Process Analysis by AAVOS International

The upstream sector includes the searching for potential underground or underwater crude oil and natural gas fields, drilling of exploratory wells, and subsequently drilling and operating the wells that recover and bring the crude oil and/or raw natural gas to the surface. there has been a significant shift toward including unconventional gas as a part of the upstream sector, and corresponding developments in liquefied natural gas (LNG) processing and transport. The midstream sector involves the transportation (by pipeline, rail, barge, oil tanker or truck), storage, and wholesale marketing of crude or refined petroleum products. Pipelines and other transport systems can be used to move crude oil from production sites to refineries and deliver the various refined products to downstream distributors. Natural gas pipeline networks aggregate gas from natural gas purification plants and deliver it to downstream customers, such as local utilities. The downstream sector commonly ref...

Fluorescence is the emission of light by a substance that has absorbed light or other electromagnetic radiation. It is a form of luminescence. In most cases, the emitted light has a longer wavelength, and therefore lower energy, than the absorbed radiation. The most striking example of fluorescence occurs when the absorbed radiation is in the ultraviolet region of the spectrum, and thus invisible to the human eye, while the emitted light is in the visible region, which gives the fluorescent substance a distinct color that can only be seen when exposed to UV light. Fluorescent materials cease to glow immediately when the radiation source stops, unlike phosphorescence, where it continues to emit light for some time after. Fluorescence has many practical applications, including mineralogy, gemology, medicine, chemical sensors (fluorescence spectroscopy), fluorescent labelling, dyes, biological detectors, cosmic-ray detection, and, most commonly, fluorescent lamps. Fluorescence also oc...

Lignocellulose refers to plant dry matter (biomass), so called lignocellulosic biomass. It is the most abundantly available raw material on the Earth for the production of biofuels, mainly bio-ethanol. It is composed of carbohydrate polymers (cellulose, hemicellulose), and an aromatic polymer (lignin). These carbohydrate polymers contain different sugar monomers (six and five carbon sugars) and they are tightly bound to lignin. Lignocellulosic biomass can be broadly classified into virgin biomass, waste biomass and energy crops. Virgin biomass includes all naturally occurring terrestrial plants such as trees, bushes and grass. Waste biomass is produced as a low value byproduct of various industrial sectors such as agriculture (corn stover, sugarcane bagasse, straw etc.) and forestry (saw mill and paper mill discards). Energy crops are crops with high yield of lignocellulosic biomass produced to serve as a raw material for production of second generation biofuel; examples include switch...

Curing is a term in polymer chemistry and process engineering that refers to the toughening or hardening of a polymer material by cross-linking of polymer chains, brought about by electron beams, heat or chemical additives.

In materials science, polymorphism is the ability of a solid material to exist in more than one form or crystal structure

Tacticity is simply the way pendant groups are arranged along the backbone chain of a polymer

For the retrieval of trace gas amounts, the technique of Differential Optical Absorption Spectroscopy (DOAS) is a well established remote sensing method which has been developed and improved over the last decades. It was first used for measurements conducted with ground-based instruments, but can also be applied when observing the atmosphere from space. The DOAS method makes use of the individual absorption characteristics of molecules on the mathematical basis of Lambert-Beer’s absorption law. The technique enables to observe atmospheric trace gases such as ozone and NO2. For this the absorption in visible and near ultraviolet sunlight scattered in the zenith is measured. So called slant columns, that are the column densities along the light path can be derived. The fundamental difference between typical radiative transfer calculations and the point of view in the DOAS method is the way how the light is traced through the atmosphere. DOAS type measurements can be conducted either us...