Experimental study of the woody debris trapping efficiency of a steel pipe,open sabo dam

In recent years, the damage caused to human settlements in Japan by large woody debris (LWD) has been increasing. For example, the 2013 Izu Oshima typhoon resulted in a large number of fatalities and missing persons, and the Kagoshima Typhoon Disaster and Northern Kyusyu torrential downpour caused vast infrastructure damage due to the associated LWD. Current countermeasures for preventing LWD are insufficient to maintain the safety of residential areas. One type of protective barrier, the open sabo dam, has been constructed in Japan during the past 30 years. The primary function of open sabo dams is to block the flow of boulders, thereby also reducing sediment flow by reducing the gap size. However, because Japanese open sabo dams are designed specifically for boulder-trapping, the ability of these dams to trap LWD remains uncertain. In particular, many problems have been reported with respect to sediment trapping by driftwood with roots in an open sabo dam setting. The objective of this study was to examine the trapping efficiency of open sabo dams for LWD and sediment. The experimental approach clarified the influence of driftwood, without and with roots, on sediment trapping for a straight-channel flume. The flexible roots of the driftwood were shown to have a significant effect on the sediment trapping efficiency of the dam.     

纯油条件下合成碳酸盐岩烃类包裹体及其捕获机制探讨

设计了在接近实际储层温压条件下,流体介质为纯原油时在冰洲石中合成烃类包裹体的实验。合成样品的显微观察及荧光分析证实实验成功合成了烃类包裹体,实验证明油气对晶体生长和包裹体的形成有抑制作用,但不会终止其形成,纯油条件晶体仍能生长捕获包裹体,水并不是矿物生长捕获烃类包裹体的必须条件。结合矿物润湿性实验及前人研究将碳酸盐岩烃类包裹体捕获机制归纳为3种情况:油水共存(水润湿)、油水共存(油润湿)及纯油条件。水润湿条件下由水溶液提供矿物质来源,较易形成包裹体; 油润湿条件下由水溶液和油中的极性组分共同提供矿物质来源; 纯油条件下由原油中的极性组分和裂解产生的有机酸提供物源,形成烃类包裹体较少,晶体生长受到抑制。     

激光冷却和囚禁中性原子

目前利用激光来冷却和囚禁中性原子的技术已取得激动人心的进展。通过使用廉价的二极管激光器和蒸汽室收集器，有效地降低了囚禁原子的复杂性和高成本，在零点几μＫ温度下，可得到１０１１个原子／ｃｍ３的原子密度。本文介绍了有关激光冷却与囚禁技术，讨论了其现实应用：频率标准一基本物理性质研究。     

Ongoing methane discharge at well site 22/4b (North Sea) and discovery of a spiral vortex bubble plume motion

First direct evidence for ongoing gas seepage activity on the abandoned well site 22/4b (Northern North Sea, 57°55′ N, 01°38′ E) and discovery of neighboring seepage activity is provided from observations since 2005. A manned submersible dive in 2006 discovered several extraordinary intense seepage sites within a 60 m wide and 20 m deep crater cut into the flat 96 m deep seafloor. Capture and (isotope) chemical analyses of the gas bubbles near the seafloor revealed in situ concentrations of methane between 88 and 90%Vol. with δ¹³C–CH₄ values around −74‰ VPDB, indicating a biogenic origin. Bulk methane concentrations throughout the water column were assessed by 120 Niskin water samples showing up to 400.000 nM CH₄ in the crater at depth. In contrast, concentrations above the thermocline were orders of magnitude lower, with a median value of 20 nM. A dye tracer injection into the gas seeps revealed upwelling bubble and water motion with gas plume rise velocities up to ∼1 ms⁻¹ (determined near the seabed). However, the dissolved dye did not pass the thermocline, but returned down to the seabed. Measurements of direct bubble-mediated atmospheric flux revealed low values of 0.7 ± 0.3 kty⁻¹, much less than current state-of-the-art bubble dissolution models would predict for such a strong and upwelling in situ gas bubble flux at shallow water depths (i.e. ∼100 m).Acoustic multibeam water column imaging data indicate a pronounced 200 m lateral intrusion at the thermocline together with high methane concentration at this layer. A partly downward-orientated bubble plume motion is also visible in the acoustic data with potential short-circuiting in accordance to the dye experiment. This observation could partly explain the observed trapping of most of the released gas below the well-established thermocline in the North Sea. Moreover, 3D analyses of the multibeam water column data reveal that the upwelling plume transforms into a spiral expanding vortex while rising through the water column. Such a spiral vortex motion has never been reported before for marine gas seepage and might represent an important process with strong implication on plume dynamics, dissolution behavior, gas escape to the atmosphere, and is considered very important for respective modeling approaches.     

Dispersal pattern of suspended sediment in the shear frontal zone off the Huanghe (Yellow River) mouth

The in situ records of a cruise in September 1995 off the Huanghe mouth and laboratory measurements indicate that the shear front off the river mouth results from the phase difference between the nearshore and offshore tides and plays significant role in the river-laden sediment dispersal. Two types of shear front, identified from the behaviors of currents inside and outside the shear front, alternate over tidal cycle, each of which lasts for ∼2–3 h. The dispersal patterns of suspended sediment at the stations inside and outside the shear front are distinctly different from each other. In addition, the gravity-driven hyperpycnal flow generated near the mouth is terminated within shallow water due to the barrier effect of shear front. A dispersal pattern of river-laden suspended sediment in the shear frontal zone is proposed to interpret the difference of sediment transport inside and outside the shear front. The fresh and highly turbid river effluents discharge to the sea during ebb tides and are transported northwestwards inside the shear front under the combined impacts of northward ebb currents, down-slope transport of hyperpycnal flow and confining action of shear front; after partially mixing with the ambient seawater the river effluents are then transported southeastwards outside the shear front along the flood currents, causing the intermittent increase in suspended sediment concentration and corresponding decrease in salinity outside the shear front. Over annual time scale the subaqueous slope has a geomorphological response to the ephemeral shear front. Most of the river-laden sediment deposit inside the shear front with a high accumulation rate, while erosion is dominant outside the shear front due to the lack of sediment supply.     

Synthetic saline-aqueous and hydrocarbon fluid inclusions trapped in calcite at temperatures and pressures relevant to hydrocarbon basins: A reconnaissance study

We conducted reconnaissance experiments to synthesize aqueous and hydrocarbon inclusions trapped in calcite at conditions relevant to petroleum basins, and characterize the microthermometric properties of such inclusions. Fluid inclusions (FIs) were synthesized in a system of saline aqueous solution (5 or 20 wt% NaCl) coexisting with either heavy crude oil or gasoline under gas-undersaturated conditions, from 90 to 210 °C and 200–550 bar. The synthetic inclusions are not representative of gas-bearing systems, and methane (CH₄) was not detected in any aqueous inclusions. The FIs are mainly distributed along planar healed cracks, indicating that the inclusions formed by fracture healing in the calcite crystal. Microthermometric measurements were conducted on coeval aqueous and hydrocarbon inclusions, and Raman spectroscopic analyses were done on aqueous inclusions, to determine the properties of FIs trapped at these conditions.Homogenization temperatures of synthetic FIs are mostly lower than the experimental trapping temperature, although the FIs show high variability in measured homogenization temperature. Results allow comparison of T_h values for each sample with the expected T_h, isochores and pressure corrections calculated for the system H₂ONaCl. The latter parameters are broadly consistent with the known PVTX properties of H₂ONaCl fluids, suggesting little effect of hydrocarbons on the homogenization behavior, although the low precision of the T_h data limits this assessment. Nevertheless, this result is not unexpected considering that light hydrocarbons (gas) is not present in the experiments (as corroborated by Raman spectroscopy), a consequence of using “dead” oil in the experiments. Simulation of gas-bearing petroleum basins will require additional protocols for producing gas, either by in-situ cracking of the starting hydrocarbon material, or by other means. The reconnaissance experiments documented here provide a basis for such future experiments.     

New theoretical approaches to black holes

Quite recently, some new mathematical approaches to black holes have appeared in the literature. They do not rely on the classical concept of event horizon—which is very global, but on the local concept of hypersurfaces foliated by trapped surfaces. After a brief introduction to these new horizons, we focus on a viscous fluid analogy that can be developed to describe their dynamics, in a fashion similar to the membrane paradigm introduced for event horizons in the seventies, but with a significant change of sign of the bulk viscosity.     

Effects of wettability and pore-level displacement on hydrocarbon trapping

We use a three-dimensional mixed-wet random network model representing Berea sandstone to extend our previous work on relative permeability hysteresis during water-alternating-gas (WAG) injection cycles [Suicmez, VS, Piri, M, Blunt, MJ, 2007, Pore-scale simulation of water alternate gas injection, Transport Porous Med 66(3), 259–86]. We compute the trapped hydrocarbon saturation for tertiary water-flooding, which is water injection into different initial gas saturations, S_gi, established by secondary gas injection after primary drainage. Tertiary water-flooding is continued until all the gas and oil is trapped. We study four different wettability conditions: water-wet, weakly water-wet, weakly oil-wet and oil-wet. We demonstrate that the amounts of oil and gas that are trapped show surprising trends with wettability that cannot be captured using previously developed empirical trapping models. We show that the amount of oil that is trapped by water in the presence of gas increases as the medium becomes more oil-wet, which is opposite from that seen for two-phase flow. It is only through a careful analysis of displacement statistics and fluid configurations that these results can be explained. This illustrates the need to have detailed models of the displacement processes that represent the three-phase displacement physics as carefully as possible. Further work is needed to explore the full range of behavior as a function of wettability and displacement path.     

Effects of oil cracking on fluorescence color,homogenization temperature and trapping pressure reconstruction of oil inclusions from deeply buried reservoirs in the northern Dongying Depression,Bohai Bay Basin,China

The effects of oil cracking on fluorescence color, homogenization temperature (T_ho) and trapping pressure (P_t) of oil inclusions from deeply buried reservoirs (DBRs) (3672–4359 m) in the northern Dongying Depression were determined based on fluorescence spectroscopy and homogenization temperatures of oil inclusions, kinetic modeling of crude oil cracking, and petroleum inclusion thermodynamics modeling.The modeling results demonstrate that fluorescence color, T_ho and predicted P_t have strong relationships with the transformation rate via cracking of oil to gas (T_r), and the formation temperature (T_f) that the inclusions experienced. The fluorescence color is hardly influenced at all during the initial stages of oil cracking (T_r < 13%, T_f < 160 °C), but fluorescence color begins to shift toward shorter wavelengths (blue shift) during progressive oil cracking (T_r < 24%, T_f < 190 °C). With further oil cracking, the fluorescence color may either experience no change or continue its blue shift. Eventually the fluorescence color will disappear as the aromatic compounds are completely cracked. The T_ho increases at first (T_r < 24%, T_f < 190 °C), but then decreases or even becomes negative during major oil cracking. The reconstructed P_t values show a corresponding reverse trend.Oil inclusions from DBRs and other shallow reservoirs in the Dongying Depression show an obvious blue shift in fluorescence color at a depth of approximate 4000 m (T_f = 160 °C) and generally contain solid bitumen below 4000 m, supporting the effect of oil cracking on fluorescence variation, consistent with the modeling result. The T_ho from DBRs in the Minfeng area increases with increasing burial depth (T_f < 190 °C), which is also consistent with the modeling results. However, the T_ho of oil inclusions with blue-white fluorescence from DBRs in the Shengtuo area did not show such a trend. Recent trapping, high trapping pressure and higher-maturity oil may have led to a low-degree of oil cracking, and thus less modification of T_ho in the Shengtuo area.Oil cracking results in consistent volume ratios of pyrobitumen to oil inclusions (F_vpy) in the same fluid inclusion assemblage, and the F_vpy value increases with oil cracking level, which can be used to recognize if oil cracking has occurred in oil inclusions and what level of oil cracking they have experienced.As the oil cracking model used in this study did not account for the role of pressure, it is more applicable for oil inclusions that were trapped under normally pressured conditions. Oil inclusions trapped under overpressured conditions will be less influenced by oil cracking.     

Impact of capillary hysteresis and trapping on vertically integrated models for CO2 storage

Vertically integrated models are frequently applied to study subsurface flow related to CO₂ storage scenarios in saline aquifers. In this paper, we study the impact of capillary-pressure hysteresis and CO₂ trapping on the integrated constitutive parameter functions. Our results show that for the initial drainage and a subsequent imbibition, trapping is the dominant contributor to hysteresis in integrated models. We also find that for advective processes like injection and plume migration in a sloped aquifer the correct treatment of the hysteretic nature of the capillary fringe is likely of secondary importance. However, for diffusive/dispersive processes such as a redistribution of the CO₂ plume due to buoyancy and capillary forces, the hysteretic nature of the capillary fringe may significantly impact the final distribution of the fluids and the timescale of the redistribution.