Microstructural properties of glass composite material made from incinerated scheduled waste slag and soda lime silicate (SLS) waste glass

Glass composite material (GCM) was produced from incinerated scheduled waste bottom slag (BS) and soda lime silicate (SLS) waste glass. The effect of BS waste loading on the GCM and the microstructural properties was studied. Batches of powder mixture is formulated with 30 wt.% to 70 wt.% of BS powder and SLS waste glass powder for GCM sintering. The powder mixtures of BS and SLS waste glass were compacted by uniaxial pressing method and sintered at 800 °C with heating rate of 2 °C/min and one hour soaking time. The phases identified by X-ray diffraction (XRD) method in all sintered samples are anorthite sodian, quartz, hematite and diopside. It was observed that higher BS waste loading results in higher porosity, higher water absorption and lower bulk density according to ASTM C373. In contrast, the Vickers microhardness value determined according to ASTM C1327, decreases with higher BS waste loading. This similar trend is observed for modulus of rupture (MOR) analysis which was performed according to ISO 10545-4. This physical and mechanical properties can be related to the microstructure observed during scanning electron microscope (SEM) analysis. More open pores and less dense surface are observed for higher BS waste loading samples. On the other hand, samples with lower BS waste loading consists of higher dense surface and no open pores. GCM with batch formulation of 30 wt.% BS and 70 wt.% SLS waste glass has shown the lowest water absorption percentage of 1.17%, the lowest porosity percentage of 2.2% and the highest bulk density value of 1.88 g/cm3. It also shows the highest MOR of 70.57 MPa and 5.6 GPa for Vickers microhardness with congruent microstructure features

Study on the effect of ultrasonic wave amplitude on de-emulsification of crude oil to enhance production process

Abstract One of the most challenging issue faced by the oil and gas industry is the formation of crude oil emulsion. The emulsion formation will lead to inconsistency in the production performance, which directly affects the economic growth of the industry. Current, conventional de-emulsification methods such as thermal, demulsifiers, and electrical methods are found ineffective in solving crude oil emulsion problem relativity to expected settling time. Therefore, this research aims to propose ultrasonic wave application method for better separation rate to solve crude oil emulsion problem. The effects of ultrasonic waves are investigated by designed experiment under different operating temperature. The optimum operating conditions are investigated and identified through optimization methods in Design Expert Software. The goals of this research are to achieve maximum water and oil separation and minimize the rag layer thickness. Based on the experiments and results, the best operating condition is at operating temperature of 60 °C at 40 μm of ultrasonic frequency of 20 kHz. These parameters were able to provide 73.3% of water separation rate and 20% volume fraction of oil layer after eight hours of bottle test.</jats:p

Intelligent classification of waxy crude oil odor-profile at different temperature

Crude oil is one of the basic needs required for humans to ease their life. The quality of crude oil with the lowest wax content is very important, in order to sustain the transportation and production of crude oil from offshore to onshore. Based on literature from previous studies, the appearance of wax depends on the temperature which is called Wax Appearance Temperature (WAT). Hence, there is a need to propose a new method to classify the waxy crude oil at a different temperature. The main purpose of this paper is to classify Malaysian waxy crude oil odor profile at different temperatures using intelligent classification technique. There are 28,000 data measurement of the waxy crude oil that was taken using an electronic nose (E-nose). The data readings have been normalized and analyzed using a statistical method. Then, the odor profiles were classified using K-Nearest Neighbour. The classification performance shows that the technique was able to classify the Malaysian waxy crude oil odor profile at different temperatures with 100% accuracy

Influence of Hydrostatic Pressure on the Formation of Voids in Gelled Crude Oil

Production of waxy crude oil from offshore fields has increased in the last decade. However, the operation is being challenged with the high wax content of crude oil that tends to precipitate at lower temperature. This paper presents the effects of hydrostatic pressure on the voids formed in waxy crude oil gel. A flow loop rig that simulates offshore waxy crude oil transportation was used to produce the gel. A Magnetic Resonance Imaging of 3-Tesla system was used to scan the gelled samples in horizontal and vertical pipes. The hydrostatic pressure effect was found to be most significant near the pipe wall as a change in percent voids volume of 0.53% was observed at that region. In particular, the voids volume reduction was more pronounced in the lower half side of the pipe. The total volume of voids in the vertical pipe was lower than that in the horizontal pipe, and this suggests that the gel in the vertical pipe became denser due to the effects from the hydrostatic pressure. Conversely, the voids volume around the pipe core in the vertical pipe was higher when compared to that in the horizontal pipe. The change in voids volume near the pipe core and wall shrunk to a minimum and converged to 0.18% voids volume at larger duration of the hydrostatic effect. Further, hydrostatic pressure was observed to have significant influences for higher duration making the void size to be distributed across and along the pipeline; however, it was found to have insignificant effects on voids size distribution for smaller duration. The findings of this study can help for better understanding of voids formation in vertical pipelines that would further assist in developing a model predicting restart pressure accurately.</jats:p