Dilution is one of the various existing methods in reducing heavy crude oil viscosity. In this method, heavy crude oil is mixed with a solvent or lighter oil in order to achieve a certain viscosity. Thus, precise mixing rules are needed to estimate the viscosity of blend. In this work, new empirical models are developed for the calculation of the kinematic viscosity of crude oil and diluent ble...

We present an algorithm that can detect blends of bright stars with fainter, un-associated eclipsing binaries. Such systems contaminate searches for transiting planets, in particular in crowded fields where blends are common. Spectroscopic follow-up observations on large aperture telescopes have been used to reject these blends, but the results are not always conclusive. Our approach exploits t...

The first micro-lensing event discovered towards the Small Magellanic Cloud by the MACHO collaboration (Alcock et al. 1997b) had a very long time scale, t0 = 123 days. The EROS collaboration (Palanque-Delabrouille et al. 1997) discovered a ∼ 2.5% brightness variation with a period P = 5.1 days. The OGLE collaboration (Udalski et al. 1997) established that the variation persists while the micro-...

We report high-resolution spectroscopic follow-up observations of the faint transiting planet candidate OGLE-TR-33 (V = 14.7), located in the direction of the Galactic center. Small changes in the radial velocity of the star were detected that suggested initially the presence of a large planet or brown dwarf in orbit. However, further analysis revealed spectral line asymmetries that change in p...

Aalto University, P.O. Box 11000, FI-00076 Aalto www.aalto.fi Author Laura Taajamaa Name of the doctoral dissertation Supported ultrathin films and non-woven fibre mats from polysaccharide containing bicomponent polymer blends Publisher School of Chemical Technology Unit Department of Forest Products Technology Series Aalto University publication series DOCTORAL DISSERTATIONS 87/2014 Field of r...

Industry in the developed world has come to depend heavily on HFC refrigerants, all blends except for R134a. This dependency will increase when the last of the HCFCs, R22, becomes unavailable in the near future. Furthermore, the pressure for increased efficiency combined with reduced running costs and environmental impact is relentless, particularly since the Kyoto Protocol which has had the ef...

We report the influence of different polymer purification procedures on the photovoltaic performance of bulk heterojunction solar cells formed from binary blends of poly(3-hexylthiophene) (P3HT) and fullerenes. Selective Soxhlet extractions and metal scavenging agents were used to remove residual monomer, magnesium salt by-products and catalyst from high-weight P3HT (Mw 121 kg/mol, PDI 1.8, RR ...

In the first part of the present research, an R290/R600 mixture was tested as a drop-in substitute in a 20cubic-feet, single-evaporator, autodefrost, topmount, conventional domestic refrigerator/freezer. All the hardware remained the same, only the capillary tube was lengthened to achieve the optimum performance. The best result with an optimized R290/R600 blend was 6% savings compared to the b...