Corrosion and erosion remain two key issues in petroleum production. In the last few years, there has been an increasing demand for online process control where the rate of metal loss may be monitored. From an ultrasound perspective these challenges reduce to measuring the wallthickness over time. By combining permanently installed sensors, low noise measurements and temperature compensation, l...

The use of liquid fuels necessitates methods to assess the quality and suitability of these fuels for their intended use. Traditionally, this is performed through a series of chemical and physical tests. However, in some operational situations, streamlined methods to reliably evaluate fuel quality would offer distinct advantages. The Naval Research Laboratory has been engaged in a research prog...

OBJECTIVE Although petroleum products are useful chemical compounds which form an integral part of our modern technology, they have been reported to cause deleterious effect on health following their inhalation. Petroleum hydrocarbons-dependent health hazards and their mechanisms have been associated with the routes of administration. This study, therefore, aimed at the isolation and chemical c...

Introduction Nothing has ever been invented — not the light bulb, not the automobile, not the iPhone. Someone at some point got the notion to combine two or more existing ideas and call it the next new thing. So it was with the Agile Alliance, the Agile Manifesto and its nine principles. In February 2001, 17 “anarchists” met to create a common and more efficient method of software development. ...

Electrospun non-woven poly(ε-caprolactone) (PCL) microfiber meshes are described as biodegradable, mechanically robust, and reusable polymeric oil sorbents capable of selectively retrieving oil from simulated oil spills in both fresh and seawater scenarios. Hydrophobic PCL meshes have >99.5% (oil over water) oil selectivity and oil absorption capacities of ~10 grams of oil per gram of sorbent m...

In North America, investment in unconventional oil extraction has increased due to the scarcity of conventional reserves. The rapid production growth has induced an extensive transportation activity, sometimes using aging pipelines and inadequate rail tank cars. Without surprise, in recent years, several high impact oil spills have occurred, as the taken place in Lac-Mégantic, the worst terrest...

Crude oil plays an important role in providing the energy supply of the world, and pipelines have long been recognized as the safest and most efficient means of transporting oil and its products. However, the transportation process also faces the challenges of asphaltene-paraffin structural interactions, pipeline pressure losses and energy consumption. In order to determine the role of drag-red...

Microbial enhanced oil recovery: literature survey http://www.clw.csiro.au/publications/science/2008/ WFO-MicrobialOilRecovery.pdf This report is well referenced and contains some general information on enhanced recovery techniques and biosurfactants. Oil spill: Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_spill This Wikipedia entry is a good starting point for information on oil spills. Parts of...