CHARACTERIZATION OF ZINC OXIDE AS DIELECTRIC CERAMICS FOR REDUCTION OF INTERFACIAL TENSION BETWEEN OIL AND WATER

Generally, the application of nanotechnology is widely used in daily life. Nanotechnology helps to improve the characteristic and properties of the material. Most of the application of the nanoparticles is to enhance the ability of the material which improve their performance during its operation. Nanoparticles also would help to increase the wettability of the particles. The increasing wettability of the material or substances will lead to the decreasing of the interfacial tension between the surfaces. In the oil and gas industry, oil that is extracted is not optimum due to high interfacial tension between oil and water. Thus, this research was conducted to study the effect of different concentration of zinc oxide nanoparticles to the reduction of interfacial tension between oil and water. This project is mainly to investigate the changes on the physical and molecular level properties of the oil and water after the zinc oxide nanoparticle is used as additional component in the brine solution to increase mobility of the oil. The characterization of zinc oxide is done by using XRD and FESEM. For this experiment, the IFT is not directly measured by using IFT machine instead, the IFT is analyzed through the contact angle testing and pendant drop testing. The contact angle and pendant drop test were conducted by using the goniometer machine, to justify the changes of interfacial tension between oil and water. Increasing the concentration of the nanofluid, the contact angle and surface tension are decreasing. It is confirmed that the interfacial tension between oil and water is decreasing along with the increasing concentration of zinc oxide nanofluid. The graph of concentration of nanofluid against the contact angle and surface tension will be plotted by the data obtained from the contact angle testing and pendant drop testing which to analyze the interfacial tension of the water to the zinc oxide. In the nutshell, this study can prove that zinc oxide nanoparticles have the wettability properties that possess a high potential to replace the current method of reducing the interfacial tension between oil and water and used in the oil and gas industry as one of the Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR) alternatives

Kostnadskartlegging av fylkeskommunale fagskoler

På oppdrag fra Kunnskapsdepartementet har Deloitte og NIFU kartlagt kostnadene i de fylkeskommunale fagskolene. Hensikten har vært å skaffe oversikt over fylkeskommunenes samlede kostnader til fagskoler, hvordan kostnadene fordeler seg på ulike utdanninger og hva som forklarer kostnadsvariasjon. Kartleggingen er gjort med sikte på å skaffe til veie et faktagrunnlag for et nytt incentivbasert finansieringssystem

Masterprogrammer på engelsk i Norge. I bredde og nisjer

På oppdrag av Språkrådet har NIFU STEP ved forsker Vera Schwach studert språkbruk og språkvalg i høyere utdanning

Primary recovery factor as a function of production rate: implications for conventional reservoirs with different drive mechanisms

This study evaluates the dependency of production rate on the recovery of hydrocarbon from conventional reservoirs using MBAL simulator. The results indicated that the recoveries are sensitive to the production rate in almost all hydrocarbon reservoirs. It was also found that the recovery of volumetric gas drive reservoirs is not impacted by the production rate. In fact, any increase in the production rate improves gas recovery in weak and strong water drive reservoirs. Moreover, increasing the production rate in oil reservoirs decreases the recovery with a significant effect observed in the weak water drive reservoirs. The results of this study demonstrate the need for implementing an effective reservoir management in order to obtain a maximum recovery

CHARACTERIZATION OF ZINC OXIDE AS DIELECTRIC CERAMICS FOR REDUCTION OF INTERFACIAL TENSION BETWEEN OIL AND WATER

Generally, the application of nanotechnology is widely used in daily life. Nanotechnology helps to improve the characteristic and properties of the material. Most of the application of the nanoparticles is to enhance the ability of the material which improve their performance during its operation. Nanoparticles also would help to increase the wettability of the particles. The increasing wettability of the material or substances will lead to the decreasing of the interfacial tension between the surfaces. In the oil and gas industry, oil that is extracted is not optimum due to high interfacial tension between oil and water. Thus, this research was conducted to study the effect of different concentration of zinc oxide nanoparticles to the reduction of interfacial tension between oil and water. This project is mainly to investigate the changes on the physical and molecular level properties of the oil and water after the zinc oxide nanoparticle is used as additional component in the brine solution to increase mobility of the oil. The characterization of zinc oxide is done by using XRD and FESEM. For this experiment, the IFT is not directly measured by using IFT machine instead, the IFT is analyzed through the contact angle testing and pendant drop testing. The contact angle and pendant drop test were conducted by using the goniometer machine, to justify the changes of interfacial tension between oil and water. Increasing the concentration of the nanofluid, the contact angle and surface tension are decreasing. It is confirmed that the interfacial tension between oil and water is decreasing along with the increasing concentration of zinc oxide nanofluid. The graph of concentration of nanofluid against the contact angle and surface tension will be plotted by the data obtained from the contact angle testing and pendant drop testing which to analyze the interfacial tension of the water to the zinc oxide. In the nutshell, this study can prove that zinc oxide nanoparticles have the wettability properties that possess a high potential to replace the current method of reducing the interfacial tension between oil and water and used in the oil and gas industry as one of the Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR) alternatives

Foraminiferal morphogroups in dysoxic shelf deposits from the Jurassic of Spitsbergen

Analysis of benthic foraminiferal assemblages was performed in Bathonian to Kimmeridgian deposits through a section covering the lower half of the Agardhfjellet Formation in central Spitsbergen. The section consists mainly of organic-rich shales, which contain low-diversity agglutinated assemblages. In this foraminiferal succession five morphogroups were differentiated according to shell architecture (general shape, mode of coiling and number of chambers), integrated with the supposed microhabitat (epifaunal, shallow infaunal and deep infaunal) and feeding strategy (suspension-feeder, herbivore, bacterivore, etc.). The environmental evolution of the analysed section is interpreted by using the stratigraphic distribution of morphogroups, combined with species diversities and sedimentary data, in a sequence stratigraphic framework. The section comprises two depositional sequences, which demonstrate that species diversity and relative frequency of morphogroups are correlative with transgressive–regressive trends controlling depth and oxygenation of the water column. In both sequences, the maximum flooding interval is characterized by increased organic carbon content, dominance of the epifaunal morphogroups and reduced species diversity: features reflecting the increased degree of stagnation separating the transgressive phase from the regressive phase.The participation of J. Nagy in this research has been supported by the Statoil/Hydro VISTA programme. The contribution of M. Reolid and F.J. Rodríguez-Tovar has been supported by the projects CGL2005-06636-C0201 and CGL2005-0316/BTE, the EMMI group (RNM-178, Junta de Andalucía) and the Acción Integrada 30.AI.PO.1300 (University of Granada–University of Oslo). A grant of the Universidad de Jaén financed M. Reolid’s short stay at the University of Oslo

Numerical Study of Cuttings Transport of Nanoparticle-Based Drilling Fluid

Cuttings transportation from the drill bit, through the annulus, to the surface is one of the most important functions performed by drilling fluid. The prediction of drilling fluid's performance to transport cuttings in the annulus is very complex task due to the presence of numerous parameters. Nanoparticles (NPs) have been recently introduced into drilling fluid to engineer its properties and enhance its performance. Nevertheless, the lifting capacity has not been sufficiently investigated. The understanding of the influence and the mechanisms responsible for the improvement in cuttings transport process can further advance the application of NPs for drilling fluids. Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) is widely used as a numerical technique in handling complex multiphase flow problems in different operational conditions. The present work has taken the advantages of CFD to computationally analyze the influence of NPs and the effects of various parameters such as drilling fluids rheology, flow rate, pipe rotation, cuttings density, shape, concentration, and drilling fluids-cuttings particle coupling regimes on the cuttings transport in a vertical wellbore. The CFD simulation is carried out by using transient solver of ANSYS-FLUENT commercial code. The dense discrete phase model is used to overcome the main shortcomings of previous Eulerian based approaches. Good agreement has been achieved between the simulation and the published experimental results. It showed that the fluid viscosity and cuttings transport process can be significantly enhanced by adding nanomaterials to the fluid, and the process is highly influenced by cuttings characteristics such as in situ concentration, shape, and density

Reliability based casing design

Working stress design is today the most used method for casing design. This method is easy to learn and uses enough safety factors to provide a safe design. Reliability based design is a stochastic approach to casing design that adds another layer of complexity. The reliability based design method applies safety factors for specific parameters from the case study. This helps us visualize the different safety factors and where the safety factors are applied rather than taking the safety factors for granted. The reliability based design method calculates a probability of failure that determines whether the selected casing meets the recommended requirements for a specific scenario. The probability of failure allows us to utilize risk assessment of the selected casing and puts a number on how safe the design actually is. The case study tested both WSD and RBD for a burst scenario and evaluated which casing grade met the requirements for the different methods and models. First, the WSD methodology was tested for a casing grade of CP110, and the result showed that the selected casing grade did not satisfy the requirements for WSD after applying the NORSOK safety factor. The same parameters were then tested for different burst strength models in RBD. The Barlow model resulted in meeting the requirements for a casing grade of CP110 for high consequence failures. The ad-hoc model resulted in meeting the requirements for an even lower casing grade of RT95 for high consequence failures. RBD level 4 was tested using Monte Carlo simulations in MATLAB. The number of iterations required for the simulations was determined based on calculation time, variability, and stabilization of the different output parameters. The testing concluded that 10^8 iterations were reasonable for high consequence failures such as burst. The conclusion is that RBD4 is well suited for burst scenarios. The RBD method allowed us to choose a lower grade for the selected casing than WSD and provided output parameters that are useful for risk assessments.Working stress design is today the most used method for casing design. This method is easy to learn and uses enough safety factors to provide a safe design. Reliability based design is a stochastic approach to casing design that adds another layer of complexity. The reliability based design method applies safety factors for specific parameters from the case study. This helps us visualize the different safety factors and where the safety factors are applied rather than taking the safety factors for granted. The reliability based design method calculates a probability of failure that determines whether the selected casing meets the recommended requirements for a specific scenario. The probability of failure allows us to utilize risk assessment of the selected casing and puts a number on how safe the design actually is. The case study tested both WSD and RBD for a burst scenario and evaluated which casing grade met the requirements for the different methods and models. First, the WSD methodology was tested for a casing grade of CP110, and the result showed that the selected casing grade did not satisfy the requirements for WSD after applying the NORSOK safety factor. The same parameters were then tested for different burst strength models in RBD. The Barlow model resulted in meeting the requirements for a casing grade of CP110 for high consequence failures. The ad-hoc model resulted in meeting the requirements for an even lower casing grade of RT95 for high consequence failures. RBD level 4 was tested using Monte Carlo simulations in MATLAB. The number of iterations required for the simulations was determined based on calculation time, variability, and stabilization of the different output parameters. The testing concluded that 10^8 iterations were reasonable for high consequence failures such as burst. The conclusion is that RBD4 is well suited for burst scenarios. The RBD method allowed us to choose a lower grade for the selected casing than WSD and provided output parameters that are useful for risk assessments

A non-inertial two-phase model of wax transport in a pipeline during pigging operations

The removal of wax deposit from pipelines is commonly accomplished using pigs. In order to avoid the formation of wax plugs in pipes, bypass pigs, which create a liquid jet to disperse the scraped deposit, are employed. Despite many One-Dimensional (1D) models have been developed to predict the dynamics of bypass pigs, the details of the interaction between the liquid jet and the debris have not been investigated numerically yet. In this work the fluid dynamics of a wax-in-oil slurry in front of a moving bypass pig is studied by means of three-dimensional (3D) numerical simulations. A mathematical model which couples the pig and the wax-in-oil slurry dynamics, solved in the pig frame of reference, has been developed. The results show that the pig quickly reaches an equilibrium velocity, and the pig acceleration is proportional to the square of the mixture relative velocity. Comparing the present with previous sealing-pig results it appears that the bypass flow is more effective in deterring plug formation. Moreover, the 3D fields have the advantage of showing the wax distribution in each pipe section whereas the 1D model cannot distinguish between deposited and suspended wax

CO2 storage in depleted gas reservoirs: A study on the effect of residual gas saturation

Depleted gas reservoirs are recognized as the most promising candidate for carbon dioxide storage. Primary gas production followed by injection of carbon dioxide after depletion is the strategy adopted for secondary gas recovery and storage practices. This strategy, however, depends on the injection strategy, reservoir characteristics and operational parameters. There have been many studies to-date discussing critical factors influencing the storage performance in depleted gas reservoirs while little attention was given to the effect of residual gas. In this paper, an attempt was made to highlight the importance of residual gas on the capacity, injectivity, reservoir pressurization, and trapping mechanisms of storage sites through the use of numerical simulation. The results obtained indicated that the storage performance is proportionally linked to the amount of residual gas in the medium and reservoirs with low residual fluids are a better choice for storage purposes. Therefore, it would be wise to perform the secondary recovery before storage in order to have the least amount of residual gas in the medium. Although the results of this study are useful to screen depleted gas reservoirs for the storage purpose, more studies are required to confirm the finding presented in this paper