HEAVY-OIL PRODUCTION USING EMULSION FLOODING

In recovery of heavy crude oil by a sufficient means other than thermal recovery methods has been a great concern to researchers. Several researchers have found it difficult to achieve oil in-water (O/W) emulsion stability status. In an effort to minimize the viscosity, heavy crude needs modification.  The morphology and stability of oil-in-water emulsions were studied as a function of aqueous phase salinity. In reducing the viscosity of the heavy-oil, brine solutions were selected as alternative in forming oil-in-water (O/W) emulsion. The aim of this research is to investigate the various salinity levels that influence viscosity and stability of oil-in-water emulsion. From observation, the loose emulsions were discovered through bottle test which showed complete separation on low salinity concentration. Optical microscope assembled with a digital camera was used to investigate the oil droplets of the stable and non-stable emulsion. Results indicated that phase separation appears more easily on low concentration at room temperature, and larger size droplets in the high concentrations. Therefore, using low salinity oil in water flooding, it reduces the viscosity of heavy crude oil. http://dx.doi.org/10.4314/njt.v35i2.1

UiS Subsea-Freight Glider: A large buoyancy-driven autonomous cargo glider

This study presents the baseline design for the autonomous subsea vehicle capable of traveling at a lower speed of 1 m/s with an operating range of 400 km. Owing to UiS subsea-freight glider’s (USFG) exceedingly economical and unique propulsion system, it can transport various types of cargo over variable distances. The primary use-case scenario for the USFG is to serve as an autonomous transport vessel to carry CO2 from land-based facilities to subsea injection sites. This allows the USFG to serve as a substitute for weather-dependent cargo tankers and underwater pipelines. The length of the USFG is 50.25 m along with a beam of 5.50 m, which allows the vessel to carry 518 m3 of CO2 while serving the storage needs of the carbon capture and storage (CCS) ventures on the Norwegian continental shelf. The USFG is powered by battery cells, and it only consumes a little less than 8 kW of electrical power. Along with the mechanical design of the USFG, the control design is also presented in the final part of the paper. The maneuvering model of the USFG is presented along with two operational case studies. For this purpose, a linear quadratic regulator (LQR)- and proportional-integral-derivative (PID)-based control system is designed, and a detailed comparison study is also shown in terms of tuning and response characteristics for both controllers.acceptedVersio

Data sharing in secure multimedia wireless sensor networks

© 2016 IEEE. The use of Multimedia Wireless Sensor Networks (MWSNs) is becoming common nowadays with a rapid growth in communication facilities. Similar to any other WSNs, these networks face various challenges while providing security, trust and privacy for user data. Provisioning of the aforementioned services become an uphill task especially while dealing with real-time streaming data. These networks operates with resource-constrained sensor nodes for days, months and even years depending on the nature of an application. The resource-constrained nature of these networks makes it difficult for the nodes to tackle real-time data in mission-critical applications such as military surveillance, forest fire monitoring, health-care and industrial automation. For a secured MWSN, the transmission and processing of streaming data needs to be explored deeply. The conventional data authentication schemes are not suitable for MWSNs due to the limitations imposed on sensor nodes in terms of battery power, computation, available bandwidth and storage. In this paper, we propose a novel quality-driven clustering-based technique for authenticating streaming data in MWSNs. Nodes with maximum energy are selected as Cluster Heads (CHs). The CHs collect data from member nodes and forward it to the Base Station (BS), thus preventing member nodes with low energy from dying soon and increasing life span of the underlying network. The proposed approach not only authenticates the streaming data but also maintains the quality of transmitted data. The proposed data authentication scheme coupled with an Error Concealment technique provides an energy-efficient and distortion-free real-time data streaming. The proposed scheme is compared with an unsupervised resources scenario. The simulation results demonstrate better network lifetime along with 21.34 dB gain in Peak Signal-to-Noise Ratio (PSNR) of received video data streams

Chemical equivalence assessment of three brands of carbamazepine tablets and their anticonvulsant outcome on electrically-induced seizures in chicks

Assay for content of active ingredients is a critical test of drug quality; failure to meet up the standard for content of active ingredients will result to sub therapeutic quantities. Three brands (A, B and C) of carbamazepine were assayed to determine their chemical equivalence as well as their anticonvulsant activities. This was aimed at determining the possible relation between the chemical equivalence of the brands and their anticonvulsant outcomes. The brands were randomly selected from Community Pharmacies in Zaria, Kaduna State, and assayed for chemical equivalence to establish weight uniformity and identity; percentage content of active ingredients, using UV spectrophotometric analysis. Similarly all the brands were evaluated for anticonvulsant activity using maximal electroshock seizure model in chicks at doses of 20, 10 and 5 mg/kg. All the brands passed weight uniformity test as none of the tablets deviated from the mean by more than 7.5%. Similarly, their melting points were found to conform to standard average melting point (191oC) according to B.P. official monograph. However, the content of the active ingredients for Brands B and C did not conform to official standard of 95-105% while brand A conformed. Thus, the percentage contents for brands A, B and C were 99.49%, 76.02% and 87.59% respectively. Also, all the brands at the tested doses offered protection against seizures, ranging from 70-100%; but Brand C at 5 mg/kg offered only 40% quantal protection. The three brands of carbamazepine tablets were not chemically equivalent and their chemical equivalence indices could not be said to be the determinant of anticonvulsant effect.Key words: carbamazepine, anticonvulsant and chemical equivalenc

Performance evaluation of High Definition video streaming over Mobile Ad Hoc Networks

© 2018 Video Service Providers (VSPs) can collect and analyze an enormous amount of multimedia data from various cloud storage centers using real-time big data systems for supporting various online customers. The infrastructure-less nature of Mobile Ad Hoc Networks (MANETs) makes the video streaming a challenging task for VSPs. High packet-loss probability in MANETs can create a notable distortion in the received video quality. In this paper, High Definition (HD) videos are streamed over MANETs. First, a transmission model is designed followed by a distortion model to estimate network distortions, such as packet-loss rate and end-to-end delay. Based on the proposed models, a video streaming framework is designed to efficiently utilize the available bandwidth in MANETs, minimize the network distortions, and improve Quality of Service (QoS). Later, an Error Concealment (EC) technique is used to conceal the lost/dropped video frames to improve the Quality of Experience (QoE). Experimental results show that our proposed video streaming framework outperforms the state-of-the-art routing protocols designed for MANETs, such as Destination-Sequenced Distance Vector (DSDV) and Optimized Link Sate Routing (OLSR) protocols. In the end, both subjective and objective evaluations are performed to evaluate the perceptual quality of the concealed video data

A Mobile Multimedia Data Collection Scheme for Secured Wireless Multimedia Sensor Networks

© 2013 IEEE. Wireless Multimedia Sensor Networks (WMSNs) produce enormous amounts of big multimedia data. Due to large size, Multimedia Sensor Nodes (MSNs) cannot store generated multimedia data for a long time. In this scenario, mobile sinks can be utilized for data collection. However, due to vulnerable nature of wireless networks, there is a need for an efficient security scheme to authenticate both MSNs and mobile sinks. In this paper, we propose a scheme to protect an underlying WMSN during mobile multimedia data collection. The proposed scheme is a two-layer scheme. At the first layer, all MSNs are distributed into small clusters, where each cluster is represented by a single Cluster Head (CH). At the second layer, all CHs verify identities of mobile sinks before sharing multimedia data. Authentication at both layers ensures a secure data exchange. We evaluate the performance of proposed scheme through extensive simulation results. The simulation results prove that the proposed scheme performs better as compared to existing state-of-the-art approaches in terms of resilience and handshake duration. The proposed scheme is also analyzed in terms of authentication rate, data freshness, and packet delivery ratio, and has shown a better performance

Preliminary phytochemical and antimicrobial screening of they stem bark extracts of Bauhinia rufescence Lam using some selected pathogens

Bauhinia rufescens Lam (Leguminosea-Caesalpinoideae) stem bark was extracted using methanol and fractionated using ethylacetate, butanol and water. The extract and fractions were subjected to preliminary phytochemical screening using standard procedures followed by antimicrobial screening using disc diffusion and broth dilution techniques. The extract and fractions showed the presence of carbohydrate, tannins, flavonoids, saponins, terpenes and steroids. The antimicrobial screening of the extract and fractions against clinical isolates of Staphylococcus aureus, Streptococcus pyogenes, Bacillus subtilis, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Escherichia coli and Candida albicans, using disc diffusion method at disc potency of 100μg/disc showed inhibitory activity on the test isolates with zone of inhibition ranging from 16-37mm. The methanolic and ethylacetate extracts showed the least MIC of 1.25mg/mL. The result of the study confirms the traditional use of the stem bark of B. rufescens in the treatment of infections caused by susceptible microorganisms. Keywords: Bauhinia rufescens, Stem bark, Phytochemical screening, Antimicrobial activit

A survey on big multimedia data processing and management in smart cities

© 2019 Association for Computing Machinery. All rights reserved. Integration of embedded multimedia devices with powerful computing platforms, e.g., machine learning platforms, helps to build smart cities and transforms the concept of Internet of Things into Internet of Multimedia Things (IoMT). To provide different services to the residents of smart cities, the IoMT technology generates big multimedia data. The management of big multimedia data is a challenging task for IoMT technology. Without proper management, it is hard to maintain consistency, reusability, and reconcilability of generated big multimedia data in smart cities. Various machine learning techniques can be used for automatic classification of raw multimedia data and to allow machines to learn features and perform specific tasks. In this survey, we focus on various machine learning platforms that can be used to process and manage big multimedia data generated by different applications in smart cities. We also highlight various limitations and research challenges that need to be considered when processing big multimedia data in real-time