Identification and optimization of biosurfactant producing bacteria isolated from rag layer crude oil emulsion

Biosurfactants are surface active compounds that synthesized as secondary metabolite by wide range of bacteria and have characteristic in lowering surface and interfacial tension. This study aimed to isolate and identify biosurfactant producing bacteria from rag layer crude oil emulsion. Rag layer is considered as undesirable material as it is difficult to be separated because of the stable interaction between different components. Mineral salt medium supplemented with glucose and crude oil was used to screen the ability of isolates to produce biosurfactant. Five bacterial strains that successfully isolated from rag layer crude oil emulsion sample were screened for hydrocarbon degradation and biosurfactant production. Two isolates shown positive results in drop collapse test, surface tension measurement and emulsification index, namely P3b and P4. 16S rRNA analysis revealed P3b and P4 to be closely related to Enterobacter xiangfangensis while P4 was Shewanella chilikensis, respectively. Only isolate P3b was selected for further study. Enterobacter xiangfangensis SSP3b16 was found to grow optimally at 37°C, pH 7.0 and 10mM glucose. The highest reduction of surface tension was recorded when culture medium supplemented with 7 % (v/v) glucose and 2 g/L ammonium nitrate. From this study, the biosurfactant production by Enterobacter xiangfangensisSSP3b16 can potentially be exploited to enhance oil recovery as well as in solving the rag layer problem in oil industries

A decade after the tsunami: preliminary exploration deposit layer of sediment at coast area of Kedah, Malaysia

Study on tsunami deposits is done after a decade of the incident happened at Kedah, Malaysia. This article discusses the characteristics, measurement and thickness of tsunami deposits. It also provides the latest remaining evidences of the tsunami incident including imbrication pattern of cobbles, types of coastal protection and plants at the affected area. Run-up heights and inundation distance were taken into account for field exploration and investigation. This study may provide opportunities to understand how remaining evidences of tsunami could be tracked and recorded

EFFECTS OF DRILLING MUD CONTAMINATION ON THE PROPERTIES OF WAXY CRUDE OIL

Contamination of crude oil with drilling mud normally occurs during drilling process. The contamination may change the properties of crude oil leading to inaccurate assessment of the first extracted crude oil. Incorrect prediction of crude oil properties and behavior will subsequently lead to under- or over-designing of the upstream and midstream facilities. Therefore, the work aims to investigate the effects of drilling mud contamination on waxy crude oil properties such as pour point temperature, wax appearance temperature (WAT) and the yield strength of the waxy crude oil gel. Measurements conducted on the drilling mud contaminated mixture show no effect on the pour point, minimal changes to the WAT and considerable increase to the viscosity and yield stress values. Bottle test results indicate that drilling mud free oil layer which should be used in characterizing the crude oil exist only after 24 hours of gravity settling

Construction of the large-scale mining area decision-making support and the synthesis management platform

Because of lacking modern information management and long-term planning, many serious problems, including environment, ecology, production and so forth, are found in Chinese large-scale, mid-scale and small-scale mining areas. GIS (Geographic Information System) can efficiently show its vital energies in problem solving, and which mainly depends on its powerful spatial analysis, decision-making and mass data storage and management ability. In this paper, we take large-scale mining area as an example to study GIS decision-making support, synthesis management platform applied mining area. According to characteristics of the large-scale mining area, we put forward a plan for GIS platform of information management and long-term planning of mining area: the platform is divided into decision support subsystem and the community synthesis management subsystem. The former includes following items: (1) Site selection, which is mainly for site selection of industrial production, commercial run and residential area; (2) Monitoring of reclaimed land and ecology, which is mainly for destructed field surface and subsurface of the mining area because of coal mining; (3) The synthesis management system of green mining, mainly for safety, efficiency and environment protection. The later, community synthesis management subsystem mainly includes: the community synthesis information subsystem and the public urgent predetermined planning subsystem. At last, some problems and shortages are analyzed in the system construction of the large-scale mining area. (8 refs.

Study on LAI estimation of broadleaf forests in arid areas using digital hemispherical photography - A case study in the Tarim River Basin, China

The values of leaf area index (LAI) were optically measured with digital hemispherical photography in deciduous Populus euphratica Oliv forests in the Tarim River Basin, China, and then they are estimated and analyzed. Circular fisheye photography was compared with another alternative indirect method (cover photography) for estimating LAI,. The purpose of the study was to develop a practical estimation mode for measuring and estimating LAI in arid areas. The results derived by the rapid and automatic analysis of cover images using WinSCANOPY 2006 are similar to that derived by the manual image analysis using Adobe Photoshop. Estimated results of LAI from cover photography are more ideal than that from circular fisheye photography to correlate with LAI from destructive sampling. © 2009 IEEE. (9 refs.

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

Analysis of the spectral response of flourishing-withering vegetation changes based on ground spectral measurements

A structural mode was used to characterize vegetation composition at the plant leaf level and a flourishing-withering ratio was developed. The spectral responses of vegetation with different flourishing-withering ratios were analyzed,: the change rates of the chlorophyll and moisture content indices of vegetation with different flourishing-withering ratios were compared, and correlations between the chlorophyll and moisture content indices were analyzed. The results reveal that leaves with an intermediate flourishing-withering ratio can increase the absorption signatures of vegetation and that band ranges of 570-700 nm and 1300-1540 nm can play a role in indicating changes in the flourishing-withering ratios of vegetation; NPQI, NPCI, R-695/R-420, R-695/R-760, R-750/R-700, the peak-value area of red: selvedge, the red selvedge amplitude, the ratio between the red selvedge amplitude and the minimum, amplitude, and the NDVI of vegetation change regularly with the change in flourishing-withering ratios, and these nine vegetation indices are highly related to the chlorophyll content. Vegetation indexes of NDWI and PRI are very sensitive to the flourishing-withering change in vegetation and are closely related to the moistures content, and the correlation coefficient is higher than 0.9. The derivative of the spectra is more effective in describing changes in the structural mode of vegetation with different! flourishing-withering ratios, especially at band ranges of 552-628 nm and 630-686 nm, and it is more, sensitive to the mixed flourishing-withering ratios of leaves rather than to the vegetation indices. The red selvedge position in the spectrum is highly related to the chlorophyll content and is not sensitive to: changes in the structural mode of mixed flourishing-withering leaves. The red selvedge parameters are sensitive to changes in the flourishing-withering ratio at the peak-value area of the red selvedge amplitude and the ratio between the red selvedge amplitude and the minimum amplitude. The effect of a sand background on the spectrum of withering leaves is higher than that of flourishing leaves; the effect of a sand background increases with increasing proportions of withering leaves, the superposition effect of the sand background on mixed flourishing-withering leaves is about 7% at visible light bands of 400-700 nm and 1300-1540 nm, and is over 10% at the near infrared band range of 700-1300 nm

Study on LAI estimation of broadleaf forests in arid areas using digital hemispherical photography

The values of leaf area index (LAI) were optically measured with digital hemispherical photography in deciduous Populus euphratica Oliv forests in the Tarim River Basin, China, and then they are estimated and analyzed. Circular fisheye photography was compared with another alternative indirect method (cover photography) for estimating LAI,. The purpose of the study was to develop a practical estimation mode for measuring and estimating LAI in arid areas. The results derived by the rapid and automatic analysis of cover images using WinSCANOPY 2006 are similar to that derived by the manual image analysis using Adobe Photoshop. Estimated results of LAI from cover photography are more ideal than that from circular fisheye photography to correlate with LAI from destructive sampling