Canine Oil Detection (K9-SCAT) following 2015 Releases from the T/V Arrow Wreck

2017 ◽  
Vol 2017 (1) ◽  
pp. 2620-2641 ◽  
Author(s):  
E.H. Owens ◽  
H.C. Dubach ◽  
P. Bunker ◽  
S. MacDonald ◽  
Z. Yang ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Petroleum Hydrocarbons ◽  
Fuel Oil ◽  
Support Surface ◽  
Chemical Analyses ◽  
Proof Of Concept ◽  
Residual Oil ◽  
High Confidence ◽  
Capability Of Detection ◽  
Trained Observers ◽  
Coverage Rates

Abstract The T/V Arrow sank in 1970, spilling Bunker C fuel oil into Chedabucto Bay, Nova Scotia. In the summer and fall of 2015, residual oil leaked from the sunken vessel and re-oiled shorelines in the Bay. A K9-SCAT field study, funded by Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC), was conducted in June 2016 to assess the capability of detection canines to locate stranded oil following the new releases. The canine detected small amounts of weathered surface oil that were barely visible, and in some cases, not visible, to the SCAT-trained observers, as well as subsurface oil on mixed- and coarse-sediment beaches. The average speed of a survey, in terms of the length of shoreline covered, varied depending on the shore type and the width of the survey band. The most challenging site was a steep bedrock shoreline with an alongshore survey rate of 0.2 linear km/hour. Typical alongshore coverage rates for the wide, mixed sediment were in the range 0.7 to 1.2 linear km/hour, and for both straight, wide sand beaches were 1.2 km/hour. The highest alongshore rate was 2.4 linear km/hour for the narrow beach on Janvrin Island. The successful detection of 2015 T/V Arrow cargo oil (both naturally stranded and intentionally planted) on selected Chedabucto Bay shorelines indicates that there is a low risk, high confidence level that the canine did not miss subsurface oil, although that possibility may exist. Where the canine made an alert and no surface oil was visible, chemical analyses of sediment samples indicated that weathered petroleum hydrocarbons were present at those locations and, therefore, the canine had made correct alerts. The results provide further “proof of concept” for K9-SCAT teams to support surface and subsurface oil detection during traditional shoreline assessment surveys.

Enhancing Gas Turbine Operation With Heavy Fuel Oil

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vikram Muralidharan ◽  
Matthieu Vierling
Keyword(s):  
Power Generation ◽  
Natural Gas ◽  
Gas Turbine ◽  
Power Plants ◽  
High Efficiency ◽  
Combined Cycle ◽  
Fuel Oil ◽  
Residual Oil ◽  
Heavy Fuel Oil ◽  
Hydro Power

Power generation in south Asia has witnessed a steep fall due to the shortage of natural gas supplies for power plants and poor water storage in reservoirs for low hydro power generation. Due to the current economic scenario, there is worldwide pressure to secure and make more gas and oil available to support global power needs. With constrained fuel sources and increasing environmental focus, the quest for higher efficiency would be imminent. Natural gas combined cycle plants operate at a very high efficiency, increasing the demand for gas. At the same time, countries may continue to look for alternate fuels such as coal and liquid fuels, including crude and residual oil, to increase energy stability and security. In over the past few decades, the technology for refining crude oil has gone through a significant transformation. With the advanced refining process, there are additional lighter distillates produced from crude that could significantly change the quality of residual oil used for producing heavy fuel. Using poor quality residual fuel in a gas turbine to generate power could have many challenges with regards to availability and efficiency of a gas turbine. The fuel needs to be treated prior to combustion and needs a frequent turbine cleaning to recover the lost performance due to fouling. This paper will discuss GE’s recently developed gas turbine features, including automatic water wash, smart cooldown and model based control (MBC) firing temperature control. These features could significantly increase availability and improve the average performance of heavy fuel oil (HFO). The duration of the gas turbine offline water wash sequence and the rate of output degradation due to fouling can be considerably reduced.

scholarly journals Quantitative and qualitative analysis of contaminating hydrocarbons in the Gulf of Santiago de Cuba by gas chromatography

2021 ◽  
Vol 50 (1) ◽  
pp. 91-104
Author(s):  
Liliana Mesa ◽  
José Falcón ◽  
Alexander Mulet ◽  
Juan Castellanos
Keyword(s):  
Gas Chromatography ◽  
Power Plant ◽  
Qualitative Analysis ◽  
Petroleum Hydrocarbons ◽  
Peak Height ◽  
Oil Refinery ◽  
Fuel Oil ◽  
Degree Of Contamination ◽  
Santiago De Cuba ◽  
Thermoelectric Power Plant

The coasts of Cuba are exposed to damage caused by the contamination by petroleum hydrocarbons. The coastal strip of the Gulf of Santiago de Cuba is an example of natural resources deterioration due to this contamination, which appears as one of its main environmental problems. In the present work, using gas chromatography, quantitative and qualitative analysis were performed based on the retention time values and the area under the chromatogram curve, which allowed characterizing the degree of contamination at four points of the bay of Santiago de Cuba: playa La Estrella (P1), “Guillermón Moncada” Port (P2) “Hermanos Díaz” Oil Refinery (P3), “Antonio Maceo” Thermoelectric Power Plant RENTE (P4). Retention times of individual peaks in chromatograms of individual samples with several standards, thus obtaining the types of hydrocarbons present at each point, with points P2 and P3 being the ones with the highest pollutant and the highest concentration by peak height. Fuel oil turned out to be the most polluting agent present in the bay.

scholarly journals Transposons modulate transcriptomic and phenotypic variation via the formation of circular RNAs in maize

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lu Chen ◽  
Pei Zhang ◽  
Yuan Fan ◽  
Juan Huang ◽  
Qiong Lu ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Phenotypic Variation ◽  
Genomic Variation ◽  
Circular Rnas ◽  
Maize Genome ◽  
Proof Of Concept ◽  
High Confidence ◽  
Genomic Features ◽  
Rna Molecules ◽  
Expression Variation ◽  
Flanking Regions

AbstractCircular RNAs (circRNAs) are covalently closed, single-stranded RNA molecules. Recent studies in human showed that circRNAs can arise via transcription of reverse complementary pairs of transposons. Given the prevalence of transposons in the maize genome and dramatic genomic variation driven by transposons, we hypothesize that transposons in maize may be involved in the formation of circRNAs and further modulate phenotypic variation. To test our hypothesis, we performed circRNA-Seq on B73 seedling leaves and integrate these data with 977 publicly available mRNA-Seq datasets. We uncovered 1,551 high-confidence maize circRNAs, which show distinct genomic features as compared to linear transcripts. Comprehensive analyses demonstrated that LINE1-like elements (LLE) and their Reverse Complementary Pairs (LLERCPs) are significantly enriched in the flanking regions of circRNAs. Interestingly, the accumulation of circRNA transcripts increases, while the accumulation of linear transcripts decreases as the number of LLERCPs increases. Furthermore, genes with LLERCP-mediated circRNAs are enriched among loci that are associated with phenotypic variation. These results suggest that LLERCPs can modulate phenotypic variation by the formation of circRNAs. As a proof of concept, we showed that the presence/absence variation of LLERCPs could result in expression variation of one cicrRNA, circ352, and further related to plant height through the interaction between circRNA and functional linear transcript. Our first glimpse of circRNAs uncovers a new role for transposons in the modulation of transcriptomic and phenotypic variation via the formation of circRNAs.

Origin and fate of hydrocarbons in Sullom Voe

1981 ◽  
Vol 80 ◽  
pp. 135-154
Author(s):  
J. M. Davies ◽  
R. Johnston ◽  
K. J. Whittle ◽  
P. R. Mackie
Keyword(s):  
Surface Water ◽  
Petroleum Hydrocarbons ◽  
Water Film ◽  
Sediment Traps ◽  
Chemical Analyses

SynopsisThe results of chemical analyses for hydrocarbon components in the surface water film, water, sediment traps and sediments are presented for samples collected during the period 1973–78. The n-alkane profiles of these samples are used to characterise the hydrocarbons and to help in determining their origin. The amounts of hydrocarbon present are compared to the estimated inputs of petroleum hydrocarbons from operational losses and accidents based upon analogies with worldwide averages and with data taken from other similar oil terminals. Some conclusions are drawn as to the likely fate of this oil in Sullom Voe.

BIOAVAILABILITY OF PETROLEUM HYDROCARBONS FROM WATER, SEDIMENTS, AND DETRITUS TO THE MARINE ANNELID, NEANTHES ARENACEODENTATA

1977 ◽  
Vol 1977 (1) ◽  
pp. 621-625 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven S. Rossi
Keyword(s):  
Petroleum Hydrocarbons ◽  
Water Soluble ◽  
Fuel Oil ◽  
Magnification Factor ◽  
Short Term ◽  
Tissue Concentrations ◽  
Short Term Exposure ◽  
Oil Water ◽  
Sediment Particles ◽  
Marine Worms

ABSTRACT Uptake, retention, metabolism, and depuration of diaromatic hydrocarbons by the polychaete, Neanthes arenaceodentata, were examined in experiments utilizing seawater solutions and sediments contaminated with either No. 2 fuel oil water-soluble fractions or radio-labelled naphthalenes. Polychaetes rapidly accumulate 14C-naphthalene (magnification factor = 40X) from solution during short-term exposure (24 hr). Worms slowly released hydrocarbons accumulated during acute exposure down to undetectable levels (<0.05 ppm) within 300 hours after return to clean seawater. 14C-naphthalene accumulated from solution was metabolized by polychaetes, and associated microflora apparently play no role in uptake, release, or metabolism. Analyses of worms held for 28 days in clay-silt sediments artificially contaminated with No. 2 fuel oil (9 μg total naphthalenes/g wet sediment) indicate that naphthalenes were not accumulated by worms at tissue concentrations above 0.1 ppm. Polychaetes likewise failed to accumulate 14C-methylnaphthalene from ingestion of contaminated detritus (10-15 μg 14C-methylnaphthalene/g dry detritus) for 16 consecutive days. These data suggest that petroleum hydrocarbons bound to sediment particles or particulate organic matter are less available to marine worms than those in solution.

Magnetization clustering inversion — Part 2: Assessing the uncertainty of recovered magnetization directions

Geophysics ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 84 (4) ◽  
pp. J17-J29 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jiajia Sun ◽  
Yaoguo Li
Keyword(s):  
Magnetic Measurements ◽  
Synthetic Data ◽  
Magnetic Data ◽  
Proof Of Concept ◽  
High Confidence ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Number Of Clusters ◽  
Copper Gold ◽  
Standard Deviations ◽  
Low Uncertainty

The unknown magnetization directions in the presence of remanence have posed great challenges for interpreting magnetic data. Estimating magnetization directions based on magnetic measurements, therefore, has been an active area of research within the applied geophysics community. Despite the availability of several methods for estimating magnetization directions, quantifying the uncertainty of such estimates has remained untackled. We have investigated the use of the magnetization-clustering inversion (MCI) method for the purpose of assessing the uncertainty of the recovered magnetization directions. Specifically, we have leveraged the fact that the number of clusters that one expects to see among the magnetization directions recovered from MCI needs to be supplied by a user. We propose to implement a sequence of MCIs by assuming a series of different cluster numbers, and subsequently, to calculate the standard deviations of the recovered magnetization directions at each location in a model as a practical way of quantifying the uncertainty of the estimated magnetization directions. We have developed two different methods for the calculations of the standard deviations, and have also investigated the maximum number of clusters that one needs to consider to reliably assess the uncertainty. After the proof-of-concept study on a synthetic data set, we applied our methods to a field data set from an iron-oxide-copper-gold deposit exploration in the Carajás Mineral Province, Brazil. The high-confidence zones that correspond to low-uncertainty zones indicate a high spatial correspondence with the mineralization zones inferred from the drillholes and geology.

Interagency Investigations of a Persistent Oil Spill on the Washington Coast: Animal Population Studies, Hydrocarbon Uptake by Marine Organisms, and Algae Response Following the Grounding of the Troopship GENERAL M. C. MEIGS

1973 ◽  
Vol 1973 (1) ◽  
pp. 793-808
Author(s):  
Robert C. Clark, Jr. ◽  
John S. Finley ◽  
Benjamin G. Patten ◽  
Dennis F. Stefani ◽  
Edward E. DeNike
Keyword(s):  
Petroleum Hydrocarbons ◽  
Qualitative Evaluation ◽  
Fuel Oil ◽  
Shelf Area ◽  
Long Term Effects ◽  
Biological Damage ◽  
Intertidal Community ◽  
Upper Intertidal ◽  
Basic Characteristics

ABSTRACT An interagency team of biologists, chemists, oceanographers and engineers has been investigating the long-term effects of oil spilled by the grounding of the troopship GENERAL M. C. MEIGS January 6, 1972, on an ocean coast intertidal community of plants and animals. Oil has continuously been released from the 440,000 liters of Navy Special Fuel Oil carried by the vessel. The team assessed biological damage by making 1) surveys of abundance and physiological condition of animals, 2) qualitative evaluation of obvious damage to plants, and 3) measurements of the hydrocarbon uptake in both plants and animals. A series of sites, forming a vertical profile of the rocky shelf area from the upper intertidal zone to the lowest low tide level in Wreck Cove, have been studied. This report describes the preliminary findings of the first ten months (January-October, 1972) of the investigation. Abnormal and dead urchins (Strongylocentrotus purpuratus) indicated that this species was affected. Loss of fronds and bleached thalli not evident in control areas were observed in the plant community in the immediate vicinity of the hulk. Petroleum hydrocarbons were taken up in the intertidal community. The normal paraffin hydrocarbon patterns and content over the range n-C14 H30 to n-C37H76 of healthy-appearing goose barnacles (Mitella polymerus), crabs (Hemigrapsus nudus) and an alga (Fucus gardneri) display the same basic characteristics as the fuel oil which had been lost from the GENERAL M. C. MEIGS.

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