Chemistry Commons^™

A Systematic Multiscale Investigation Of Nanoparticle-Assisted Co2 Enhanced Oil Recovery (Eor) Process For Shale Oil Reservoirs, Dayo A. Afekare

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Shale oil reservoirs are prolific on the short term due to hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling but experience significant production decline, leading to poor ultimate recovery and leaving billions of barrels of oil buried in the ground. In this study, a systematic multi-scale investigation of an enhanced oil recovery (EOR) process using relatively inexpensive silicon dioxide nanoparticles and carbon dioxide for shale oil reservoirs was conducted. Using the Tuscaloosa Marine Shale (TMS) as a case study, aqueous dispersions of nanosilica in conjunction with CO₂ were investigated at nano-to-core scales. At the nanoscale, atomic force microscope was used to investigate …

Investigations Of The Structure And Protein-Protein Interactions Of Chlamydia Trachomatis Scc4, Thilini Oshadhi Senarath Ukwaththage

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Chlamydia trachomatis (CT) is the most common, sexually transmitted bacterial disease (STD) in the world. In the developmental cycle of CT, specific chlamydia chaperone 4 (Scc4) is a unique protein with essential and multiple roles. Hence, Scc4 is significant as a virulence target for therapeutic approaches to treat chlamydial infections. A novel approach was discovered to purify tag free Scc4 by utilizing a 6X-histidine-tag on Scc1 in the co-expressed Scc4:Scc1 complex by capturing the complex on nickel-charged immobilized metal affinity chromatography resin, followed by dissociation of Scc4 with sarkosyl. Using triple resonance NMR experiments, backbone and sidechain resonances …

Development Of Engineered Soil Surrogates For Modeling Natural Soil Sorption Behavior, Ghada Yehia Abdalla

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The land produces more than 95% of the global food supply, and with a continuously growing population, we need to optimize the use of the available agricultural land. Soil organic matter (SOM) is an essential component of soils, especially concerning their fertility and sorption behavior. The chemical composition of the SOM consists of lipids, lignin, and cellulose. However, the heterogeneous and complex nature of SOM, and real soils, makes their study challenging and introduces uncontrollable factors.

Therefore, structural mimics of natural soils with increasing complexity representing the real soil functionality were synthesized and evaluated for bulk properties related to their …