Isolation and identification of Indigenous Bacteria from Egyptian Oil field for Enhanced Oil Recovery Applications

Conventional EOR Chemical Techniques have an environmental hazards, when injected to formation. Conventional EOR Techniques have a high Production cost and complex operational process and equipment. In 1926, J. W. Beckman made a breakthrough in terms that he proposed developing a method to enhance oil by using microorganisms. MEOR is a technology using microorganisms to facilitate, increase oil production from reservoir. The aims of this PhD study are to investigate the application of the indigenous bacteria in Egyptian crude oil for enhanced oil recovery, and study the effects of salinity, nutrients and concentration on bacteria culture (miscibility)

A Case Study of Solar Energy Application in Enhanced Oil Recovery

Abstract Steam process is one of the most beneficial thermal enhanced oil recovery (TEOR) techniques, which is applied for heavy oil reservoirs to decrease viscosity, thus increasing the production rate. Traditionally, producing steam for TEOR requires consumption of massive amount of natural gas. Issaran Field is one of the largest heavy and extra heavy oil field in the world that was discovered in 1981 in Egyptian Eastern Desert. The required demand of steam for Issaran field is 25,000 bbl./day at 550 ˚F and 1000 psi. The objective of this study is to design a parabolic trough collectors (PTC) plant, which fulfils the required steam consumption need by Issaran heavy oil field. Results showed that solar energy has the ability to generate steam at the same quality as gas-fired system. PTC plant will produce almost 44.3% of total required steam. The cost of steam produced will be 0.658 $/steam bbl instead of 3$ from gas-fired system. The cost of producing oil from the hybrid system is in average 19.8 $/bbl instead of 25$/bbl from gas-fired system

Accretion of Ghost Condensate by Black Holes

The intent of this letter is to point out that the accretion of a ghost condensate by black holes could be extremely efficient. We analyze steady-state spherically symmetric flows of the ghost fluid in the gravitational field of a Schwarzschild black hole and calculate the accretion rate. Unlike minimally coupled scalar field or quintessence, the accretion rate is set not by the cosmological energy density of the field, but by the energy scale of the ghost condensate theory. If hydrodynamical flow is established, it could be as high as tenth of a solar mass per second for 10MeV-scale ghost condensate accreting onto a stellar-sized black hole, which puts serious constraints on the parameters of the ghost condensate model.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures, REVTeX 4.0; discussion expande

Doing gender and development: understanding empowerment and local gender relations

A major dilemma in Gender and Development (GAD) work is why it is that sometimes women may feel better off colluding with gendered structures that ensure their continued subordination rather than seeking approaches that will allow them to break free of this. Kandiyoti (1988 Gender and Society 2 274-90) has identified this apparent collusion as 'patriarchal bargains', which offer women greater advantages than they perceive can be achieved by challenging the prevailing order. Such women are therefore reluctant to engage in empowering activities that may challenge their gendered bargain. This paper explains this dilemma in the context of GAD work undertaken with Bedouin women in Southern Egypt

Study of Microbial Enhanced Oil Recovery using Indigenous Bacteria in Egyptian Oil Reservoirs

Microorganisms provide a unique opportunity for improving oil recovery economically and environmentally in a technique called “Microbial Enhanced Oil Recovery MEOR”. This study highlights the importance and potential of microbiology in petroleum engineering. Biosurfactant production is one of the most efficient mechanisms in microbial enhanced oil recovery (MEOR) processes. Biosurfactants have recently attained extended attention because they have numerous benefits over chemical synthetic surfactants, including higher biodegradability, lower toxicity, higher foaming, environmental compatibility, and effective properties under harsh conditions. The present study investigates the production of biosurfactants by indigenous bacteria isolated from Egyptian oil fields, and the use of these biosurfactants in enhancing the oil recovery. Fifty-nine Egyptian oil reservoirs were screened to investigate the potential for MEOR in Egyptian oil fields. The results showed that 8 reservoirs from the Gulf of Suez and 3 reservoirs from the Western Desert had the potential for MEOR. The bacterial isolation and identification of the collected crude oil samples from the Egyptian oil fields that have the potential for MEOR showed 11 isolated strains, which are Pseudomonas stutzeri, Clostridium spp, pseudomonas aeruginosa, pseudomonas fluorescens, Brevibacterium spp, Cellulosimicrobium spp, Pseudomonas panipatensis, Enterobacter spp, Bacillus flexus, Bacillus licheniformis, and Bacillus subtilis. The isolated strains Bacillus subtilis and Bacillus licheniformis were selected for further studies in this research because they are reported as good biosurfactants-producing bacteria under facultative or anaerobic conditions, spore forming, and non-pathogenic. The results of surface activity and bacteria growth examination also showed that the selected bacterial strains Bacillus licheniformis and Bacillus subtilis could produce effective biosurfactants that reached their maximum surface activity and reach maximum after 24 h of incubation. The results of emulsification activity examination showed that produced biosurfactants by Bacillus licheniformis and Bacillus subtilis could significantly emulsify crude oil with emulsification indices of 50% and 64%, respectively. The contact angle measurement showed that the oil was more detached from the sandstone surface when submerged in an aqueous solution of the produced biosurfactants, where the biosurfactants produced by Bacillus subtilis and Bacillus licheniformis decreased the contact angle of the oil drop from 104.96° and 107.30° to 85.40° and 88.72° after 24 h, respectively. Similarly, the new proposed medium decreased the contact angle of the oil drop from 112.30° and 110.90° to 63.85° and 69.33° after 24 h, respectively, which could facilitate the recovery of remaining oil. High stability was observed at high temperatures for a long-time period and more than 60% of their surface and emulsification activities were maintained over a wide range of pH and salinity. The core flooding tests showed the potential of the biosurfactants produced by Bacillus licheniformis and Bacillus subtilis to recover up to 31% and 39% of additional oil over the water flooding residual oil saturation under simulated reservoir conditions, respectively. In addition to the beneficial effects of the selected indigenous bacteria in producing effective biosurfactants, the performed environmental risk assessment showed that Bacillus licheniformis and Bacillus subtilis are environmentally safe, have no potential for toxicity, and no risk could occur for MEOR

The Littlest Higgs

We present an economical theory of natural electroweak symmetry breaking, generalizing an approach based on deconstruction. This theory is the smallest extension of the Standard Model to date that stabilizes the electroweak scale with a naturally light Higgs and weakly coupled new physics at TeV energies. The Higgs is one of a set of pseudo Goldstone bosons in an $SU(5)/SO(5)$ nonlinear sigma model. The symmetry breaking scale $f$ is around a TeV, with the cutoff \Lambda \lsim 4\pi f \sim 10 TeV. A single electroweak doublet, the ``little Higgs'', is automatically much lighter than the other pseudo Goldstone bosons. The quartic self-coupling for the little Higgs is generated by the gauge and Yukawa interactions with a natural size $O(g^2,\lambda_t^2)$, while the top Yukawa coupling generates a negative mass squared triggering electroweak symmetry breaking. Beneath the TeV scale the effective theory is simply the minimal Standard Model. The new particle content at TeV energies consists of one set of spin one bosons with the same quantum numbers as the electroweak gauge bosons, an electroweak singlet quark with charge 2/3, and an electroweak triplet scalar. One loop quadratically divergent corrections to the Higgs mass are cancelled by interactions with these additional particles.Comment: 15 pages. References added. Corrected typos in the discussion of the top Yukawa couplin

Electroweak symmetry breaking in supersymmetric models with heavy scalar superpartners

We propose a novel mechanism of electroweak symmetry breaking in supersymmetric models, as the one recently discussed by Birkedal, Chacko and Gaillard, in which the Standard Model Higgs doublet is a pseudo-Goldstone boson of some global symmetry. The Higgs mass parameter is generated at one loop level by two different, moderately fine-tuned sources of the global symmetry breaking. The mechanism works for scalar superpartner masses of order 10 TeV, but gauginos can be light. The scale at which supersymmetry breaking is mediated to the visible sector has to be low, of order 100 TeV. Fine-tuning in the scalar potential is at least two orders of magnitude smaller than in the MSSM with similar soft scalar masses. The physical Higgs boson mass is (for $\tan\beta\gg1$) in the range 120-135 GeV.Comment: 17 pages, no figures, LaTe

Collective Quartics and Dangerous Singlets in Little Higgs

Any extension of the standard model that aims to describe TeV-scale physics without fine-tuning must have a radiatively-stable Higgs potential. In little Higgs theories, radiative stability is achieved through so-called collective symmetry breaking. In this letter, we focus on the necessary conditions for a little Higgs to have a collective Higgs quartic coupling. In one-Higgs doublet models, a collective quartic requires an electroweak triplet scalar. In two-Higgs doublet models, a collective quartic requires a triplet or singlet scalar. As a corollary of this study, we show that some little Higgs theories have dangerous singlets, a pathology where collective symmetry breaking does not suppress quadratically-divergent corrections to the Higgs mass.Comment: 4 pages; v2: clarified the existing literature; v3: version to appear in JHE