Recreating mineralogical petrographic heterogeneity within microfluidic chips : assembly, examples, and applications

This material includes work supported by Royal Society Research Grant RG140009. BA was supported by a Society of Petrophysics and Well Log Analysts (SPWLA) grant and an Aberdeen Formation Evaluation Society (AFES) bursary. MC was supported by a University of Aberdeen College of Physical Sciences PhD studentship. The authors thank Munasuonyu Walter for SEM images of crushed marble†, MSc students Oluwatoyole A. Adepoju and Vasiliki Koutsogianni for their contribution to the experiments, and undergraduate student Duncan Mackenzie for helpful discussions. Open Access via RSC Gold 4 GoldPeer reviewedPublisher PD

What about nitrogen? Using nitrogen as a carrier gas during the analysis of petroleum biomarkers by gas chromatography mass spectrometry

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Asphaltene detection using Surface Enhanced Raman Scattering (SERS)

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Survival of Organic Materials in Hypervelocity Impacts of Ice on Sand, Ice, and Water in the Laboratory

The survival of organic molecules in shock impact events has been investigated in the laboratory. A frozen mixture of anthracene and stearic acid, solvated in dimethylsulfoxide (DMSO), was fired in a two-stage light gas gun at speeds of ?2 and ?4?km s?1 at targets that included water ice, water, and sand. This involved shock pressures in the range of 2–12 GPa. It was found that the projectile materials were present in elevated quantities in the targets after impact and in some cases in the crater ejecta as well. For DMSO impacting water at 1.9?km s?1 and 45° incidence, we quantify the surviving fraction after impact as 0.44±0.05. This demonstrates successful transfer of organic compounds from projectile to target in high-speed impacts. The range of impact speeds used covers that involved in impacts of terrestrial meteorites on the Moon, as well as impacts in the outer Solar System on icy bodies such as Pluto. The results provide laboratory evidence that suggests that exogenous delivery of complex organic molecules from icy impactors is a viable source of such material on target bodies

Constraining causes of fish mass mortality using ultra-high-resolution biomarker measurement

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Identification, Geochemical Characterisation and Significance of Bitumen among the Grave Goods of the 7th Century Mound 1 Ship-Burial at Sutton Hoo (Suffolk, UK)

Acknowledgments: We would like to thank Antony Simpson for formatting the figures for publication. We are indebted to Dr Sonja Marzinzik and Dr Sue Brunning, former and current curators of the Department of Britain, Europe and Prehistory at the British Museum, for facilitating access to the Sutton Hoo finds. Carbon and hydrogen isotopic measurements were carried out by Iso-Analytical Limited. We are grateful to colleagues and others who read and commented on the manuscript in draft. Funding: This research was supported by funding from the European Commission Research Executive Agency (REA) via the Marie Curie Actions – Intra-European Fellowships for Career Development funding scheme (FP7-MC-IEF), Grant Agreement No. 253942, awarded to PB and RJS for project AMPT (Ancient Maritime Pitch and Tar: a multi-disciplinary study of sources, technology and preservation). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Depositional environment of the upper triassic baluti formation in gara anticline, kurdistan region, north iraq : Insight from microfacies and biomarker characteristics

cknowledgements The authors are grateful to Colin Taylor from the University of Aberdeen, Department of Geology and Petroleum Geology for his great assistance during analyzing the samples by GC-MS. The authors are very grateful to the Editor in Chief Prof. Dr. Salih M. Awadh, the Secretary of Journal Mr. Samir R. Hijab and the Technical Editors for their great efforts and valuable comments.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

IMPACT OF DISPLACEMENT RATE ON WATERFLOOD OIL RECOVERY UNDER MIXED-WET CONDITIONS

ABSTRACT Under uniformly water-wetting conditions, it is well established that waterflood oil recovery remains independent of flood rate while the flow is capillary-dominated and, furthermore, that the rate dependence emerges when the microscopic capillary number exceeds O(10 -5 ). In contrast, there is no equivalent framework for interpreting the flood rate-dependence of oil recovery under mixed-wet conditions representative of oil reservoirs. Indeed, not even the appropriate definition of capillary number under mixedwet conditions is established. In this paper, we focus specifically on oil recovery from mixed-wet porous media at high initial oil saturation and its dependence on water injection rate. We present laboratory measurements of oil distribution and its evolution during secondary waterflood at 2.5, 5.0, and 500 ft day -1 . Oil distribution was directly imaged at the pore scale using a high-speed camera coupled to an optical microscope in a bed of calcite grains packed into a microfluidic chip. These measurements are benchmarked against bulk measurements of remaining oil saturation in limestone cores. Data to date suggest that remaining oil saturation, So, after the same volume of water injection, displays a dependence on injection rate qualitatively similar to the classic capillary desaturation curve for uniformly water-wet media, with the rate dependence emerging at a higher injection rate under mixed-wet conditions than under water-wet conditions. However, unlike in uniformly water-wet media, the long-time (residual) So does not display a dependence on the rate. These findings may have important implications not only for oil recovery, but for a wide range of engineering applications involving mixed-wet porous media, e.g., geological CO2 storage, remediation of nonaqueous phase liquid (NAPL)-contaminated soils and aquifers, and irrigation

E-tracers:development of a low cost wireless technique for exploring sub-surface hydrological systems

This briefing describes the first deployment of a new electronic tracer (E-tracer) for obtaining along-flowpath measurements in subsurface hydrological systems. These low-cost, wireless sensor platforms were deployed into moulins on the Greenland Ice Sheet. After descending into the moulin, the tracers travelled through the subglacial drainage system before emerging at the glacier portal. They are capable of collecting along-flowpath data from the point of injection until detection. The E-tracers emit a radio frequency signal, which enables sensor identification, location and recovery from the proglacial plain. The second generation of prototype E-tracers recorded water pressure, but the robust sensor design provides a versatile platform for measuring a range of parameters, including temperature and electrical conductivity, in hydrological environments that are challenging to monitor using tethered sensors

Influence of Early Low-Temperature and Later High-Temperature Diagenesis on Magnetic Mineral Assemblages in Marine Sediments From the Nankai Trough

Funding Information: This research used samples and data provided by the International Ocean Discovery Program (IODP). The authors thank the Marine Works Japan staff at the Kochi Core Center for support during sampling. This work was supported by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science Grant-in-Aid for Science Research (grant 17K05681 to Myriam Kars), the German Research Foundation (DFG grants 388260220 to Male Koster and Susann Henkel, and 408178672 to Florence Schubotz), and the Australian Research Council (grant DP200100765 to Andrew P. Roberts). The authors also thank two anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments and Editor Joshua Feinberg for handling the manuscript.Peer reviewedPublisher PD