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.     

Flexible poly(styrene-ethylene-butadiene-styrene) hybrid nanofibers for bioengineering and water filtration applications

Among the thermoplastic elastomers that play important roles in the polymer industry due to their superior properties, styrene-based species and polyurethane block copolymers are of great interest. Poly(styrene-ethylene-butadiene-styrene) (SEBS) as a triblock copolymer seems to have the potential to meet many demands in different applications due to various industrial requirements where durability, biocompatibility, breaking elongation, and interfacial adhesion are important. In this study, the SEBS triblock copolymer was functionalized with natural (Satureja hortensis, SH) and synthetic (nanopowder, TiO₂) agents to obtain composite nanofibers by electrospinning and electrospraying methods for use in biomedical and water filtration applications. The results were compared with thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU) composite nanofibers, which are commonly used in these fields. Here, functionalized SEBS nanofibers exhibited antibacterial effect while at the same time improving cell viability. In addition, because of successful water filtration by using the SEBS composite nanofibers, the material may have a good potential to be used comparably to TPU for the application.     

Conceptual damage-sensitive features for structural health monitoring: Laboratory and field demonstrations

The use of damage-sensitive features to evaluate structural condition or health is a very critical aspect of structural health monitoring. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the potential of two different damage-sensitive features for detecting damage. Different damage scenarios are simulated on a large-scale laboratory structure and a three-span highway bridge for demonstration. The features presented in this paper are the modal flexibility-based deflection and curvature both of which are obtained directly from dynamic properties. In the literature, flexibility associated with mode shapes and mode shapes curvatures have been mostly explored. In this study, multi-input–multi-output dynamic data are used to obtain modal flexibility, which is a close approximation to the actual flexibility. A main novelty is that the curvature is calculated from the deflected shapes using the modal flexibility as opposed to using modal vectors. In this paper, the theory of the methodology is explained and then experimental studies and results are presented. For the experimental studies, the laboratory specimen and the three-span bridge were gradually damaged. It is shown that both deflection and curvature are conceptual and physically meaningful features for damage detection and localization. The issues and the requirements for these features to perform successfully are also presented.     

Deactivation of copper-ion-exchanged hydrogen-mordenite-type zeolite catalyst by SO2 for no reduction by NH3

Deactivation of copper-ion-exchanged hydrogen-mordenite-type zeolite catalyst by SO₂ for NO reduction by NH₃ was examined in a fixed-bed flow reactor. The deactivation of the catalyst was strongly dependent on reaction temperature. At high reaction temperatures over 300°C, the catalyst did not lose its initial activity up to 50 h of operation, regardless of SO₂ feed concentration from 500 to 20,000 ppm. However, at low reaction temperatures near 250°C, apparent deactivation did occur. Changes in the physicochemical properties such as surface area and sulfur content of deactivated catalyst well correlated with catalyst activity, depending upon reaction temperatures. The deactivation was due to pore blocking and/or filling by deactivating agents, which plugged and/or filled the pores of catalyst. The deactivating agents deposited on the catalyst surface were presumed to be (NH₄)₂SO₄ and/or (NH₄)HSO₄ from the results of TGA and ion-chromatography measurement.     

The impact of micro‐ and macroergonomics considerations on appropriate technology transfer decisions in developing countries: The case of Turkey

The research presented in this paper aims to support the decision process of appropriate technology transfer to industrially developing countries by improving a broader understanding of relationships between the key micro‐ and macroergonomics factors and the technology alternatives. The methodology involves knowledge acquisition, identifying and categorizing a holistic set of key criteria about technology transfer with respect to ergonomics. This work attempts briefly to identify factors affecting the success of technology transfer in order to reduce the potential of incompatibilities with respect to micro‐ and macroergonomics and to optimize the decision process of managers. The objective of the decision model, based on the analytic hierarchy process (AHP), determines the global priority weights for different technology alternatives and examines the critical factors and benefits, which affect the appropriateness of technology transfer. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Hum Factors Man 17: 1–19, 2007.     

Accurate Receptor-Ligand Binding Free Energies from Fast QM Conformational Chemical Space Sampling

Small molecule receptor-binding is dominated by weak, non-covalent interactions such as van-der-Waals hydrogen bonding or electrostatics. Calculating these non-covalent ligand-receptor interactions is a challenge to computational means in terms of accuracy and efficacy since the ligand may bind in a number of thermally accessible conformations. The conformational rotamer ensemble sampling tool (CREST) uses an iterative scheme to efficiently sample the conformational space and calculates energies using the semi-empirical ‘Geometry, Frequency, Noncovalent, eXtended Tight Binding’ (GFN2-xTB) method. This combined approach is applied to blind predictions of the modes and free energies of binding for a set of 10 drug molecule ligands to the cucurbit[n]urils CB[8] receptor from the recent ‘Statistical Assessment of the Modeling of Proteins and Ligands’ (SAMPL) challenge including morphine, hydromorphine, cocaine, fentanyl, and ketamine. For each system, the conformational space was sufficiently sampled for the free ligand and the ligand-receptor complexes using the quantum chemical Hamiltonian. A multitude of structures makes up the final conformer-rotamer ensemble, for which then free energies of binding are calculated. For those large and complex molecules, the results are in good agreement with experimental values with a mean error of 3 kcal/mol. The GFN2-xTB energies of binding are validated by advanced density functional theory calculations and found to be in good agreement. The efficacy of the automated QM sampling workflow allows the extension towards other complex molecular interaction scenarios.     

Influence of the cross‐sectional shape on the structure and properties of polyester fibers

The effects of the fiber cross‐sectional shape on the structure and properties of polyester fibers were investigated. Fully drawn yarn (FDY) polyester fibers (167 dtex and 48 filaments) were produced under the same spinning conditions used in a spinning plant. The only difference between the fibers was their cross‐sectional shapes. Four different cross‐sectional shapes were chosen for the experimental work: round, hollow‐round, trilobal, and hollow‐trilobal. The crystallinity and values of the maximum stress, maximum strain, modulus, yield stress, shrinkage in boiling water, and unevenness of the fibers were determined. The difference in the cross‐sectional shapes influenced the modulus, maximum strain, yield stress, and shrinkage in boiling water. No effects on the crystallinity and maximum stress were observed. The results suggested that the hollow fibers had higher amorphous orientation than the full fibers. The hollow‐round fiber had the highest unevenness value. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci 103: 2615–2621, 2007     

Ultrahigh molecular weight polyethylene with improved crosslink density,oxidation stability,and microbial inhibition by chemical crosslinking and tea polyphenols for total joint replacements

Highly crosslinked ultrahigh molecular weight polyethylene (UHMWPE) stabilized by vitamin E (VE) is widely applied in artificial joints as the bearings. Despite the approval, there is a discord that VE lowers the crosslinking efficiency, limiting its use at high concentration. In this work, we aim to obtain highly crosslinked and oxidation resistant UHMWPE through the conjunction of tea polyphenol and chemical crosslinking. We hypothesized that highly incorporated tea polyphenol with multiple reactive sites can ameliorate crosslinking efficiency of chemical crosslinked UHMWPE in comparison to VE. Epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG) as representative tea polyphenol was incorporated into UHMWPE at high concentration (2–8 wt%), followed by chemical crosslinking with 2 wt% organic peroxide. Unlike VE/UHMWPE blends as the control, chemical crosslinking achieved an increasing trend in crosslink density of EGCG/UHMWPE blends with increasing antioxidant concentration. High concentration of EGCG also enhanced the oxidation stability of UHMWPE. Intriguingly, EGCG endowed UHMWPE with an excellent antimicrobial property, which was inefficient in VE/UHMWPE. Cell viability was hardly affected by the high loaded antioxidant and peroxide. The chemically crosslinked UHMWPE blended with EGCG is proved to be a reasonable, cost effective and realistic alternative for use in artificial joints.