Air and Gas Drilling Manual, Fourth Edition: Applications for Oil, Gas and Geothermal Fluid Recovery Wells, and Specialized Construction Boreholes, and the History and Advent of the Directional DTH delivers the fundamentals and current methods needed for engineers and managers engaged in drilling operations. Packed with updates, this reference discusses the engineering modelling and planning aspects of underbalanced drilling, the impacts of technological advances in high angle and horizontal drilling, and the importance of new production from shale. in addition, an in-depth discussion is included on well control model planning considerations for completions, along with detailed calculation examples using Mathcad. This book will update the petroleum and drilling engineer with a much-needed reference to stay on top of drilling methods and new applications in today's operations.

Applications of Artificial Intelligence Techniques in the Petroleum Industry gives engineers a critical resource to help them understand the machine learning that will solve specific engineering challenges. The reference begins with fundamentals, covering preprocessing of data, types of intelligent models, and training and optimization algorithms. The book moves on to methodically address artificial intelligence technology and applications by the upstream sector, covering exploration, drilling, reservoir and production engineering. Final sections cover current gaps and future challenges.

Regional Geology and Tectonics: Principles of Geologic Analysis, 2nd edition is the first in a three-volume series covering Phanerozoic regional geology and tectonics. The new edition provides updates to the first edition's detailed overview of geologic processes, and includes new sections on plate tectonics, petroleum systems, and new methods of geological analysis. This book provides both professionals and students with the basic principles necessary to grasp the conceptual approaches to hydrocarbon exploration in a wide variety of geological settings globally.

Dynamic Well Testing in Petroleum Exploration and Development, Second Edition, describes the process of obtaining information about a reservoir through examining and analyzing the pressure-transient response caused by a change in production rate. The book provides the reader with modern petroleum exploration and well testing interpretation methods, including their basic theory and graph analysis. It emphasizes their applications to tested wells and reservoirs during the whole process of exploration and development under special geological and development conditions in oil and gas fields, taking reservoir research and performance analysis to a new level. This distinctive approach features extensive analysis and application of many pressure data plots acquired from well testing in China through advanced interpretation software that can be tailored to specific reservoir environments.

Distillation & Hydrocarbon Processing Practices is a practical reference guide to the design and operations of hydrocarbon processing plants (refineries, petrochemical plants, and gas processing plants). Ashis Nag illustrates advanced practices in distillation with examples of process simulation and basic principles. Nag's extensive knowledge and more than 35 years of experience as an engineer supply the practical examples and design guidelines contained in this text. Its many case studies will assist engineering students as well as practicing engineers in understanding the inner workings at these complex facilities.

For a country accustomed to counting its resources in millions, or even billions, the unit of measure is almost too small to be of interest. But during a lunch break one day, Robert E. Hardwicke asked of his colleagues in the Petroleum Administration for War why American oil is measured by the 42-gallon barrel and no other. Why not 30, 36, or an even 50? No one present had the answer, but a dozen years later, and after extensive research, Hardwicke produced the answer for himself and all others in and out of the oil industry.

This book is of more than ordinary significance, for it tends to consolidate, in interesting and easily understandable terms, the history and definitions, not only of the now-standard oil barrel but also of the units that make it up and the legal pitfalls connected with it. It is a story full of oil-drilling lore--about odd-sized barrels in wagons for transporting the newly discovered petroleum in Pennsylvania in 1859; about Benedict Hagan, who supplied many an empty whiskey barrel to the producers at Oil Run; about Nelly Bly, who is more redoubtable to the oil industry for having been the "mother of steel barrels" than for besting Phileas Fogg's time in circling the globe; about the scientific struggle for accuracy in gauging oil.

"The Oilman's Barrel" has important meaning for historians, metrologists, petroleum lawyers and executives, coopers, distillers, and the petroleum industry generally.

Assuming no mathematical or chemistry knowledge, this book introduces complete beginners to the field of petroleum engineering. Written in a straightforward style, the author takes a practical approach to the subject avoiding complex mathematics to achieve a text that is robust without being intimidating. Covering traditional petroleum engineering topics, readers of this book will learn about the formation and characteristics of petroleum reservoirs, the chemical properties of petroleum, the processes involved in the exploitation of reservoirs, post-extraction processing, industrial safety, and the long-term outlook for the oil and gas production. The descriptions and discussions are informed by considering the production histories of several fields including the Ekofisk field in the North Sea, the Wyburn Field in Canada, the Manifa Field in Saudi Arabia and the Wilmington Field off the Californian Coast. The factors leading up to the well blowouts on board the Deepwater Horizon in the Gulf of Mexico and in the Mantara Field in the Timor Sea are also examined. With a glossary to explain key words and concepts, this book is a perfect introduction for newcomers to a petroleum engineering course, as well as non-specialists in industry. Professor David Shallcross is one of the foremost practitioners in chemical engineering education worldwide. Readers of this book will find his previous book, Chemical Engineering Explained, a useful companion.

The long awaited third edition of Properties of Petroleum Fluids covers all the essential components, properties, and equations for the various fluids and gases. Esteemed author William McCain, has expanded and revised his book to now include new and updated correlations and rules for preparing values of nearly all the fluid properties required by petroleum engineers. The third edition also includes new research on asphaltenes and gas hydrates and two new chapters on gas condensates and volatile oils.

Dynamic Description Technology of Fractured Vuggy Carbonate Gas Reservoirs delivers a critical reference to reservoir and production engineers on the basic characteristics of fractured vuggy gas reservoirs, combining both static and dynamic data to improve reservoir characterization accuracy and development. Based on the full lifecycle of well testing and advanced production decline analysis, this reference also details how to apply reservoir dynamic evaluation and reserve estimation and performance forecasting. Offering one collective location for the latest research on fractured gas reservoirs, this reference also covers physical models, analysis examples, and processes, 3D numerical well test technology, and deconvolution technology of production decline analysis. Packed with many calculation examples and more than 100 case studies, this book gives engineers a strong tool to further exploit these complex assets.

Advanced Biomass Gasification: New Concepts for Efficiency Increase and Product Flexibility provides a thorough overview on new concepts in biomass gasification and consolidated information on advances for process integration and combination, which could otherwise only be gained by reading a high number of journal publications. Heidenreich, Muller and Foscolo, highly respected experts in this field, start their exploration with the compact UNIQUE reactor, gasification and pyrolysis, gasification and combustion, and catalysts and membranes. The authors then examine biomass pre-treatment processes, taking into account the energy balance of the overall conversion process, and look into oxygen-steam gasification and solutions for air separation, including new options for integration of O2-membranes into the gasifier. Several polygeneration strategies are covered, including combined heat and power (CHP) production with synthetic natural gas (SNG), biofuels and hydrogen, and new cutting-edge concepts, such as plasma gasification, supercritical water gasification, and catalytic gasification, which allows for insights on the future technological outlook of the area. This book is then a valuable resource for industry and academia-based researchers, as well as graduate students in the energy and chemical sectors with interest in biomass gasification, especially in areas of power engineering, bioenergy, chemical engineering, and catalysis.

Natural Gas has been called 'the prince of hydrocarbons': an abundant resource that is versatile and competitive with other fuels and popular throughout the world. The advent of newer technologies that can deliver natural gas to worldwide markets, coupled with its reputation as a clean-burning, efficient energy source, make natural gas the international 'fuel of the future'.It offers a thorough understanding of the entire natural gas value chain, including detailed discussion of emerging sectors such as Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG), Gas-To-Liquid (GTL), and Coal Bed Methane (CBM). It covers gas terms, conversion units, commercialization and marketing issues. It explores current and emerging international players, and the latest in technology development.

In Chapter One, L. Khotseng and G. Vaivars provide an overview of the recent advances in electrocatalysts for direct methanol fuel cells for both anode and cathode catalysts in order to present direct methanol fuel cells as an alternative power source for portable devices. In Chapter Two, Nobuyoshi Nakagawa, Mohammad Ali Abdelkareem, Takuya Tsujiguchi, and Mohd Shahbudin Masdar propose a fuel supply layer using a porous carbon plate (PCP) for DMFCs allowing for the use of high methanol concentrations. The proposed layer is comprised of a thin PCP layer, as well as a gap layer that has a mechanism to supply the methanol as a vapor. Next, Chapter Three by D.S. Falcao, J. P. Pereira, and A.M.F.R. Pinto review the multiphase flow in fuel cells modelling approaches while also reviewing the flow visualisation techniques for flow analysis in fuel cells. Chapter Four by B.A. Braz, V.B. Oliveira, and A.M.F.R. Pinto closes the book by discussing the key work that has been done to improve the passive DMFC performance and providing a review on the most recent developments in passive DMFCs.

In the late 1890s, at the dawn of the automobile era, steam, gasoline, and electric cars all competed to become the dominant automotive technology. By the early 1900s, the battle was over and internal combustion had won. Was the electric car ever a viable competitor? What characteristics of late nineteenth-century American society led to the choice of internal combustion over its steam and electric competitors? And might not other factors, under slightly differing initial conditions, have led to the adoption of one of the other motive powers as the technological standard for the American automobile? David A. Kirsch examines the relationship of technology, society, and environment to choice, policy, and outcome in the history of American transportation. He takes the history of the Electric Vehicle Company as a starting point for a vision of an ""alternative" automotive system in which gasoline and electric vehicles would have each been used to supply different kinds of transport services. Kirsch examines both the support-and lack thereof-for electric vehicles by the electric utility industry. Turning to the history of the electric truck, he explores the demise of the idea that different forms of transportation technology might coexist, each in its own distinct sphere of service. A main argument throughout Kirsch's book is that technological superiority cannot be determined devoid of social context. In the case of the automobile, technological superiority ultimately was located in the hearts and minds of engineers, consumers and drivers; it was not programmed inexorably into the chemical bonds of a gallon of refined petroleum. Finally, Kirsch connects the historic choice of internal combustion over electricity to current debates about the social and environmental impacts of the automobile, the introduction of new hybrid vehicles, and the continuing evolution of the American transportation system.

China is the world's most populous country with approximately 1.3 billion people. It has experienced tremendous economic growth over the last three decades with an average annual increase in gross domestic product (GDP) of 9.8% during that period. This rapid economic growth has led to an increasing demand for energy, spurring China to add an average of 53 gigawatts (gw) of electric capacity each year over the last ten years to its power generation capabilities. China is also the world's largest producer and consumer of coal, with about half of its coal use being for electricity generation. In fact, coal provides over 70% of China's current electricity needs, and fuels much of the new power generation capacity being built. While many of these new coal plants are among the most technically advanced in the world, the burning of coal results in sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, and particulate emissions which contribute to air pollution, and greenhouse gas emissions linked to global climate change. The current and potential future environmental consequences of burning coal are a major reason China has been actively seeking to increase its renewable energy capabilities. When current rates of use are considered, limited domestic reserves of coal, natural gas, and oil provide another impetus for change. However, China's announced intent to rely on domestic, sustainable solutions for its growing energy needs has led to a focus on developing "green" or renewable energy resources. In contrast to China, some argue that the United States does not have a comprehensive national policy in place for promotion of renewable energy technologies, with some observers saying that the higher costs of renewable electricity are not conducive to market adoption. However, for both countries, the reasons for increasing the use of renewable energy are diverse, and include energy security, energy independence, cleaner air, and more recently anthropogenic climate change, sustainability concepts, and economic development. Creating new, higher quality jobs could reasonably be said to be primary drivers of policy goals in both the United States and China.

We are facing a crisis that threatens the sustainability of the entire planet. Civilisation has been defined up to now by how efficiently we handle our energy needs; nevertheless, today we are bombarded by proposals for alternative technologies that are more energy-intensive than whatever preceded. "Engineering" has come to mean more processing, greater profit margin, and yet more implosive outcome. Covering up this failure to develop sustainable alternatives highlight only short-term gain. The focus on short-term and tangibles obscures the true vision of technology users. Perpetual justifications of progressively less efficient technologies has become a rampant source of the profoundest disinformation. No sector has fallen bigger victim to this disinformation campaign than the petroleum industry. Today, the most efficient naturally processed fuel (fossil fuel) production is synonymous with unsustainability and compatibility with nature and the environment. Accompanying this slogan is the environmentalists' drumbeat about "renewable" energy. Everywhere people are sold on the idea that even genetically altered vegetable oil is sustainable and efficient whereas natural crude oil exploitation is not. With this slogan, it has become fashionable to replace the agricultural industry with "renewable" energy production and try to replace fossil fuel energy with nuclear energy. The industry that single-handedly served mankind a globalisation panacea on a silver platter has now become a villain worthy of being replaced with the makers of nuclear bombs and DDT. Similarly, carbon dioxide -- the essence of life and energy, through photosynthesis -- has become the other villain that must be "sequestered" and possibly replaced by hydrogen and even radioactive nuclear spent fuel.

The goal of coal mining is to economically remove coal from the ground. Coal is valued for its energy content, and since the 1880s is widely used to generate electricity. The most economical method of coal extraction from coal seams depends on the depth and quality of the seams, and the geology and environmental factors. This book presents current research from across the globe in the study of coal extraction, including production of ashless coal by using a solvent extraction technique; the Hotelling model of optimal non-renewable resource extraction; coal extraction with a carbon disulfide/N-Methyl-2-pyrrolidinone mixed solvent; and extraction of inorganic species of coal.

Fuel ethanol production has increased steadily in the U.S. since the 1980's, when it was given impetus by the need to reduce energy dependence on foreign supplies. The momentum has continued as production costs have fallen, and as the U.S. Clean Air Act has specified a percentage of renewable fuels to be mixed with gasoline. New technologies that may further increase cost savings include co-product development, such as recovery of high-value food supplements, and cellulosic conversion. Though improvements in processing and technology are important, however, the fluctuating rise of inputs such as corn, the cost of energy alternatives, and environmental developments play larger roles in the fortunes of the industry. This book examines the use of ethanol as fuel, as well as its other applications in different parts of the world. This book also addresses a policy initiative by the Federal Administration to apply United States Department of Energy (DOE) research to broadening the country's domestic production of economic, flexible, and secure sources of energy fuels. This book consists of public documents which have been located, gathered, combined, reformatted, and enhanced with a subject index, selectively edited and bound to provide easy access.

This book discusses the current development of the study on coal combustion, which mainly involves devolatilization, volatiles combustion, char combustion and the formation of pollutants. Regarding the devolatilization of coal, it is well-known that devolatilization has a significant impact on the other processes during coal combustion. The process of char combustion is of central importance in practical pulverized applications. However, the mechanism of char combustion has not yet been completely understood due to the existence of many factors such as the thermal annealing of char, the pore structure, inherent mineral content in char and the fragmentation of the char particle. This book also presents a detailed discussion on the intrinsic reactivity and thermal annealing of char, as well as the comparison of different char combustion models.

Coal use today is responsible for large, and mostly avoidable, damages to human health and our water and land. Coal use in the future, along with other fossil fuels, threatens to wreak havoc in the earth's climate system. This book looks at "clean coal" technologies such as coal gasification and carbon capture. Coal gasification, when done in conjunction with carbon capture and storage (CCS) is one technology option that offers our nation an attractive approach to utilise our indigenous fossil energy resources in a more efficient and environmentally sound manner for producing clean, affordable power from coal with dramatically reduced carbon emissions. Coal gasification with CCS can also reduce the carbon impact of using coal to produce ultra-clean fuels for the transportation sector, substitute natural gas (SNG) to heat our homes and fuel our industrial sector, fertilisers to ensure an abundant food supply, and chemicals that play an integral part in our every day lives. Another coal gasification concept explored in this book that could further reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) emission is co-feeding coal and biomass into gasifiers to produce electricity or conventional transportation fuels. In addition to these technologies, this book also describes ways at improving or optimising the performance of coal-fired power plants, in addition to tools that can be used and are available to cut global warming emissions. This book consists of public domain documents which have been located, gathered, combined, reformatted, and enhanced with a subject index, selectively edited and bound to provide easy access.

The principle fuel used as a petrol substitute for road transport vehicles is bioethanol. Bioethanol fuel is mainly produced by the sugar fermentation process, although it can also be manufactured by the chemical process of reacting ethylene with steam. The main sources of sugar required to produce ethanol come from fuel or energy crops. These crops are grown specifically for energy use and include corn, maize and wheat crops, waste straw, willow and popular trees, sawdust, reed canary grass, cord grasses, Jerusalem artichoke, myscanthus and sorghum plants. Ethanol or ethyl alcohol (C2H5OH) is a clear colourless liquid, it is biodegradable, low in toxicity and causes little environmental pollution if spilt. Ethanol burns to produce carbon dioxide and water. Ethanol is a high octane fuel and has replaced lead as an octane enhancer in petrol. By blending ethanol with gasoline we can also oxygenate the fuel mixture so it burns more completely and reduces polluting emissions. This new and important book gathers the latest research from around the globe in this promising field.

This book looks at developments in oil shale which is the largest untapped domestic resource with the greatest potential to decrease our dependence on foreign oil. Over 70% of the world's oil shale resources occur in the United States. These deposits contain over 1.5 trillion barrels of shale oil. If only 800 billion of this can be recovered, that alone would supply all of our current domestic petroleum needs for the next 100 years or more. The 2005 Energy Security Act demonstrated that the US government might finally encourage the development of these valuable oil shale resources. The nation's production of crude oil has been declining since the 1970s while its demand has continued to increase, making the country increasingly dependent on imported oil. However, there are lingering questions about our ability to produce shale oil in this country. Most of these questions discussed in this book, centre on key issues such as: (1) is the technology available and will it work on a large scale?; (2) can shale oil be produced profitably?; (3) can shale oil be produced in an environmentally responsible manner?; and (4) what are the socio-economic impacts going to be on the local regions where these developments occur? Oil shale requires an expensive, high-risk, long-lead time development program and the federal government controls most of the resource. They will therefore ultimately determine whether or not shale oil is ever produced at a level sufficient to improve our economic and national security.

Nanoscale metallic and ceramic materials, also called nanomaterials, have held enormous attraction for researchers over the past few years. They demonstrate novel properties compared with conventional (microcrystalline) materials owing to their nanoscale features. Recently, mechanical alloying and powder metallurgy processes for the fabrication of metal-ceramic/alloy-ceramic nanocomposites with a unique microstructure have been developed. This book focuses on the fabrication of nanostructured hydrogen storage materials and their nanocomposites. The potential application of the research presented in the book fits well into the EU Framework Programme for Research and Innovation Horizon 2020, where one of the societal challenges is secure, clean, and efficient energy. Wherever possible, the authors have illustrated the subject by their own results. The goal of the book is to provide comprehensive knowledge about materials for energy applications to graduate students and researchers in chemistry, chemical engineering, and materials science.

During the oil-boom days of the early twentieth century, a few lucky or shrewd individuals made millions of dollars virtually overnight. It is a familiar theme in the romantic mythology that sprang up about the era. But the people who produced those millions are the real story, told in these word-for-word recollections of early-day workers in the ""oil patch."" In vivid, often poignant detail these men and women recall the grueling toil, primitive living and working conditions, and ever-present danger in a time when life was cheap and oil was gold. In the late 1930s employees of the Federal Writers Project, a branch of the New Deal Workers Progress Administration, recorded the voices of these pioneers as they offered their memories, sometimes wryly humorous and sometimes bitter, of the turmoil that was the daily lot of the oilfielders. We meet colorful, tough-talking ""Manila Kate,"" who took over her husband's drilling outfit after he died in an explosion. A welder vividly recalls the death of his closest pal, a skilled hand who loved to take chances. In an oil-field shantytown the support of good-hearted neighbors assuages the pain of a bereaved and impoverished family. A ""shooter"" recalls the deadly danger of the ""soup wagon"" the buckboard that delivered the nitroglycerin to the well - or blew up on the way. While many of the individuals witnessed bizarre accidents that became almost routine in the early oil fields, their personal stories also show how uncertain job security and wages could be, even before the Depression, when dry holes and plummeting oil prices left thousands of workers broke and homeless. Many of the interviewers provide valuable technical details about early oilfield operations. Yet it is the stories of the people, the workers themselves, that endure. The early oil industry was built upon their toil, their pain, and their courage, all of which are evident in every word recorded here.

A three-step methodology was developed to provide reliable prediction of a coal's behaviour in a utility boiler: (1) Extracting the combustion kinetic model parameters by combining experimental data from a pilot-scale test facility, Computational Fluid Dynamic (CFD) codes and an artificial neural network. While the combustion kinetic parameters used in the model code will not correspond to the combustion rate of a single particle of coal, these parameters do describe the combustion behaviour of a "macroscopic" sample of tested coal.(2) Validation of the combustion kinetic model parameters by comparing diverse experimental data with simulation results calculated with the same set of model parameters. (3) The model parameters are then used for simulations of full-scale boilers using the same CFD code. For operational engineering information needed by the utility operator, the authors apply the predicted results to EXPERT SYSTEM, a boiler supervision system developed by Israel Electric Corporation (IEC). Four different bituminous and sub-bituminous coals with known behaviour in IEC 550MW opposite-wall and 575MW tangential-fired boilers were used to show the adequacy of the methodology. The predictions are done with the CFD code, GLACIER, propriety of Reaction Engineering International (REI). Preconfigured GLACIER models of the test and full-scale furnaces were purchased from REI and validated by our group. This book includes a detailed description of the methodology, test furnace facility and an example of the experimental and predictive combustion results from the four coals used to test the methodology. In addition, two previously unknown coals are examined prior to their firing in the utility boilers and prediction of their behaviour and operational parameters in the two boilers carried out.