrodes and their direct electrical characterization by cyclic voltammetry (CV). The functional coatings were investigated with regards to the addressability and stability of the electrodes, which are related to small changes in molecular layer thickness. The response of a redox active compound in solution to the faradic current is indirectly proportional to the molecular chain length of the SAMs. We observed a decrease of the electrode sensitivity with enhanced surface protection and slow long term degradation of the SAM under electrochemical stress by CV, and therefore conclude a trade-off optimum for molecules with the C10 chain.