Rheological Modelling of Complex Flow Behaviour of Bitumen-Solvent Mixtures and Implication for Flow in a Porous Medium

The viscosity of extra-heavy oils including bitumen can be reduced significantly by adding solvent such as toluene to enhance extraction, production and transportation. Thus, prediction of viscosity and/or rheology of bitumen-solvent mixtures has become necessary. More so, selecting a suitable rheological model for simulation of flow in porous media has an important role to play in engineering design of production and processing systems. While several mixing rules have been applied to calculate the viscosity of bitumen-solvent mixtures, rheological model to describe the flow characteristics has rarely been published. Thus, in this investigation, rheological behaviour of bitumen and bitumen-toluene mixtures (weight fractions of bitumen WB = 0, 0.25, 0.5, 0.6, 0.75, and 1 w/w) have been studied at the flow temperature (75 °C) of the bitumen and in the range of shear rates between 0.001 and 1000 s−1. The data was fitted using different rheological models including the Power Law, Cross Model, Carreau-Yasuda Model, and the newly introduced ones herein named as Cross-Logistic and Logistic models. Then, a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model was built using a scanning electron image (SEM) of rock sample (representing a realistic porous geometry) to simulate pore scale flow characteristics. The observations revealed that the original bitumen exhibits a Newtonian behaviour within the low shear rate region (0.001 to 100 s−1) and shows a non-Newtonian (pseudoplastic) behaviour at the higher shear rate region (100 to 1000 s−1). Conversely, the bitumen-toluene mixtures show shear thinning (pseudoplastic) behaviour at low shear rate region (0.001 to 0.01), which appears to become less significant within 0.01 to 0.1 s−1, and exhibit shear independent Newtonian behaviour within 0.1 and 1000 s−1 shear rates. Moreover, except for the original bitumen, statistical error analysis of prediction ability of the tested rheological models as well as the results from the pore scale flow parameters suggested that the Power Law might not be suitable for predicting the flow characteristics of the bitumen-toluene mixtures compared to the other models.

Analysis of Side Information Impact on the Coverage Region of Wireless Wiretap Channel

Analyzing wireless communication performances by using information-theoretic results is of practical importance. In this paper, first, an achievable secrecy rate region and an outer bound on the secrecy capacity region for the discrete alphabet and memoryless wiretap channel with side information non-causally known at the transmitter are obtained. Then, by extending the results to the continuous alphabet wireless wiretap channel and by deriving a closed-form expression on the secrecy coverage region (SCR), as a remarkable wireless performance factor, impact of side information on the SCR is analyzed and it is shown that side information increases the SCR as expected intuitively. Numerical evaluation of theoretical results is done finally.

Blends of poly(butylene adipate-co-terephthalate) and thermoplastic whey protein isolate: a compatibilization study

This work assesses the influence of the plasticizer polyethylene glycol (PEG) on the compatibilization of poly(butylene adipate-co-terephthalate) (PBAT) and thermoplastic whey protein isolate (WPIT) blends. To prepare the blends, WPI was denatured at 90 oC, in the presence of PEG, to become a thermoplastic material. Dried WPIT was later mechanically blended with PBAT using a torque rheometer at 160 oC and 80 rpm. Two blends were prepared: 90% of PBAT/10% of WPIT (90_10) and 70% of PBAT/30% of WPIT (70_30). Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) analyses showed a homogenous blend morphology and good interaction between the dispersed phase and the matrix. Atomic force microscopy-based infrared spectroscopy (AFM-IR) showed PBAT and WPIT bands in all studied regions of both blends, which suggests that these materials presented partial miscibility. The viscosity ratio of the PBAT/WPIT system was less than 3.5 in the high shear rate region in complex viscosity curves, which indicates that droplet break-up of WPIT may occur by the drop fibrillation mechanism. The addition of WPIT reduced the degree of crystallinity of PBAT in the blends in comparison to pristine PBAT as shown by X-ray diffraction (XRD). Mechanical tests showed that blend tensile strength and elongation at break decreased with the addition of WPIT. Elastic modulus of the blends increased compared to pristine PBAT. Barrier properties were also evaluated showing that the oxygen permeability coefficient reduced by 20% for the blend with 30% of WPIT and vapor water permeability increased with the addition of WPIT.

Joint User Pairing and Power Allocation Scheme Based on Transmission Mode Switching between NOMA-Based Maximum Ratio Transmission and MMSE Beamforming in Downlink MISO Systems

This paper investigates the design of the joint user pairing and power allocation scheme with transmission mode switching (TMS) in downlink multiple-input-single-output (MISO) systems. Firstly, the closed-form expressions of the boundary of achievable rate region of two candidate transmission modes, i.e., non-orthogonal multiple access based maximum ratio transmission (NOMA-MRT) and minimum mean square error beamforming (MMSE-BF), are obtained. By obtaining the outer boundary of the union of the achievable rate regions of the two transmission modes, an adaptive switching method is developed to achieve a larger rate region. Secondly, based on the idea that the solution to the problem of weighted sum rate (WSR) optimization must be on the boundary of the achievable rate region, the optimal solutions to the problem of WSR optimization for NOMA-MRT and MMSE-BF are obtained for the two-user case, respectively. Subsequently, by exploiting the aforementioned optimal solutions for two transmission modes and the high efficiency of TMS, a suboptimal user pairing and power allocation algorithm (JUPA) is proposed to further improve the sum rate performance for the multiuser case. Compared with the exhaustive search-based user pairing and power allocation algorithm (ES-PPA), the proposed JUPA can enjoy a much lower computational complexity and only suffers a slight sum rate performance loss, and it outperforms other traditional schemes. Finally, numerical results are provided to validate the analyses and the proposed algorithms.

Looking for the hidden morphological signature of active faults in a Low Strain Rate region: clues from the eastern Kachchh region (NW India)

<p>The Kachchh region (NW India), a pericratonic rift basin delimited by E-W trending major thrust faults, is a Low Strain Rate region[PB1] . In this area, the tectonic forcing magnitude is stronger enough to trigger infrequent significant earthquakes but not enough to overprint the climatic forcing signature. As a consequence, the active faults sources of the largest seismic events are largely poorly known and their geomorphic signature is subdued. </p><p>Instrumental and paleoseismological evidence highlights that the eastern part of Kachchh experienced a significant number of seismic events such as the 1819-06-16 Allah Bund earthquake (Mw 7.8, also known as the Rann of Kutch earthquake), the 1956-07-21 Anjar earthquake (Mw 6.1), the 2001-01-26 Bhuj earthquake (Mw 7.6) and the 2006 events (Mw 5.0 and 5.6 earthquake occurred along Island Belt Fault and Gedi fault). </p><p>In this region, the unavailability of useful outcrop information due to a significant climatic overprinting of the fault’s morphological signatures hampers the detection and parametrization of actively deforming faults.</p><p>For this reason, in this ongoing work, we propose a multidisciplinary approach, aimed at detecting active geological structures and their related [PB2] surface deformation, which mainly consists of quantitative tectonic geomorphology and paleoseismological analyses and structural interpretation and modelling. Preliminary results are a morphotectonic evolution model and 3D fault model of the study area. Finally, we stress the concept that only a multidisciplinary approach could provide useful information to understand better the highly debated active tectonic framework of the study area.</p>