Sharif Digital Repository

Anatase and amorphous TiO2 nanoparticles were used to improve recovery of heavy oil from sandstone cores. Before performing core floods, the stability of nanoparticles at different salinities was tested using ζ potential and ultraviolet-visible (UV-vis) methods. While water recovered only 49% of the oil in the core flood experiments, 0.01% anatase structure solution recovered 80% of the oil after injecting two pore volumes at optimum conditions. To understand the mechanism responsible for improved recovery, contact angle measurements were performed on the rock surface before and after treatment with the nanoparticle solution. Contact angle measurements showed that the rock wettability... 

This work is concerned with the monitoring of ultrasound effects on inhibition, as well as the reversible kinetics modeling of asphaltene flocculation in toluene-n-alkane systems, which has been rarely reported in the literature. A crude oil sample was exposed to ultrasound waves, and then the colloidal structural evolutions of flocculated asphaltene particles induced by addition of n-alkane were studied, using a confocal microscopy. Observations confirmed that radiation of ultrasound can change the irreversibility of asphaltene flocculation in crude oil. To interpret the kinetics of asphaltene flock aggregation, the Smoluchowski model was used, and the time dependent size distribution of... 

In this work effect of composition changes of injection gas, CH4 + CO2, on the performance of immiscible WAG injection in light oil, 41 oAPI, which has been rarely attended in the available literature is investigated. Presence of CO2 helps to reduce the MMP of CH4 significantly. Core flood experiments are conducted at reservoir conditions and fixed flow rate of 0.5cc/min on a sandstone sample with the brine concentration of 5000 ppm, and the influence of injection gas composition as well as WAG ratio on oil recovery is investigated. Different mole percents of methane in mixture, 0%, to 100% are examined, and the tests continued to ten alternate cycles with a slug size of 0.1 pore volumes and... 

The major problem in determining the forming limit diagram (FLD) with the Marciniak-Kuczynski (M-K) model is the necessity of an experimental point in order to find the initial inhomogeneity coefficient and calibrate the diagram. The purpose of the present work is to eliminate this requirement. To do this, the usual assumption of geometrical inhomogeneity has been replaced with material inhomogeneity and it has been shown that the sensitivity of the diagram to variations of the inhomogeneity factor is reduced greatly with the new assumption. Using this advantage and collecting enough experimental data for different materials, an empirical law in terms of sheet thickness has been proposed... 

The main drawback of the method proposed by Marciniak and Kuczynski for prediction of the limit strains in sheet metal forming processes is requirement of an experimental point of the forming limit curve (FLC) in order to calibrate the curve. The purpose of this work is to introduce a new method to calibrate the FLC using the M-K model in which no experimental data is needed. To achieve this goal, many experimental FLCs were collected from the literature and the values of the initial inhomogeneity factors were determined for them with trial and error aproach. Using these data, an empirical law was developed to predict the value of inhomogeneity factor. The resultant curves show good... 

Major forming limit prediction models and calibration methods are reviewed briefly and their advantages and disadvantages are discussed. Two modified Marciniak-Kuczynski (M-K) models and one modified NADDRG (Keeler-Brazier) model are also presented which have some advantages over conventional models. In the first modified M-K model, material non-homogeneity has been substituted for geometrical non-homogeneity to reduce the sensitivity of the traditional model to variations of the initial non-homogeneity. Using this important advantage, a semi-empirical relation is proposed to predict the value of the initial material non-homogeneity. In the second modified M-K model, the conventional... 

2,4-Dinitrophenylhydrazones were efficiently and rapidly converted to their corresponding carbonyl compounds with supported potassium ferrate(VI) under microwave irradiation  

Free fall gravity drainage is the most effective mechanism in gas invaded zone of fractured reservoirs. Although several analytical models have been proposed to characterize this mechanism, most of them suffer from inadequate reality, such as neglecting capillary pressure. In this study, a new analytical model was proposed to predict the oil recovery versus time for a homogeneous matrix block under a free fall gravity drainage mechanism. Considering the effect of viscous, gravity as well as capillary forces, the model was developed. This model is applicable to different conditions of gravity and capillary force, as well as when both forces are active. Along with core scale experimental data... 

To determine the curvature of the exit profile in the extrusion process of non-symmetrical flat dies, the dead metal zone profile was predicted using the energy minimization method. The dead zone is a natural non-linear die for the process and it is pragmatic to use this non-linear die to estimate the value of the exit profile curvature and the required bearing length for reducing this deviation. The velocity field is calculated based on Hermite cubic spline and some additional assumptions. In non-symmetrical dies the entrance section of the deformation region is not flat. Considering this fact, axial velocity decreases with increasing the distance to die center line which is in agreement... 

This paper presents an effective hybrid optimal modulation technique for a cascaded H-bridge (CHB) multilevel inverter. The introduced method is generalized optimal pulsewidth modulation, which can be extended to any m-level CHB multilevel inverter operating at any switching frequency. The presented hybrid optimal modulation strategy includes the pattern exchange and optimal modulation techniques. In the optimal modulation technique, the hybrid interior-point algorithm, which is more flexible and efficient than conventional optimization techniques, is applied. The proposed hybrid optimal modulation strategy yields balanced units' output fundamental voltages, and low total harmonic distortion... 

This paper proposes a control strategy for an islanded microgrid to effectively coordinate hybrid power source (HPS) units and to robustly control individual interfaced inverters under unbalanced and nonlinear load conditions. Cascaded H-bridge (CHB) multilevel inverters are flexibly deployed in order to enhance the power quality and redundancy. The HPS employs fuel cell (FC) as the main and supercapacitors (SC) as complementary power sources. Fast transient response; high performance; and high power density are the main characteristics of the proposed HPS system. The presented control strategy consists of a power management strategy for the HPS units and a voltage control strategy for the... 

Gravity drainage is the main production mechanism in the gas invaded zone in naturally fractured reservoirs. However, there are large ambiguities and complexities, resulting from the dynamic of oil depletion from matrix blocks toward the fracture network. Visualization of drained oil at pore scale using glass micromodels provides the opportunity to better understand the effects of different parameters which might affect oil recovery from fractured reservoirs. In this work a micromodel apparatus generated by laser etching is used to perform some gravity drainage tests on the network patterns. The experiments were performed on double block systems using crude oil. The block to block... 

This paper depicts a new configuration for modular hybrid power conversion systems, namely, multi-hybrid generation system (MHGS), and parallel connection at the output, such that the converter of each unit shares the load current equally. This is a significant step towards realizing a modular power conversion system architecture, where smaller units can be connected in any series/parallel grouping to realize any required unit specifications. The supercapacitor (SC) as a complementary source is used to compensate for the slow transient response of the fuel cell (FC) as a main power source. It assists the FC to meet the grid power demand in order to achieve a better performance and dynamic...