Laboratory Studies to Determine Suitable Chemicals to Improve Oil Recovery from Garzan Oil Field

Garzan oil field is located at the south east of Turkey. It is a mature oil field and the reservoir is fractured carbonate reservoir. After producing about 1% original oil in place (OOIP) reservoir pressure started to decline. Waterflooding was started in order to support reservoir pressure and also to enhance oil production in 1960. Waterflooding improved the oil recovery but after years of flooding water breakthrough at the production wells was observed. This increased the water/oil ratio at the production wells. In order to enhance oil recovery again different techniques were investigated. Chemical enhanced oil recovery (EOR) methods are gaining attention all over the world for oil recovery. Surfactant injection is an effective way for interfacial tension (IFT) reduction and wettability reversal. In this study, 31 different types of chemicals were studied to specify the effects on oil production. This paper presents solubility of surfactants in brine, IFT and contact angle measurements, imbibition tests, and lastly core flooding experiments. Most of the chemicals were incompatible with Garzan formation water, which has high divalent ion concentration. In this case, the usage of 2-propanol as co-surfactant yielded successful results for stability of the selected chemical solutions. The results of the wettability test indicated that both tested cationic and anionic surfactants altered the wettability of the carbonate rock from oil-wet to intermediate-wet. The maximum oil recovery by imbibition test was reached when core was exposed 1-ethly ionic liquid after imbibition in formation water. Also, after core flooding test, it is concluded that considerable amount of oil can be recovered from Garzan reservoir by waterflooding alone if adverse effects of natural fractures could be eliminated.     

Green Measurements for Software Product Based on Sustainability Dimensions

Software is a central component in the modern world and vastly affects the environment’s sustainability. The demand for energy and resource requirements is rising when producing hardware and software units. Literature study reveals that many studies focused on green hardware; however, limited efforts were made in the greenness of software products. Green software products are necessary to solve the issues and problems related to the long-term use of software, especially from a sustainability perspective. Without a proper mechanism for measuring the greenness of a particular software product executed in a specific environment, the mentioned benefits will not be attained. Currently, there are not enough works to address this problem, and the green status of software products is uncertain and unsure. This paper aims to identify the green measurements based on sustainable dimensions in a software product. The second objective is to reveal the relationships between the elements and measurements through empirical study. The study is conducted in two phases. The first phase is the theoretical phase, where the main components, measurements and practices that influence the sustainability of a software product are identified. The second phase is the empirical study that involved 103 respondents in Malaysia investigating current practices of green software in the industrial environment and further identifying the main sustainability dimensions and measurements and their impact on achieving green software products. This study has revealed seven green measurements of software product: Productivity, Usability, Cost Reduction, Employee Support, Energy Efficiency, Resource Efficiency and Tool Support. The relationships are statistically significant, with a significance level of less than 0.01 (p = 0.000). Thus, the hypothesised relationships were all accepted. The contributions of this study revolve around the research perspectives of the measurements to attain a green software product.     

Hybrid wideband transceiver design for achievable rate maximization in millimeter-wave MIMO systems

Telecommunication Systems - This paper proposes two algorithms for hybrid (Analog–Digital) beamforming in a single-user millimeter-wave (mm-wave) multi-input multi-output (MIMO) systems under...     

A fog-based security framework for intelligent traffic light control system

Multimedia Tools and Applications - The world is facing many problems including that of traffic congestion. To highlight the issue of traffic congestion worldwide specially in urban areas and to...     

Effect of Boronizing on Operating Stability of Steel AISI 304L under Erosion Impact of Hard Particles

Metal Science and Heat Treatment - The effect of solid boronizing at 950°C for 2 and 4 h on the phase composition, microstructure, hardness and abrasive wear of steel AISI 304L is studied...     

Al2O3/Yttria‐Stabilized Zirconia Hollow‐Fiber Membrane Incorporated with Iron Oxide for Pb(II) Removal

Removal by absorptive ceramic membranes can simultaneously absorb and separate metal ions from water. Alumina/yttria‐stabilized zirconia (Al₂O₃/YSZ) hollow‐fiber membranes, fabricated using phase inversion and sintering process, were deposited with iron oxide by an in‐situ hydrothermal process. The results showed that α‐Fe₂O₃ was produced and incorporated across the membranes. A reduction in flux was recorded with the deposition of α‐Fe₂O_3. However, it improved the adsorption capacity for heavy metal adsorption. The adsorption‐separation test demonstrated that the optimized membrane is able to completely remove Pb(II) ions after two hours.     

Transesterification of Palm-based Methyl Palmitate into Esteramine Catalyzed by Calcium Oxide Catalyst

The technology for transesterification reactions between methyl esters and alcohols is well established by using classical homogeneous alkaline catalysts, which provide high conversion of methyl esters to specialty or nonindigenous esters. However, in certain products where the purity of the esters is of concern, the removal of homogeneous catalysts after the completion of the reaction is a challenge in terms of production cost and water footprint. Therefore, a study to investigate the potential of heterogeneous catalysts was conducted on reactions between methyl palmitate and triethanolamine. The degree of basicity and active surface area of calcium oxide (CaO), zinc oxide (ZnO), and magnesium oxide (MgO) were first characterized by using temperature-programmed desorption (TPD-CO₂) and Brunauere–Emmett–Teller (BET), respectively. Among the metal oxides investigated, the CaO catalyst showed the best catalytic activity toward the transesterification process as it gave the highest conversion of methyl palmitate and yielded fatty esteramine compositions similar to the conventional homogeneous catalyst. The optimum transesterification condition by using the CaO catalyst utilized a lower vacuum system of approximately 200 mbar, which could minimize a considerable amount of energy consumption. Furthermore, low CaO dosage of 0.1% was able to give a conversion of 94.5% methyl ester and formed esteramine at 170 °C for 2 h. Therefore, the production of esterquats from esteramine may become more economically feasible through the methyl ester route by using the CaO catalyst, which can be recycled three times.     

Analysis of surface layers on bioactive glasses

FT-Raman spectroscopy proves to be a powerful technique to study surface reactions on bioactive glasses and it eliminates the fluorescence of the organic phase of whole bone, thereby making it possible to compare the reaction layers formed on bioactive glasses with the mineral phase of bone. The spectrum of hydroxycarbonate apatite (HCA) developed on the bioactive glasses is closer to that of bone than synthetic hydroxyapatite (HA) and closely matches that of bone mineral obtained by deproteination of whole human femoral cortical bone.