Ability of indigenous Bacillus licheniformis and Bacillus subtilis in microbial enhanced oil recovery

Microbially produced lipopeptide have been isolated and studied for microbial enhanced oil recovery. About 60 gram positive bacteria isolated from soil contaminated with crude oil, near the crude oil storage tank in Tehran Refinery, Tehran, Iran. However, most of these studies have produced lipopeptide by one of the pure-culture microbes isolated in a laboratory. Among the isolates, heamolytic tests revealed two biosurfactant producers. The isolated strains were designated as C2, E1. By using morphological, biochemical and molecular biology tests (16 SrRNA), the strains identified as Bacillus licheniformis and Bacillus subtitlis, respectively. Emulsification activity and measurement of surface tension indicated that, the isolates were high producers of biosurfactant. The product of C2 and E1 is mainly lipopeptide. This product reduce surface tension from 65 to 30 mN/m. Emulsified activity of crude oil was 92% for C2 and 90 % in case of E1. This is the first report of indigenous Bacillus licheniformis and Bacillus subtilis from a soil contaminated with oil in an Iranian refinery with ability to produce biosurfactant.     

Influence of biotic-abiotic factors on the degradation of novaluron in tropical soil

In this study, the degradation of novaluron (benzoylphenyl urea insect growth regulator) was investigated under controlled laboratory conditions in clay loam alluvial and coastal saline soils of West Bengal, India. The application rates were field rate (FR); 2FR and 10FR. The incubation study was carried out at 30 °C and 60% of maximum water holding capacity of both the soils. Degradation of novaluron in both the soils followed first order reaction kinetics at all application rates under non-sterile and sterile conditions. The half-lives of novaluron in non-sterilized soils ranged from 17.0–17.8 days (alluvial soil) and 11.4–12.7 days (coastal saline soil), while the values in case of the sterilized soils were 53.7–59.0 days (alluvial soil) and 28.9–29.8 days (coastal saline soil) respectively. The novaluron degradation patterns were found to be highly influenced by soil types, application rates, and biotic abiotic factors. Abiotic factors strongly influenced novaluron degradation in both the soils. Biotic degradation was higher in alluvial soil compared to the coastal saline soil.     

Modeling study of the effects of the coagulation kernel with van der Waals forces and turbulence on the particle size distribution

In this study, variations in the size distributions due to different assumptions for the coagulation kernel are investigated. In order to evaluate how the coagulation kernel influences the form of the particle size distribution and to describe the process of the Brownian coagulation, the Brownian coagulation kernel, including the van der Waals forces, is compared with the most frequently used coagulation coefficients. Retardation should be considered for interparticle interactions for particles larger than 1μm radius. However, for particle sizes larger than 0.1 μm, the Brownian kernel is not dominant, so the retardation effect can be ignored. The inclusion of the van der Waals forces in the Brownian coagulation kernel caused a faster coagulation process in the small particle size range. Taking account of the turbulent coagulation kernel, the turbulent coagulation kernel becomes more important when the turbulent intensity is higher. The turbulent coagulation kernel affects the large particle size range and ignoring the turbulent coagulation kernel will lead to overestimation of particle number concentration in model simulation. The results of this study indicate that the inclusion of van der Waals forces or the turbulent coagulation kernel in the total coagulation kernel impacts on the modeled particle size distributions and total particle number concentration.     

A combined mathematical geophysical model for prediction of pyrite oxidation and pollutant leaching associated with a coal washing waste dump

The waste produced by coal washing process produces many environmental problems. In this study, the pollution problems associated with the waste produced by Alborz Sharghi Coal Washing Plant was investigated by mathematical modeling. The study area is located at 11 km. to Razmjah coal region and 45 km. to Tehran-Mashhad road in the north part od Iran. To achieve the goal, a few samples were taken from different depths at three points on the waste dump in order to investigate pyrite oxidation and pollution generation. The samples were then analysed, using an AA-670 Shimadzu atomic absorption to determine the fraction of pyrite remained within the waste particles. A numerical finite volume model using Phoenics package has been developed to simulate pyrite oxidation and pollution generation from the Alborz Sharghi coal washing waste dump. The pyrite oxidation reaction is described by the shrinking-core model. Gaseous diffusion is the main mechanism for the transport of oxygen through the waste. The results of numerical modelling were compared with the field observations and close agreement was achieved. A simple mathematical model incorporating advection and hydrodynamic dispersion processes was also presented in order to verify the results of geophysical time-laps method showing transportation of the pollutants through the downstream of the waste dump. Both mathematical model and geophysical time-laps method are agreed in the identification of pollutant transport emanated from the waste dump. The results of such investigations can be used for designing an effective environmental management program.     

First finds of Late Tithonian and middle-late Albian radiolarian assemblages in volcanogenic-siliceous rocks of the Amur River right lower reaches and their tectonic significance

The lithological-stratigraphic study of volcanogenic-siliceous rocks developed on the left side of the Machtovaya River, a right tributary of the Amur River, yielded the first radiolarian assemblages of the late Late Tithonian, the late Late Tithonian-early Valanginian, and the middle-late Albian age. It is established that the stratigraphic succession of volcanogenic-siliceous rocks in this area is composed of upper Tithonian-Valanginian dark red to red-brown cherts with basalts in the lower part of the section and Albian dark gray clayey cherts, olive-gray siliceous-tuffaceous argillites, and tufaceous siltstones in its upper part. The replacement of cherts by their clayey varieties likely occurred in the Aptian. The composition, structure, and age of these strata and the rocks constituting the Kiselevka-Manoma accretionary complex are different, which indicates their different tectonic origin.     

A new concept of pedogenic nodule formation in landscapes of the Russian Far East

The typification of ferromanganese nodules (FMN) formed in subaqueous and subaerial settings and in residual materials, as well as FMN localization in various sediments and soils, is discussed. The genetic diversity of morphologically similar FMN and the transformation of FMN-bearing complexes with changes in landscapes have been established.     

Paleomagnetic studies of the Late Mesozoic deformation stage in the southern Primorye region

The analysis of paleomagnetic data available for the southern Primiorye region revealed that the studied objects were magnetized under regional remagnetization presumably during the Late Mesozoic folding and this magnetization can be interpreted as being synfolding. The interpretation is based on the parameter that characterizes the folding completion degree immediately before regional remagnetization. It is shown that the relaxation of Late Mesozoic horizontal stresses was irregular. The obtained estimates of the degree of folding completion are consistent with the available geological data and Talitskii’s model for tectonic deformations.     

Automated Kerogen Classification in Microscope Images of Dispersed Kerogen Preparation

We develop the classification part of a system that analyses transmitted light microscope images of dispersed kerogen preparation. The system automatically extracts kerogen pieces from the image and labels each piece as either inertinite or vitrinite. The image pre-processing analysis consists of background removal, identification of kerogen material, object segmentation, object extraction (individual images of pieces of kerogen) and feature calculation for each object. An expert palynologist was asked to label the objects into categories inertinite and vitrinite, which provided the ground truth for the classification experiment. Ten state-of-the-art classifiers and classifier ensembles were compared: Naïve Bayes, decision tree, nearest neighbour, the logistic classifier, multilayered perceptron (MLP), support vector machines (SVM), AdaBoost, Bagging, LogitBoost and Random Forest. The logistic classifier was singled out as the most accurate classifier, with an accuracy greater than 90. Using a 10 times 10-fold cross-validation provided within the Weka software, we found that the logistic classifier was significantly better than five classifiers (p<0.05) and indistinguishable from the other four classifiers. The initial set of 32 features was subsequently reduced to 6 features without compromising the classification accuracy. A further evaluation of the system alerted us to the possible sensitivity of the classification to the ground truth that might vary from one human expert to another. The analysis also revealed that the logistic classifier made most of the correct classifications with a high certainty.     

Some Results on the Spatial Breakdown Point of Robust Point Estimates of the Variogram

The effect of outliers on estimates of the variogram depends on how they are distributed in space. The ‘spatial breakdown point’ is the largest proportion of observations which can be drawn from some arbitrary contaminating process without destroying a robust variogram estimator, when they are arranged in the most damaging spatial pattern. A numerical method is presented to find the spatial breakdown point for any sample array in two dimensions or more. It is shown by means of some examples that such a numerical approach is needed to determine the spatial breakdown point for two or more dimensions, even on a regular square sample grid, since previous conjectures about the spatial breakdown point in two dimensions do not hold. The ‘average spatial breakdown point’ has been used as a basis for practical guidelines on the intensity of contaminating processes that can be tolerated by robust variogram estimators. It is the largest proportion of contaminating observations in a data set such that the breakdown point of the variance estimator used to obtain point estimates of the variogram is not exceeded by the expected proportion of contaminated pairs of observations over any lag. In this paper the behaviour of the average spatial breakdown point is investigated for cases where the contaminating process is spatially dependent. It is shown that in two dimensions the average spatial breakdown point is 0.25. Finally, the ‘empirical spatial breakdown point’, a tool for the exploratory analysis of spatial data thought to contain outliers, is introduced and demonstrated using data on metal content in the soils of Sheffield, England. The empirical spatial breakdown point of a particular data set can be used to indicate whether the distribution of possible contaminants is likely to undermine a robust variogram estimator.     

Inversely-Mapped Analytical Solutions for Flow Patterns around and within Inclined Elliptic Inclusions in Fluid-Saturated Rocks

In this paper, an inverse mapping is used to transform the previously-derived analytical solutions from a local elliptical coordinate system into a conventional Cartesian coordinate system. This enables a complete set of exact analytical solutions to be derived rigorously for the pore-fluid velocity, stream function, and excess pore-fluid pressure around and within buried inclined elliptic inclusions in pore-fluid-saturated porous rocks. To maximize the application range of the derived analytical solutions, the focal distance of an ellipse is used to represent the size of the ellipse, while the length ratio of the long axis to the short one is used to represent the geometrical shape of the ellipse. Since the present analytical solutions are expressed in a conventional Cartesian coordinate system, it is convenient to investigate, both qualitatively and quantitatively, the distribution patterns of the pore-fluid flow and excess pressure around and within many different families of buried inclined elliptic inclusions. The major advantage in using the present analytical solution is that they can be conveniently computed in a global Cartesian coordinate system, which is widely used in many scientific and engineering computations. As an application example, the present analytical solutions have been used to investigate how the dip angle of an inclined elliptic inclusion affects the distribution patterns of the pore-fluid flow and excess pore-fluid pressure when the permeability ratio of the elliptic inclusion is of finite but nonzero values.