Corrosion study of pipeline material for seabed sediment in tropical climate

Corrosive environments such as marine sediments can cause corrosion to steel pipelines at any time when certain conditions are met. Seabed sediment could cause severe corrosion damage due to its corrosiveness to the pipelines buried under it. Many consequences could take place in case if there is incident in oil/gas pipelines. Successfully identifying elements of corrosion in marine sediment would enhance the future of steel structure protection and monitoring systems. This article focuses on the behaviour of corrosion rate of steel located near shore environment and the aim is to determine the effect of sediment on corrosion of steel. To investigate that, simulated near shore sediment conditions have been used where the steel coupons buried in sediments which have different characteristics. Weight loss technique has been implemented to determine the weight loss rate of the steel specimens. Based on the results of this study, metal weight loss increases as the duration of exposure to seabed sediment environment become longer. The sea sediment simulated condition has given significant levels of corrosion. Conclusively, the corrosion rate of steel in seabed sediment located in tropical region is complicated and further studies are suggested

Near Shore Environment and Its Corrosiveness Towards Steel Pipelines

Seabed sediment is an important environment that has significant effect on pipelines buried under it. Hereby, study on corrosion rate of actual steel pipelines has been conducted to highlight the importance of near shore environment as an aggressive environment towards steel structures. Coupons made of X70 steel pipelines have been considered for weight lost determination in order to calculate the corrosion rate at both near shore and offshore areas. The results show that the corrosion rate of coupons buried at near shore area was higher than the coupons at offshore. Conclusively near shore environment has shown a significant influence on corrosion of steel pipelines

The Concept of Single Use Piston Break Safety Syringe

syringe is a simple piston pump consisting of a plunger that fits tightly in a tube. The plunger can be pulled and pushed along inside a cylindrical tube (the barrel), allowing the syringe to take in and expel a liquid or gas through an orifice at the open end of the tube. The open end of the syringe may be fitted with a hypodermic needle, a nozzle, or tubing to help direct the flow into and out of the barrel. Syringes are often used to administer injections, apply compounds such as glue or lubricant, and measure liquids. The reuse and abuse of syringe has led to cross-infection of diseases; thus, the need of single use safety syringe arises. Single use safety syringe is able to prevent the abuse of syringe. Many inventions have been produced; the most common are through-push retract breakable safety syringe, rotary plunger retractable safety syringe and release-ring breakable safety syringe. A new type of single use safety syringe Piston Break Safety Syringe is discussed in this paper. Common safety syringes available in market consist of three major components as described earlier. Beside its simplicity, the low cost to produce also the main factor why this type is very popular. The new Piston Break Safety Syringe has similar design with this widely used safety syringe; hence, it makes it easier to be adapted by the users due to its similarity, since no extra training to use it is required. The cost should be equivalently low due to the similarity in size, design and number of components

Phytochemistry and antiplasmodial properties of aqueous and methanol leaf extracts of Jatropa curcas

This study was aimed at evaluating the phytochemistry and antiplasmodial properties of the aqueous and methanolic leaf extracts of Jatropa curcas against the malaria parasite; Plasmodium falciparum. The need for new therapeutic compounds against malaria parasite is made more urgent by the continued spread of resistance to almost all the available anti malarial drugs. Phytochemical detection followed by antiplasmodial sensitivity test was carried on the two leaf extracts following standard procedures. The pyhtochemicals detected from both extracts were alkaloids, glycosides, tannins, saponins, phenol, steroids and flavonoids. The result of Plasmodium sensitivity tests revealed that both the aqueous and methanolic leaf extracts of Jatropa curcas were highly effective against the malaria parasite. However, the methanolic extract showed greater activity than the aqueous extract. At extract concentration of 10mg/ml, the methanol extract produced the highest parasite clearance rate after 72 hour incubation period, with percentage elimination of 95.4% while the aqueous extract produced 87% elimination at the same concentration and incubation period. These observations showed that Jathropa plant may contain chemicals with promising antimalarial properties which when fully harnessed could constitute a novel therapy for the management of clinical malaria.Keywords: Antiplasmodial, Jatropha Curcas, Extracts, Phytochemistry

Does Inhalation of Virgin Coconut Oil Accelerate Reversal of Airway Remodelling in an Allergic Model of Asthma?

Many studies have been done to evaluate the effect of various natural products in controlling asthma symptoms. Virgin coconut oil (VCO) is known to contain active compounds that have beneficial effects on human health and diseases.The objective of this study was to evaluate the effect of VCO inhalation on airway remodelling in a rabbit model of allergic asthma.The effects of VCO inhalation on infiltration of airway inflammatory cells, airway structures, goblet cell hyperplasia, and cell proliferation following ovalbumin induction were evaluated. Allergic asthma was induced by a combination of ovalbumin and alum injection and/or followed by ovalbumin inhalation.The effect ofVCOinhalationwas then evaluated via the rescue or the preventive route. Percentage of inflammatory cells infiltration, thickness of epithelium and mucosa regions, and the numbers of goblet and proliferative cells were reduced in the rescue group but not in preventive group. Analysis using a gas chromatography-mass spectrometry found that lauric acid and capric acid were among themost abundant fatty acids present in the sample. Significant improvement was observed in rescue route in alleviating the asthma symptoms, which indicates the VCO was able to relieve asthma-related symptoms more than preventing the onset of asthma

Quantifying reputation loss of pipeline operator from various stakeholders perspectives, part 1: prioritization

Quantifying reputation loss (RL) due to pipeline damage is commonly generalized based on the owner's definition. This one-way perspective of portraying RL is unfair and unrealistic and consequently miscalculates the impact assessment of pipeline damage; hence, inaccurate risk prediction. It is crucial to develop a model to quantify qualitative RL to avoid unpredicted risk. Thus, this article provides a framework for a procedure to calculate RL by utilizing the factors identified in a previous study. In this paper (Part 1), the prioritization of factors based on the stakeholders' perspectives is presented. The factors were grouped into stakeholder-influenced categories and prioritized by a fuzzy analytic hierarchy process based on the feedback gained from the stakeholders, i.e., investors, customers, employees and the public. The result shows that factor D3, “Accident severity”, was ranked highest by all stakeholders. The priority vector for each factor obtained was assigned as a weight of the factor. The pipeline owner's reputation loss model (RLM) is developed by applying the obtained priority vectors in the subsequent paper (Part 2). The developed model was verified by experts as a comprehensive, clear, objective, practical and moderately reliable model. The model was applied to a case study and eventually produced a lower risk value when compared with the currently used model. It is proven that RL factors can be quantitatively measured and can simultaneously improve pipeline damage impact assessment. Thus, a risk-based inspection schedule can be managed comprehensively

Antibacterial activity of guava (Psidium guajava l.) extracts on Staphylococcus aureus isolated from patients with urinary tract infections attending a tertiary-care hospital

The uses of herbal treatment are one of the possible ways to treat diseases caused by multi drug resistant bacteria. In this study, the phytochemical and antimicrobial effect of Psidium guajava (l.) leaf and stem extracts were investigated using well diffusion method against Staphylococcus aureus isolates recovered from urine sample of patients with urinary tract infection (UTI) attending Murtala Muhammad Specialist Hospital, Kano. The results revealed that the plant contained some bioactive compounds which includes; Alkaloids, Flavonoids, Anthraquinones, Amino acid, Saponins, Tannins, Reducing sugar, Glycoside and Phenolic compound. The antimicrobial activity of the plant showed that the plant leaf and stem extracts (Ethanolic and Aqueous) had an antibacterial activity against the test isolates with varying mean zones of inhibitions ranging from 10mm to 24mm. However, the organic solvent extract showed more effect compared to the aqueous extract. The present study therefore, suggested that the plant (Psidium guajava L.) can be used as an alternative to chemotherapeutic agents

Biosorption of Mercury by Selected Plants – a Preliminary Study

Traditionally, mercury (Hg) is considered among the most toxic elements with several major health issues and serious environmental challenges. With the frequent release of Hg from artisanal and small-scale gold mining (ASGM) operations, aquatic plants or staple crops in environments polluted with mercury may accumulate significant amounts of mercury. Thus, result in mercury entering the food supply chain posing health challenges to humans. In order to ascertain the bio-sorption characteristics of some staple crops for mercury; beans, millet, corn and groundnut were tested. The plants were contacted with 10 mg/L and 50 mg/L solution of mercury concentration for 7 days followed by subsequent metal analysis of residual solution. The results delineate that, metal uptake ranges of 4.6-9.3 mg/l, 3.2-9.6 mg/l, 4.7-9.3 mg/l and 3.0-7.7 mg/l for beans, corn, groundnut and millet respectively for the 10 ppm Hg solution. In addition, 16.2-42.0 mg/l, 18.2-35.7 mg/l, 17.6-34.2 mg/l and 26.0-30.2 mg/l are the Hg metal uptake ranges for the 50 ppm concentration. This shows that the plants have the capacity to uptake mercury metal to certain degree. This also confirms that beans, corn, millet, and groundnut are potential bio-accumulators of mercury in mercury contaminated sites. Notably, the findings from this study affirm the hypothesis that in situations where the mercury is bioavailable, some food items harvested in such polluted areas may eventually enter the food chain

Performance comparison of baseline routing protocols in pocket switched network

Pocket Switched Network (PSN) is a branch of Delay Tolerant Network (DTN) which is intended to work in a challenged network. Challenged network is network with lack of infrastructure such as disaster area. As such, the network has intermittent connectivity. PSN provides a new paradigm to distribute messages in the network by taking advantage of roaming nodes from one place to another. In this paper, network performances of eight PSN routing protocols are investigated namely, First Contact, Direct Delivery, Epidemic, PRotocol using History of Encounter and Transitivity (PRoPHET), Spray and Wait, Binary Spray and Wait, Fuzzy Spray, Adaptive Fuzzy Spray and Wait. The performance metrics are packet delivery ratio, overhead ratio and average latency. Opportunistic Network Environment (ONE) simulator is used to evaluate the network performance. Experiments show that Epidemic has the best performance in term of message delivery ratio, but it has the highest overhead ratio. Direct Delivery has the lowest overhead ratio (zero overhead ratio) and PRoPHET has the lowest latency average