Designing a System for Upgrading of Heavy Crude Oils Through Electron Beam Treatment

Low-quality crude oil reserves require prohibitively high energy costs to extract and transport. The extreme viscosity and impurities of these oils prevents them from being transported via pipeline, requiring the use of more expensive trucks or trains. Light crude oil has a viscosity ranging up to 100 cP at 40°C. In contrast, Crude Oil #1 under investigation measures 33,855 cP, and Crude Oil #2 is 4,570,000 cP at the same temperature as measured in the laboratory. Sulfur content of both exceeds 5% by mass. Effects of the exposure of these oils to an electron beam discharge are being researched to reduce viscosity with higher conversion factors, using less energy at low temperatures. To facilitate this investigation, a flow loop was created with controls to adjust oil initial temperature with line heaters, radiation dose rate with height adjustment, flow shear rate through flow channel angle, and flow residence time through a gear pump.The flow loop uses stainless steel lines with a gear pump built to handle viscous oil at 230°C, and makes extensive use of aluminum versus steel in a modular frame to prevent overheating from the e-beam. To support the flow test cart, a remote control station cart was created, along with a fire safety cart and mobile test cell for safe sample extraction and shakedown testing. In designing the system and writing safety documentation, the test vehicles were further refined as new concerns were addressed and potential hazards mitigated. Preliminary testing of the various system components yielded a successful design. The end result is a set of systems that allows for ease of variability in operating parameters such as dose rate, gas environment, and added hydrogenation

THE METHODOLOGY FOR INTEGRATING ROBOTIC SYSTEMS IN UNDEGROUND MINING MACHINES

Roof bolting is a critical operation in ensuring the safety and stability of underground mines by securing the roof strata with bolts. The process involves moving and manipulating heavy tools while being vigilant about the safety of the area. During the installation of roof bolts, operators are exposed to hazardous conditions due to challenging working conditions in underground mines, extensive working hours, and demanding shift schedules leading to personnel fatigue and influencing operators to take shortcuts that may increase the risk of injuries and fatal accidents. The successful completion of roof bolting tasks depends heavily on operator judgment and experience to perform these tasks. To mitigate the occupational hazards inherent in roof bolting operations, a six-axis ABB IRB 1600 robotic arm was integrated into the roof bolter machine to imitate human functions during the roof bolting operation. The integration process involves selecting a suitable robot that can perform human activities and has the potential to handle the tasks at hand. The ultimate goal of implementing the robotic system into the roof bolter machine is to minimize human involvement during the roof bolting operation by converting the machine from manual operations to a partially automated roof bolter machine. The integration enhances the safety of personnel by moving humans away from the face where roof bolting takes place to a safe distance. The operator is then assigned a new role to control and supervise all the operational tasks of the automated roof bolting operation via a human-machine interface (HMI). During the laboratory testing of the automation process, the robotic arm cooperates with some novel specialized technologies to imitate human activities during roof bolting operations. The developed systems include the plate feeder, the bolt feeder, and the wrench. These systems were built to support automation and minimize human intervention during roof bolting operations. These components were linked to the Programmable Logic Controller (PLC) and controlled by the HMI touchpad. An HMI was developed for the operator to control and monitor the automated process away from the active face. This study establishes robust communication paths among all the components. The design communication network links the robotic arm and other components of the roof bolter machine, leading to a smooth and sequential roof bolting process. The EtherNet/IP protocol is used to pass messages between the components of the automated roof bolter machine through a Controller Area Network (CAN) bus device installed to enable communication using CAN protocols. Establishing a robust communication network between the components prevents collision and manages the movement of the robotic arm and other developed automated systems during the bolting process. The outcome of the study shows that the robotic arm has the potential to mimic human activities during the roof bolting operation by performing bolt grasping, holding, lifting, placing, and removal of drill steels during the roof bolting operations. As a result, humans can be moved away from hazardous areas to a safe location and control the roof bolting operation through an Human Machine Interface (HMI) touchpad. The HMI controls the bolting process with start and stop buttons from the subroutine of all the components to perform the roof bolting operation. These buttons enable the operator to stop the operation in the event of unsafe acts

Capital\u27s Media: The Physical Conditions of Circulation

The question of what constitutes media has received little attention in Marxism and where it does, the concept is an empty abstraction. While Marxists have extensively theorized the concentration of mass media ownership, and analyzed mass media content as ideology or propaganda, critical discussions of what a medium is in the capitalist mode of production have been mostly lacking. That is to say, Marxism does not have a media ontology. Media is therefore a critical gap in Marx’s political economy. This dissertation seeks to fill this gap by asking what is a medium in the capitalist mode of production?, answering it with a valueform theory of media and a concept of “capital’s media” that takes the circulation of capital as its starting point. The dissertation goes beyond Marxism’s mass media myopia and moves the concept of media towards logistics and infrastructure. The contributions this dissertation makes are to (1) develop a theory and category of capital’s media as a phenomenon of the circulation process of capital; (2) stake out an approach to investigate media phenomenon outside of pure political economy and cultural studies approaches; and in the process (3) contribute towards a rehabilitation of Marx’s analysis of circulation. To make these contributions this dissertation relies on a theoretical framework that is primarily based on Marx’s value theory, but enriched with concepts from Canadian- German media theory (Harold A. Innis, Marshall McLuhan, Friedrich Kittler, Wolfgang Ernst, and Hartmut Winkler) and Paul Virilio’s dromology. This dissertation has two components to its methodology: an original “circulationist” reading of Marx’s political economy that is developed from the heterodox Neue Marx-Lektüre (New Marx Reading), and a set of empirical case studies that includes the shipping container and intermodal transportation, distribution centers, and point-of-sale and payment systems Positing a category of capital’s media, this dissertation concludes that nothing by its very nature is a medium but instead that things function as media when they appear in that category. More specifically, a thing, such as a container ship or distribution center, appears in the category of capital’s media when they function within and for the circulation process

Designing a System for Upgrading of Heavy Crude Oils Through Electron Beam Treatment

Low-quality crude oil reserves require prohibitively high energy costs to extract and transport. The extreme viscosity and impurities of these oils prevents them from being transported via pipeline, requiring the use of more expensive trucks or trains. Light crude oil has a viscosity ranging up to 100 cP at 40°C. In contrast, Crude Oil #1 under investigation measures 33,855 cP, and Crude Oil #2 is 4,570,000 cP at the same temperature as measured in the laboratory. Sulfur content of both exceeds 5% by mass. Effects of the exposure of these oils to an electron beam discharge are being researched to reduce viscosity with higher conversion factors, using less energy at low temperatures. To facilitate this investigation, a flow loop was created with controls to adjust oil initial temperature with line heaters, radiation dose rate with height adjustment, flow shear rate through flow channel angle, and flow residence time through a gear pump.The flow loop uses stainless steel lines with a gear pump built to handle viscous oil at 230°C, and makes extensive use of aluminum versus steel in a modular frame to prevent overheating from the e-beam. To support the flow test cart, a remote control station cart was created, along with a fire safety cart and mobile test cell for safe sample extraction and shakedown testing. In designing the system and writing safety documentation, the test vehicles were further refined as new concerns were addressed and potential hazards mitigated. Preliminary testing of the various system components yielded a successful design. The end result is a set of systems that allows for ease of variability in operating parameters such as dose rate, gas environment, and added hydrogenation

Automated longwall guidance and control systems, phase 1

Candidate vertical control systems (VCS) and face advancement systems (FAS) required to satisfactorily automate the longwall system were analyzed and simulated in order to develop an overall longwall system configuration for preliminary design

The grading inspection of an agricultural product: decision-making problems and strategies with their training and selection implications

This research thesis describes an investigation into the grading inspection of apples with particular reference to the decision-making component of the inspection task. The research commences with an evaluation, conducted across seven grading packhouses in the United Kingdom, of the correctness and consistency with which examiners judge and classify fruit in accordance with the European Economic Community Standards and attempts to broadly answer two questions: (i) How well do human inspectors of apples perform under optimum conditions (the decision task with trivial search)? and (ii) how well do human inspectors of apples perform under actual 'on-line' conditions (the decision task with active search)? Subsequent analysis identifies those factors contributing to poor decision-making performance, of which four are the subject of further investigation. These are inspector training, selection of inspectors, the deployment of inspectors, and the method of presentation of fruit. [Continues.

Dust control handbook for industrial minerals mining and processing

Throughout the mining and processing of minerals, the mined ore undergoes a number of crushing, grinding, cleaning, drying, and product sizing operations as it is processed into a marketable commodity. These operations are highly mechanized, and both individually and collectively these processes can generate large amounts of dust. If control technologies are inadequate, hazardous levels of respirable dust may be liberated into the work environment, potentially exposing workers. Accordingly, federal regulations are in place to limit the respirable dust exposure of mine workers. Engineering controls are implemented in mining operations in an effort to reduce dust generation and limit worker exposure.NIOSHTIC no. 2004022