Petroleum Demand Research Articles

Rheological and Chemical Characterization of Biobinders from Different Biomass Resources

The increasing costs and strong worldwide demand for petroleum and the adverse environmental impact of the consumption of nonrenewable energy sources have encouraged the development of alternative sources of renewable energy. One source of renewable energy can be developed in biorefineries, where biomass feedstocks can be converted to biocrude oil through thermochemical processes. Biocrude oil can replace petroleum-based transportation fuels and can be used to build and maintain transportation infrastructure, which requires an energy-intensive process that consumes natural resources, including mineral aggregates, steel, cement, and petroleum-based binder. This study aimed to characterize biocrude oil as an alternative binder material, which is referred to here as biobinder. The hydrothermal liquefaction technique was used to produce biobinder from spirulina algae (microalgae), swine manure, and nanoalgae. A chemical analysis was performed with the saturates, aromatics, resins, and asphaltenes technique to characterize the percentage of different components present in the biobinder. A rheological characterization of biobinders was conducted to evaluate their feasibility for use in pavement construction and to predict their performance during the service life of a pavement. Surface free energy properties of biobinders also were determined with the use of a sessile drop device to characterize adhesion properties. The results indicated that biobinder had significantly different rheological and chemical properties than conventional asphalt binder. When blended with conventional binder, biobinder showed the potential to reduce the stiffness of original binder. As a result, it might be used to rejuvenate mixes with recycled asphalt materials or find an application under low-temperature conditions.

Practical management of cumulative anthropogenic impacts with working marine examples.

Human pressure on the environment is expanding and intensifying, especially in coastal and offshore areas. Major contributors to this are the current push for offshore renewable energy sources, which are thought of as environmentally friendly sources of power, as well as the continued demand for petroleum. Human disturbances, including the noise almost ubiquitously associated with human activity, are likely to increase the incidence, magnitude, and duration of adverse effects on marine life, including stress responses. Stress responses have the potential to induce fitness consequences for individuals, which add to more obvious directed takes (e.g., hunting or fishing) to increase the overall population-level impact. To meet the requirements of marine spatial planning and ecosystem-based management, many efforts are ongoing to quantify the cumulative impacts of all human actions on marine species or populations. Meanwhile, regulators face the challenge of managing these accumulating and interacting impacts with limited scientific guidance. We believe there is scientific support for capping the level of impact for (at a minimum) populations in decline or with unknown statuses. This cap on impact can be facilitated through implementation of regular application cycles for project authorization or improved programmatic and aggregated impact assessments that simultaneously consider multiple projects. Cross-company collaborations and a better incorporation of uncertainty into decision making could also help limit, if not reduce, cumulative impacts of multiple human activities. These simple management steps may also form the basis of a rudimentary form of marine spatial planning and could be used in support of future ecosystem-based management efforts.

Sri Lanka’s petroleum industry: policy, organization and challenges

Global petroleum demand is around 90/mbd of which about 50 percent is consumed in OECD countries. Sri Lanka’s petroleum product consumption is minuscule compared with the global demand. The country has long been an import dependent consumer of petroleum products and spends about 24 percent of the import value on them at present (2011). The Ceylon Petroleum Corporation (CPC) has long been a monopoly provider of petroleum products to the local market. However, another player was added to create a duopoly in the petroleum product distribution market in 2003. Several sub sectors of petroleum industry have been liberalized since the 1990s with a view to build a competitive environment in the industry. Emerging trends in the industry indicate that the regulating the country’s petroleum industry is an important area of concern. As seen in many other countries, transport sector is the largest consumer of oil in Sri Lanka. CPC was able meet the total petroleum product demand of the country through its only refinery in the 1970s. Petroleum product demand in the country has been rapidly rising since the 1980s. Hence, the largest quantum of petroleum supplies to the local market has to come from imported refined product sources as the supply capacity of the CPC’s refinery remained fixed. Ensuring petroleum supply stabilities in a manner to support the ongoing rapid socio-economic transformation of the country has been placed high on the current petroleum policy agenda. Government pricing policy for the industry has been consistent since 2005 in which frequent price adjustments in tandem with international price movements has been abandoned. Various petroleum products including fuel oil for electricity generation have been an area of major concern as those supplies have mostly been subsidized creating difficulties in managing CPC during the last several years. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.4038/sljda.v4i0.7102 Sri Lanka Journal of Development Administration, Vol. 4, pp. 39-53, 2014

On-road emission characteristics of CNG-fueled bi-fuel taxis

To alleviate air pollution and lessen the petroleum demand from the motor vehicle sector in China, natural gas vehicles (NGVs) have been rapidly developed over the last several years. However, the understanding of the real-world emissions of NGVs is very limited. In this study, the emissions from 20 compressed-natural-gas-fueled bi-fuel taxis were measured using a portable emission measurement system (PEMS) under actual driving conditions in Yichang, China. The emission characteristics of the tested vehicles were analyzed, revealing that the average CO2, CO, HC and NOx emissions from the tested compressed-natural-gas (CNG) taxis under urban driving conditions were 1.6, 4.0, 2.0 and 0.98 times those under highway road conditions, respectively. The CO, HC and NOx emissions from Euro 3 CNG vehicles were approximately 40%, 55% and 44% lower than those from Euro 2 vehicles, respectively. Compared with the values for light-duty gasoline vehicles reported in the literature, the CO2 and CO emissions from the tested CNG taxis were clearly lower; however, significant increases in the HC and NOx emissions were observed. Finally, we normalized the emissions under the actual driving cycles of the entire test route to the New European Driving Cycle (NEDC)-based emissions using a VSP modes method developed by North Carolina State University. The simulated NEDC-based CO emissions from the tested CNG taxis were better than the corresponding emissions standards, whereas the simulated NEDC-based HC and NOx emissions greatly exceeded the standards. Thus, more attention should be paid to the emissions from CNG vehicles. As for the CNG-fueled bi-fuel taxis currently in use, the department of environmental protection should strengthen their inspection and supervision to reduce the emissions from these vehicles. The results of this study will be helpful in understanding and controlling emissions from CNG-fueled bi-fuel vehicles in China.

Systems metabolic engineering design: Fatty acid production as an emerging case study

Increasing demand for petroleum has stimulated industry to develop sustainable production of chemicals and biofuels using microbial cell factories. Fatty acids of chain lengths from C6 to C16 are propitious intermediates for the catalytic synthesis of industrial chemicals and diesel-like biofuels. The abundance of genetic information available for Escherichia coli and specifically, fatty acid metabolism in E. coli, supports this bacterium as a promising host for engineering a biocatalyst for the microbial production of fatty acids. Recent successes rooted in different features of systems metabolic engineering in the strain design of high-yielding medium chain fatty acid producing E. coli strains provide an emerging case study of design methods for effective strain design. Classical metabolic engineering and synthetic biology approaches enabled different and distinct design paths towards a high-yielding strain. Here we highlight a rational strain design process in systems biology, an integrated computational and experimental approach for carboxylic acid production, as an alternative method. Additional challenges inherent in achieving an optimal strain for commercialization of medium chain-length fatty acids will likely require a collection of strategies from systems metabolic engineering. Not only will the continued advancement in systems metabolic engineering result in these highly productive strains more quickly, this knowledge will extend more rapidly the carboxylic acid platform to the microbial production of carboxylic acids with alternate chain-lengths and functionalities.

Alternative Lubricant Based on Renewable Resources for Industrial Applications

Bio-lubricants are often touted as a solution but the geographical necessities of cultivation can restrict their practicality as an absolute substitute to petroleum-based lubricants. The development of a novel environmentally-friendly bio-lubricant is the primary focus of this paper. The physico-chemical properties of the bio-lubricant were analyzed using multiple standards tribometers. This study provided sufficient data to conform an ISO VG 68 hydraulic industrial lubricant by blending 52.70 % (wt) soybean oil, 40.55 % (wt) mineral oil, and 6.75 (%) additive packages. This formulated blend as green alternative for machine lubrications will be significant in reducing perilous environmental pollution and depletion of natural resources. Moreover, it can contribute to reduce the global demand of petroleum based lubricant substantially.

The EU transparency and accounting directives

Europe's energy companies power societies and employ many thousands of Europeans and non-Europeans worldwide. These companies connect the supplying nations, rich in natural resources, with markets surging with demand for petroleum and natural gas, enabling our technology-driven world to function and prosper. Within the FT rankings of the top 100 listed companies, seven companies are European oil, gas or mining companies (BHP, Shell, BP, Total, Rio Tinto, Eni, Statoil), while four are US companies and nine are companies domiciled in the so-called BRIC-countries. These large multinationals have hundreds of subsidiaries and worldwide operations across more than 100 countries. They are governed by a number of regulatory and legislative authorities, including, in Europe, the legal framework and authorities of the EU. In June 2013, the EU's legislators, the European Parliament and the Council of the EU, agreed on the revised Transparency and Accounting Directives with rules that apply to major corporations in general, and to those in the extractive and primary logging industries in particular. These new pieces of EU law require major companies to disclose certain information on a country-by-country basis. The nature and rationale of these ground-breaking new laws are explained further.

Emissions characterization from EURO 5 diesel/biodiesel passenger car operating under the new European driving cycle

The increasing demand of petroleum based fuels and their use in internal combustion engines have adverse effect on air quality and climate change. Production of biofuels promises substantial improvement in air quality through reducing emission from biofuel operated vehicles. In this study the influence of the fuel mixture on EURO 5 vehicle exhaust emissions operating under the New European Driving Cycle (NEDC) and in hot operating conditions was analysed. Distinct diesel/biodiesel ratios (B0 (100%/0%), B7 (93%/7%) and B20 (80%/20%), volume basis) were considered. Experiments were conducted on a chassis dynamometer examining several pollutants, namely: carbon dioxide (CO2), carbon monoxide (CO), nitrogen oxides (NO and NO2), particulate matter (PM10 and PM2.5) and total volatile organic compounds (VOC). Moreover, a VOC speciation analysis by gas chromatography was performed to explore the emission variations regarding a set of seventeen VOC.The biodiesel fuel blends showed significant differences in combustion efficiency. An increasing amount of biodiesel in the fuel results in decreasing trends regarding NO, and particulate matter emissions. However, nitrogen dioxide and total VOC emissions increase with the biofuel content in the fuel. Moreover, the VOC speciation analysis suggests that the set of VOC present in exhausted gases is clearly fuel dependent.

Multi-zone stimulation technology

Due to ever rising demand of petroleum all over the globe and substantiate decrease in the discovery of new fields, it has become necessary to recover maximum amount of hydrocarbons possible from the available resources.The abundance of multiple vertically distributed discrete reservoirs or resources contained in long productive intervals is relatively high. Thus, it is inevitable to have technology for economical recovery of maximum possible hydrocarbons from this type of reservoir. Multi-zone stimulation technology is one of the important methods to increase the recovery factor for such reservoirs.Multi-zone stimulation technology involves of stimulating all zones individually. The major idea for doing so is that when operation is taking place in one zone, the other zones are not affected by it.ExxonMobil has developed the technology involving dynamic perforating and annular coiled tubing fracturing within a single cased wellbore which was awarded as most innovative commercial technology in 2005.This technology is presently under operation in Canada and United States. It has been in limelight since last decade because of its rapidity and reliability which in turn leads to improved well economics. MZST is rapid as work is done in single operation in a single trip and reliable as it is deployable in variety of unconventional resources such as tight gas, shale gas, coal bed methane, etc.Taking all aspects into consideration and analysing present scenario we anticipate that this technology will be promising for sustainable and economical field development and will help considerably to overcome the demand supply gap of hydrocarbons.

Managing Infrastructure OF Water and Petroleum Demand in KSA

The purpose of this paper is showing, how Geographical Information Systems (GIS ) can be used to support infrastructure planners and analyst on water and petroleum demand of a local area in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA). The first part of this work discusses the issue of analysis, design and creating the geodatabase system of KSA land and infrastructure using Stylus Studio XML editor, describing the components of the whole system of Subareas in Saudi Arabia affecting local infrastructure planning and analyzing which include of specific area and facilities management. The second part defines the creation of the GIS application of the discussed field having the GIS functions of the infrastructure discusses the geodatabase of the application of GIS In infrastructure in Saudi Arabia districts. The third part defines the results of the statistics analysis population in the Subareas, specify the relation between water resources and the elevations of subareas, the data of the layers of roads, railroads existing in Saudi Arabia specially in the eastern area where most petroleums wells are found.
     Using Google earth to show the elevation of the subareas and the relation with the water resources. Three groups of GIS forms was produced they are the geodatabase of the Saudi Arabia (area, subareas and main cities) ,water resources layers (water in land , water area and land cover ) , roads, railroads and elevations layers. The main contribution in the paper, discussed the infrastructure and the results of the statistics analysis populations in the subareas, specify the relation between water resources and the elevations of subareas of the data layers of roads, railroads existing in Saudi Arabia, especially in the eastern area where most petroleum's wells are found production and exploration of petroleum including the geodatabase of wells of petroleum distributed in Saudi Arabia finding the locations using Google earth map, satellites to locate the areas of producing petroleum.

Performance and Emission Characteristics of Diesel Engine Running on Blended Palm Oil

Rapid increasing of industrialization and motorization has led arising of petroleum and energy demand. This pursue a new energy blends to cater the depletion of fossil fuel and the environmental degradation condition. Malaysia is blessed, which has suitable climate to plant alternative fuel (palm oil) and become one of the largest exporters to the world. Palm oil in its refined form as cooking oil has high energy content which can be adopted as an alternative to the petroleum based fuel. This paper evaluates the performance and emission characteristics of refined palm oil (RPO) as a fuel to the diesel engine. Palm oil and its blends composition with 20%, 40%, 60% as well as pure palm oil (100%) and diesel were tested separately under various engine loads. Five series of tests data on each type of fuel were analyzed and compared. Moreover, by increasing the percentage of RPO in blends would lead a character of higher percentage in density and viscosity. Studied revealed that the small percentage of RPO composition promises a good thermal efficiency together with the emission released.

Oil and Economy: Factors Influencing Crude Oil Prices and the Significance of these on the Global Economy

Oil is a commodity with huge strategic importance to all countries in the world. During the years 2002 to 2008, crude oil reached peak prices that mainly reflected increased crude oil demand as a result of strong global economic growth. Rapid manufacturing growth in China, India and other Asian countries during pre-recession years lead to a largest increase in oil prices ever witnessed before. Following economic downturn, the Economist (2009) shows crude oil prices went down due to decline in petroleum demand and other energy sources. Since then, the prices for crude oil have multiplied due to oil still being the most important energy source in the world (IMF, 2011) The paper finds in its investigation of factors influencing prices of oil that crude oil prices have a pivotal influence on global economy as their large movements may induce economic shocks for countries, prompting them to change their economic policies.

Will Venezuelan extra-heavy oil be a significant source of petroleum in the next decades?

Unconventional oil resources are needed to complement petroleum supply in the next decades. However, given the restrictions that pertain to the production of these resources, this article evaluates the availability of Venezuelan unconventional oil for helping meet the future worldwide petroleum demand. Venezuela has the world's second-largest oil reserves, but the majority of it is unconventional extra-heavy oil from the Orinoco Oil Belt. The perspective of Venezuelan production, the ways in which PDVSA, the state oil company, will raise funds for planned investments and the future oil price predictions are used to assess Venezuela's ability to serve as a source of unconventional oil in the coming years. Findings indicate that Venezuelan crude oil will be increasingly able to provide part of the marginal petroleum supply at a level predicted in global scenarios but short of that predicted by the country's government. Operational difficulties and the effort to raise financial resources for the oil production in the Belt require urgency in overcoming difficulties. As conventional production in Venezuela will stabilise in the coming years and the country is dependent on oil production, Venezuela will rely on extra-heavy oil extraction to ensure increased oil production and the stabilisation of internal accounts.

High energy content liquid hydrocarbon fuel from mixture of polypropylene and polystyrene waste plastics using thermal cracking and activated carbon

In this current society, petroleum is a big factor to meet the world’s energy demand. According to statistics, the consumption of petroleum is much higher than its production rate. Furthermore, countries around the world spend large amounts of money each year to import fossil fuel, which can cause major deflation in a countries economy. Many alternative proposals have been made to overcome the petroleum issue. Alternate energy sources have been developed based on reliable sources to reduce the demand of petroleum, but these sources require vast amount of land and financial complication. Research based on conversion of waste plastic into high energy content liquid fuel has the potential to overcome the world’s energy demand. Unlike fossil fuel, the source of waste plastic is virtually unlimited. Nearly 48 million tons of waste plastic is generated in the US alone. From this amount 65% is landfill, 25% is incineration and 10% is for recycling purpose. Waste plastic is not biodegradable it can remain for a long period in land fill. Incineration and recycle process crating toxic gas and affecting greenhouse gas. The presence of these waste plastic on landfill causes variety of environmental and health problems. Natural State Research Inc has developed unique technology that will remove these waste plastics from landfill and convert them into high energy content liquid hydrocarbon fuel. Preliminary test have shown that waste plastic converted into fuel burns cleaner than the current commercial fuels and it can be produced a lower cost due to its primary source being waste plastic. The present technology has already shown the capability to produce this fuel from waste plastics in a laboratory scale and plans to move on into pilot and commercialization plant.

Locating Electric Vehicle Charging Stations

Access to electric vehicle (EV) charging stations will affect EV adoption rates, use decisions, electrified mile shares, petroleum demand, and power consumption across times of day. Parking information from more than 30,000 records of personal trips in the Puget Sound, Washington, Regional Council's 2006 Household Activity Survey is used to determine public (nonresidential) parking locations and durations. Regression equations predict parking demand variables (i.e., total vehicle hours per zone or neighborhood and parked time per vehicle trip) as a function of site accessibility, local job and population density, trip attributes, and other variables available in most regions and travel surveys. Several of these variables are key inputs to a mixed-integer programming problem developed to determine optimal location assignments for EV charging stations. The algorithm minimizes EV users' costs for station access while penalizing unmet demand. This useful specification is used to determine the top locations for installing a constrained number of charging stations within 10 mi of the downtown area of Seattle, Washington, and shows how the access costs of charging location schemes respond to parking demand and station location. The models developed here are generalizable to data sets available for almost any region and can be used to make more informed decisions about station locations around the world.

Experimental Investigation into Tribological Characteristics of Bio-Lubricant Formulated from Jatropha Oil

The investigation of Lubricated Friction and Wear is an extended study. The aim of this study is to investigate the friction and wear characteristics of Jatropha oil based biolubricant by using Cygnus Wear Testing Machine under load of 30N, a high rotating speed of 2000 rpm and one hour operation time. In this study, SEA 40 was used as a reference base lubricant. As a biolubricant various blends like 10%, 20%, 30%, 40% and 50% of Jatropha oil were mixed with the base lubricant (SEA 40). The experiment was conducted using aluminium pins and cast iron disc which were lubricated with those of biolubricants. The lubricants were characterized by viscosity and elemental analysis using Viscometer and Multi oil analysers (MOA) respectively. To investigate wear and friction behaviour, image of worn surface have been taken by optical microscopy. From the experimental result, it is found that the lubricant regime that occurred during the experiment was boundary lubrication. The abrasive and the adhesive wear were the main wear mechanisms that occurred in the tests. The results of this experiment reveal that the addition of 10% jatropha oil with base lubricant can be used as lubricating oil without any shortcoming, which would help to reduce the global demand of petroleum based lubricant substantially.

Study of Friction and Wear Characteristic of Jatropha Oil Blended Lube Oil

The revolution in industrialization throughout the world has boosted the utilization of machinery and shifted the muscle power to machines. The use of machines in various sectors has increased the demand of petroleum based lubricants. Lubricants act as an antifriction media, facilitating smoother working, reducing the risks of undesirable frequent failures and maintaining reliable machine operations among different rotating parts of machines. Due to the depleting of petroleum resources and environment concern, the demand of non-edible vegetable oil based lubricants has increased as well. In this regard, the effect of the Jatropha oil blended with lube oil on the friction and wear characteristics has been investigated in this paper. Experiment has been carried out by using Cygnus Wear Testing Machine under the load of 30N, a high rotating speed of 2000rpm and one hour of running. Lubricant SAE 40 has been used as a base lubricant in this study. The experiment has been conducted on aluminium pins and cast iron disc which lubricated with Jatropha oil blended bio-lubricant (JBL). To prepare the bio-lubricant, 0%, 20%, 30%, 40% and 50% by volume of Jatropha oil were blended with lubricant SAE 40. In order to understand the characteristics of lubricant, viscometer and multi oil analyser tests have been conducted. It has been found that 10% of Jatropha oil bio-lubricant gives lowest wear and creates less amounts of heat than others samples, and with above 10% contamination, the wear and lubricating temperature increases significantly.

CPSO-SVM Based Petroleum Demand Prediction

Study of oil demand, oil demand uncertainty, leading to its strong non-linear, sudden change characteristic, causes the linear modeling of traditional method and neural network prediction precision is low. In order to accurately forecast demand, presents a chaos particle swarm optimization of support vector machine oil demand forecasting method (CPSO-SVM). The CPSO SVM parameter optimization, and then using SVM to petroleum demand nonlinear variation modeling, finally to 1989~ 2007 oil demand data for simulation, the results show that, compared with other oil demand forecast algorithm, CPSO-SVM raised oil demand forecast accuracy, as demand for oil to provide a new method for predicting.

Comparison of the technical potential for hydrogen, battery electric, and conventional light-duty vehicles to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and petroleum consumption in the United States

Light-duty vehicles (LDV) are responsible for a large fraction of petroleum use and are a significant source of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the United States. Improving conventional gasoline-powered vehicle efficiency can reduce petroleum demand, however efficiency alone cannot reach deep GHG reduction targets, such as 80% below the 1990 LDV GHG emissions level. Because the cost and availability of low-GHG fuels will impose limits on their use, significant reductions in GHG emissions will require combinations of fuel and vehicle technologies that both increase efficiency and reduce the emissions from fuel production and use. This paper examines bounding cases for the adoption of individual technologies and then explores combinations of advanced vehicle and fuel technologies. Limits on domestic biofuel production—even combined with significant conventional combustion engine vehicle improvements—mean that hydrogen fuel cell electric or battery electric vehicles fueled by low-GHG sources will be necessary. Complete electrification of the LDV fleet is not required to achieve significant GHG reduction, as replacing 40% of the LDV fleet with zero-emission hydrogen vehicles while achieving optimistic biofuel production and conventional vehicle improvements can allow attainment of a low GHG emission target. Our results show that the long time scale for vehicle turnover will ensure significant emissions from the LDV sector, even when lower emission vehicles and fuels are widely available within 15 years. Reducing petroleum consumption is comparatively less difficult, and significant savings can be achieved using efficient conventional gasoline-powered vehicles.

Faktor-Faktor yang Mempengaruhi Produksi Biodiesel dari Minyak Sawit Mentah Menggunakan Katalis Padat Kalsium Karbonat yang Dipijarkan

The demand for petroleum has increased recently due to the increase of world population, industries andtransportation. Biodiesel (fatty acids methyl esters) has become attractive because of high price of petroleum,limited recourses of crude oil, and environmental concerns. Most biodiesel is produced by transesterification oftriglycerides of refined/edible type oils using methanol and homogeneous catalyst such NaOH and KOH. The useof heterogeneous calcined CaCO3 catalyst, has advantages such as the ease of phase separation betweencatalyst and biodiesel. This paper presents factors affecting the synthesis of biodiesel from crude palm using thecalcined CaCO3 catalyst . The synthesis is carried out by two steps, the acid-catalyzed pre-esterification of free-fatty acid and followed by base-catalyzed transesterification of triglycerides. A study of optimizing the reactioncondition of the esterification followed by transesterification of crude palm oil (CPO) is performed to obtainmaximum production of biodiesel. Under conditions of catalyst calcination temperature of 9000C, reactor time of1.5 hours, catalyst dosage of 1,5%, reaction temperature of 700C and methanol/oil molar ratio of 9 : 1, the oilconversion is 74,6%. The as-synthesized biodiesel meets the requirements of Indonesian National Standard (SNI)for biodiesel.