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Reservoir Characterization And Simulation Of Enhanced Oil Recovery For Bakken, Runxuan Sun

Theses and Dissertations

The Bakken formation is one of the largest unconventional resources in the world with approximately 92 billion barrels of recoverable oil. However, the primary oil recovery factor remains as low as less than 10% of the original oil in place (OOIP). Given the vast Bakken resources and low primary oil recovery, there is a need and enormous potential for the enhanced oil recovery (EOR) in Bakken.

Two comprehensive numerical compositional models were built for the simulation CO2 Huff-n-Puff and cyclic surfactant injection in an actual Middle Bakken horizontal well. A good history match of primary production was obtained. Embedded Discrete …

Fracture Detection And Prediction In Unconventional Reservoirs For Finding Sweet Spot, Sofiane Djezzar

Theses and Dissertations

The Cambro-Ordovician in the Algerian Saharan platform is characterized by tight sandstone formations with very low petrophysical characteristics where the natural fractures play an important role in their productivity. The Mouydir basin is the less explored basin in Algeria where no 3D seismic data exist and only low quality of seismic 2D surveys are available. In addition, few wells were drilled in the fifties exist in this basin. They were drilled based on the field observations, gravity data, geological maps, and seismic refraction data. Unfortunately, these wells were all negative. The Mouydir basin is limited in the west by the …

Fine Scale Characterization Of Organic Matter Using Analytical Methods: Raman And Nmr Spectroscopies, Seyedalireza Khatibi

Theses and Dissertations

In order to assess a source rock for economical exploitation purposes, many parameters should be considered. Regarding the geochemical aspects, the most important ones are amount of organic matter (OM) and its quality. Quality refers to thermal maturity level and the nature of the OM from which it was formed that affect the ability of oil and gas generation. Vitrinite reflectance and programed pyrolysis such as Rock-Eval (RE) are common methods for such analysis.

However, vitrinite is not always present in sediments and RE is providing bulk properties. Moreover, the increase in exploration and production of unconventional reservoirs and their …

Evaluation Of Rutting And Cracking Resistance Of Fiber Reinforced Hma Mixes In North Dakota, Zeenat Nahar

Theses and Dissertations

Asphalt pavements deteriorate over time due to traffic loads and weather conditions. The primary failure modes of asphalt pavements in North Dakota are rutting, fatigue cracking, and low temperature cracking. This study investigated whether the addi- tion of Aramid Fiber to SuperPave HMA mixes improves their resistance to rutting, low temperature cracking, and fatigue cracking. The experiments were conducted on conventional and fiber mixes provided by the North Dakota Department of Trans- portation. The Asphalt Pavement Analyzer (APA), Disk Shaped Compact Tension (DCT), and the Semi-Circular Disk Shape equipment (SCB) were used to test for rut- ting, low temperature cracking, …

Career Change Theory: An Analysis Of Second Career Pilots Pursuing The Aviation Profession, Alex Nikle

Theses and Dissertations

The United States regional air carrier industry has recently undergone a substantial transformation in pilot salaries and hiring practices. Regional airlines are employing professional aviators at unprecedented rates in response to economic growth, regulatory reform, and legacy air carrier retirements. The resulting demand for professional pilots has drawn a new category of aviators into the airline industry, identified in this research as “second career” pilots. The following study used a mixed method design to examine the backgrounds of survey participants at two US flight training programs and determine their transition motivations. Through chi-square tests, t-tests, and correlation analysis, this study …

Classification Of Rotating Machinery Fault Using Vibration Signal, Santosh Paudyal

Theses and Dissertations

Rotating machinery are critical instruments in the manufacturing sectors that are continually operated to fulfill their productivity objective. To reduce the risk of catastrophic failure and unwanted breakdown, it is crucial to ensure that these machines operate within their quality standards. Waste is undesirable to such sectors that directly affect manufacturing price. Maintenance intervention must be efficient, else it is deemed as waste. It is estimated that businesses are losing billions of dollars worldwide due to inadequate maintenance and poor management. It is, therefore, crucial to carry out effective maintenance actions. Since condition-based monitoring method recommends maintenance only when necessary, …

Predicting Flame Stability, Ash Deposition And Radiative Heat Transfer Characteristics During Oxy-Fuel Combustion Of Pulverized Coal Using Different Multiphase Modeling Frameworks, Trevor Lee Seidel

Theses and Dissertations

Oxy-fuel combustion processes are promising technologies for power generation that allow CO2 recovery and sequestration using essentially conventional equipment. Although oxy-fuel combustion has been well researched over the years, there are fundamental issues related to the associated ash deposition processes and their subsequent impact on radiative heat transfer that need to be understood before oxy-fuel combustion can be fully scaled up to a commercial scale. Ash formation and deposition is a complex physio-chemical process consisting of: vaporization, condensation, melting, fragmentation, nucleation and coagulation of the mineral matter and organically bound metals in the parent fuel that results in a distinct …

Melnet: A Deep Learning Based Model For Melanoma Detection, Shudipto Sekhar Roy

Theses and Dissertations

Melanoma is identified as the deadliest in the skin cancer category. However, early-stage detection may enhance the treatment result. In this research, a deep learning-based model, named “melNET”, has been developed to detect melanoma in both dermoscopic and digital images. melNET uses the Inception-v3 architecture to handle the deep learning part. To ensure quality optimization, the architectural aspects of Inception-v3 were designed using the Hebbian principle as well as taking the intuition of multi-scale processing. This architecture takes advantage of parallel computing across multiple GPUs to employ RMSprop as the optimizer. While going through the training phase, melNET uses the …

Physiological Approach To Characterize Drowsiness In Simulated Flight Operations During Window Of Circadian Low, Bijay Guragain

Theses and Dissertations

Drowsiness is a psycho-physiological transition from awake towards falling sleep and its detection is crucial in aviation industries. It is a common cause for pilot’s error due to unpredictable work hours, longer flight periods, circadian disruption, and insufficient sleep. The pilots’ are prone towards higher level of drowsiness during window of circadian low (2:00 am- 6:00 am). Airplanes require complex operations and lack of alertness increases accidents. Aviation accidents are much disastrous and early drowsiness detection helps to reduce such accidents. This thesis studied physiological signals during drowsiness from 18 commercially-rated pilots in flight simulator. The major aim of the …

Development Of Graphene And Polymer Based Nanomaterials For Analytical And Biological Applications, Xiao Liu

Theses and Dissertations

Graphene-based nanomaterials are novel emerging materials with their superior physical, chemical and mechanical features that have applications in a broad diversity of fields. Their excellent properties include: 1) Superior biocompatibility compared to the traditional QDs because they are free from toxic heavy metals. 2) Large surface area and easy covalent/chemical modification which makes them convenient as drug delivery carriers, in comparison with liposomes. 3) High light absorption in the near infrared (NIR) region. Compared to metal nanoparticles, which gives them better photothermal properties. 4) Strong quenching efficiency; graphene-based nanomaterials were able to quench various fluorophores through fluorescence resonance energy transfer …

Design Of A Controlled Descent Lifting Body Glider For High Altitude Payload Recovery, Nanette Valentour

Theses and Dissertations

A lifting body scaled glider to be used as a recovery method for high altitude ballooning payloads has been developed at the University of North Dakota. Current recovery techniques for balloon payloads consist of monitoring and chasing the payload signal until it can be recovered. It is expected that a lifting body glider can reduce the distance for payload recovery and in some cases effectively return the payload back to the Ground Station. A preliminary subsonic aerodynamic model has been developed using MATLAB and the Vortex Lattice Method (VLM). Traditional evaluation techniques typical for calculation of the aerodynamic coefficients are …

Modeling And Improving Oxygen Carrier Performance In Chemical Looping Combustion Systems, Johannes George Van Der Watt

Theses and Dissertations

Countries across the world have different expectations on carbon dioxide (CO2) capturing and the willingness to commit to international agreements continually change. At present, the CO2 capture market is weak as industries are reluctant to take up the costs and risks associated with implementing the capture technologies. Globally, and in the United States of America (U.S.A.) in particular, the perception is that emerging energy technologies with carbon capture are too expensive or inefficient to attract investors without government backing and subsidies. Coal usage has accordingly declined. By expanding the coal value chain into more than just electricity generation, it can …