Desenvolvimento de tensoativos e sistemas microemulsionados para recuperação de petróleo

The high concentration of residual oil is one of the greatest problems found in petroleum mature fields. In these reservoirs, different enhanced oil recovery methods (EOR) can be used, highlighting the microemulsion injection. The microemulsion has showed to be efficient in petroleum recovery due to its ability to promote an efficient displacement of the petroleum, acting directly in the residual oil. In this way, this research has as objective the study of microemulsion systems obtained using a commercial surfactant (TP), determining microemulsion thermal stabilities and selecting points inside the pseudoternary phases diagram, evaluating its efficiencies and choosing the best system, that has the following composition: TP as surfactant (S), isopropyl alcohol as co-surfactant (C), kerosene as oil phase, water as aqueous phase, C/S ratio = 1, and 5% sodium p-toluenesulfonate as hydrotope; being observed the following parameters for the selection of the best pseudoternary phases diagram: C/S ratio, co-surfactant nature and addition of hydrotope to the system. The efficiency in petroleum recovery was obtained using two sandstone formation systems: Assu and Botucatu. The study of thermal stabilities showed that as the concentration of active matter in the system increased, the thermal stability also increased. The best thermal stability was obtained using point F (79.56 0C). The system that presented the best recovery percentile between the three selected (3) was composed by: 70% C/S, 2% kerosene and 28% water, with 94% of total recovery efficiency and 60% with microemulsion injection, using the Botucatu formation, that in a general way presented greater efficiencies as compared with the Assu one (81.3% of total recovery efficiency and 38.3% with microemulsion injection)

Simulação do escoamento monofásico em um estágio de uma bomba centrífuga utilizando técnicas de fluidodinâmica computacional

Oil production and exploration techniques have evolved in the last decades in order to increase fluid flows and optimize how the required equipment are used. The base functioning of Electric Submersible Pumping (ESP) lift method is the use of an electric downhole motor to move a centrifugal pump and transport the fluids to the surface. The Electric Submersible Pumping is an option that has been gaining ground among the methods of Artificial Lift due to the ability to handle a large flow of liquid in onshore and offshore environments. The performance of a well equipped with ESP systems is intrinsically related to the centrifugal pump operation. It is the pump that has the function to turn the motor power into Head. In this present work, a computer model to analyze the three-dimensional flow in a centrifugal pump used in Electric Submersible Pumping has been developed. Through the commercial program, ANSYS® CFX®, initially using water as fluid flow, the geometry and simulation parameters have been defined in order to obtain an approximation of what occurs inside the channels of the impeller and diffuser pump in terms of flow. Three different geometry conditions were initially tested to determine which is most suitable to solving the problem. After choosing the most appropriate geometry, three mesh conditions were analyzed and the obtained values were compared to the experimental characteristic curve of Head provided by the manufacturer. The results have approached the experimental curve, the simulation time and the model convergence were satisfactory if it is considered that the studied problem involves numerical analysis. After the tests with water, oil was used in the simulations. The results were compared to a methodology used in the petroleum industry to correct viscosity. In general, for models with water and oil, the results with single-phase fluids were coherent with the experimental curves and, through three-dimensional computer models, they are a preliminary evaluation for the analysis of the two-phase flow inside the channels of centrifugal pump used in ESP systems

Caracterização e aplicação de sistemas micelares e microemulsionados como inibidores de corrosão

Corrosion is an important phenomenon that frequently occurs in the oil industry, causing surface ablation, such as it happens on the internal surfaces of oil pipes. This work aims to obtain new systems to reduce this specific problem. The surfactants SDS, CTAB, and UNITOL L90 (in micellar and microemulsionated systems) were used as corrosion inhibitors. The systems were obtained using a C/S ratio of 2, butanol as cosorfactant, kerosene as oil phase and, as water phase, NaCl solutions of 0.5M with pH = 2, 4, and 7. Microemulsion regions were found both for direct and inverse micelles. SDS had the higher microemulsion region and the area was not dependent of pH. The study of micellization of these surfactans in the liquid-gas interface was carried out via the determination of CMC from surface tension measurements. Regarding microemulsionated systems, in the case of CTAB, CMC increased when pH was increased, being constant for SDS and UNITOL L90. Concerning micellar systems, increase in pH caused decrease and increase in CMC for SDC and CTAB, respectively. In the case of UNITOL L90, CMC was practically constant, but increased for pH = 4. The microemulsionated systems presented higher CMC values, except for UNITOL L90 L90. The negative values of free energy of micellization indicated that the process of adsorption was spontaneous. The results also indicated that, comparing microemulsionated to systems, adsorption was less spontaneous in the case of SDS and CTAB, while it did not change for UNITOL L90. SAXS experiments indicated that micelle geometry was spherical, existing also as halter and flat micelles, resuting in a better inght on the adsorption at the liquid-solid interface. Efficiency of corrosion inhibition as determined by electrochemical measurements, from corrosion currents calculated from Tafel extrapolation indicuting heat showed surfactants to be efficient even at low concentrations. Equilibrium isotherm data were fitted to the Freundlich model, indicating that surfactant adsorption occurs in the form of multilayers

Obtenção de sistemas microemulsionados e estudo de simulação por dinâmica molecular de sistemas micelares objetivando a veiculação de produtos naturais bioativos

Among the new drugs launched into the market since 1980, up to 30% of them belong to the class of natural products or they have semisynthetic origin. Between 40-70% of the new chemical entities (or lead compounds) possess poor water solubility, which may impair their commercial use. An alternative for administration of poorly water-soluble drugs is their vehiculation into drug delivery systems like micelles, microemulsions, nanoparticles, liposomes, and cyclodextrin systems. In this work, microemulsion-based drug delivery systems were obtained using pharmaceutically acceptable components: a mixture Tween 80 and Span 20 in ratio 3:1 as surfactant, isopropyl mirystate or oleic acid as oil, bidistilled water, and ethanol, in some formulations, as cosurfactants. Self-Microemulsifying Drug Delivery Systems (SMEDDS) were also obtained using propylene glycol or sorbitol as cosurfactant. All formulations were characterized for rheological behavior, droplet size and electrical conductivity. The bioactive natural product trans-dehydrocrotonin, as well some extracts and fractions from Croton cajucara Benth (Euphorbiaceae), Anacardium occidentale L. (Anacardiaceae) e Phyllanthus amarus Schum. & Thonn. (Euphorbiaceae) specimens, were satisfactorily solubilized into microemulsions formulations. Meanwhile, two other natural products from Croton cajucara, trans-crotonin and acetyl aleuritolic acid, showed poor solubility in these formulations. The evaluation of the antioxidant capacity, by DPPH method, of plant extracts loaded into microemulsions evidenced the antioxidant activity of Phyllanthus amarus and Anacardium occidentale extracts. For Phyllanthus amarus extract, the use of microemulsions duplicated its antioxidant efficiency. A hydroalcoholic extract from Croton cajucara incorporated into a SMEDDS formulation showed bacteriostatic activity against colonies of Bacillus cereus and Escherichia coli bacteria. Additionally, Molecular Dynamics simulations were performed using micellar systems, for drug delivery systems, containing sugar-based surfactants, N-dodecylamino-1-deoxylactitol and N-dodecyl-D-lactosylamine. The computational simulations indicated that micellization process for N-dodecylamino-1- deoxylactitol is more favorable than N-dodecyl-D-lactosylamine system.

Sistema microemulsionado: caracterização e aplicação na indústria de petróleo

Alkyl polyethoxylates are surfactants widely used in vastly different fields, from oil exploitation to pharmaceutical applications. One of the most interesting characteristics of these surfactants is their ability to form micellar systems with specific geometry, the so-called wormlike micelle. In this work, microemulsions with three distinct compositions (C/T = 40 %, 30 % and 25 %) was used with contain UNITOL / butanol / water / xylene, cosurfactant / surfactante (C/S) ratio equal to 0,5. The microemulsion was characterized by dynamic light scattering (DLS), capillary viscometry, torque rheometry and surface tensiometry experiments carried out with systems based on xylene, water, butanol (cosurfactant) and nonaethyleneglycolmonododecyl ether (surfactant), with fixed surfactant:cosurfactant:oil composition (with and without oil phase) and varying the overall concentration of the microemulsion. The results showed that a transition from wormlike micelles to nanodrops was characterized by maximum relative viscosity (depending on how relative viscosity was defined), which was connected to maximum effective diameter, determined by DLS. Surface tension suggested that adsorption at the air water interface had a Langmuir character and that the limiting value of the surfactant surface excess was independent of the presence of cosurfactant and xylene. The results of the solubilization of oil sludge and oil recovery with the microemulsion: C/S = 40%, 30% and 25% proved to be quite effective in solubilization of oil sludge, with the percentage of solubilization (%solubilization) as high as 92.37% and enhanced oil recovery rates up to 90.22% for the point with the highest concentration of active material (surfactant), that is, 40%.

Simulação do escoamento monofásico em um estágio de uma bomba centrífuga utilizando técnicas de fluidodinâmica computacional

Oil production and exploration techniques have evolved in the last decades in order to increase fluid flows and optimize how the required equipment are used. The base functioning of Electric Submersible Pumping (ESP) lift method is the use of an electric downhole motor to move a centrifugal pump and transport the fluids to the surface. The Electric Submersible Pumping is an option that has been gaining ground among the methods of Artificial Lift due to the ability to handle a large flow of liquid in onshore and offshore environments. The performance of a well equipped with ESP systems is intrinsically related to the centrifugal pump operation. It is the pump that has the function to turn the motor power into Head. In this present work, a computer model to analyze the three-dimensional flow in a centrifugal pump used in Electric Submersible Pumping has been developed. Through the commercial program, ANSYS® CFX®, initially using water as fluid flow, the geometry and simulation parameters have been defined in order to obtain an approximation of what occurs inside the channels of the impeller and diffuser pump in terms of flow. Three different geometry conditions were initially tested to determine which is most suitable to solving the problem. After choosing the most appropriate geometry, three mesh conditions were analyzed and the obtained values were compared to the experimental characteristic curve of Head provided by the manufacturer. The results have approached the experimental curve, the simulation time and the model convergence were satisfactory if it is considered that the studied problem involves numerical analysis. After the tests with water, oil was used in the simulations. The results were compared to a methodology used in the petroleum industry to correct viscosity. In general, for models with water and oil, the results with single-phase fluids were coherent with the experimental curves and, through three-dimensional computer models, they are a preliminary evaluation for the analysis of the two-phase flow inside the channels of centrifugal pump used in ESP systems

Ação de polissacarídeos sulfatados de Fucus Vesiculosus na Hemostasia e no sistema complemento

Fucans are a family of sulfated homo and teropolysaccharides respectively, composed mainly of a- (1®2) and a- (1®3) linked by L-fucose residues. Properties such as the ability to act as an anti-contraceptive, to reduce cholesterol levels, and to act as an anti-tumor agent are much related. We have focused our attention on the anticoagulant properties, platelet aggregation, hemorrhagic activity and complement system in vitro of commercial fucoidan (F) and their purified fractions (F1, F2 and F3) from Fucus vesiculosus obtained from fractionation of the fucoidan with different concentrations of acetone 1, 2 and 3v. These compounds were chemically characterized and the fucoidan (F) was modified by desulfation. The anticoagulant activity of the compounds was assessment by activated partial thromboplastin time (APTT) and prothrombine time assay (PT) using citrated normal human plasma. The results of APPT test showed that F, F1 and F2 have high anticoagulants activities 240.0 s (5 µg). The F3 showed 73.7 s in the same concentrations. The results obtained with PT test to F, F1, F2 and F3 were 81.5 s, 120.0 s, 57.1 and 32.5 s respectively with 50 µg. The dessulfated polymer showed a decrease in the anticoagulant activity in these two tests. Platelet aggregation assay was measured turbidimetrically with platelet aggregometer by method of Born. The aggregation platelet with F and fractions F1, F2 and F3 exhibited a two-phase answer in the concentration of 5 mg/mL with maximum aggregation of 76.36 ± 10.3% ; 69.54 ± 9.40%; 75.94 ± 9.01%; 51.13 ± 9.59% respectively. However, was observed a hipoaggregate profile F (15.17 ± 5.2%), F1 (7.40 ± 3.04 %), F2 (19.1 ± 5.41%) and F3 (5.09 ± 3.02%) at 0.1 mg/mL. The hemorrhagic activity assay was carried in Wistar rats and showed that these compounds have low hemorrhagic effect when compared to heparin. The complement system ( alternative pathway was made using non-sensibilized rabbit red blood cells The results of complement system essay showed that F , F2 and F3 have action inhibitory in relation to the group control 0.544, 0.697, 0.622 and 0.958 respectively The results showed that these compounds have action on this system. Interaction of the polisaccharides with proteins C3 and C4 showed that the fraction F1 stimulated the activity assay hemolytic using red blood cells

Repercussões psico-sociais da síndrome dos ovários policísticos: estudo quali-quantitativo

BACKGROUND: Polycystic ovary syndrame (PCOS) has been shown to cause a reduction in quality of life. Little is known on the psychosocial aspects associated with PCOS, especially on women s own experiences regarding the syndrome. Therefore, the aim of this study was to analyze the psychosocial impact of PCOS by measuring the health-related quality of life and exploring the women s own experiences of PCOS. METHODS: A two-phase model of combination of quantitative and qualitative research approaches was conducted, a crass-sectional survey to pravide quantitative data on the quality of life and a qualitative approach to understand the women s experience in relation to the PC OS sympt?ms. For the first phase, 109 women with PC OS and 104 healthy contrais were evaluated with the 36-item short-form health survey (SF-36). Additionally, semi-structured interviews (n=30) were conducted to facilitate in-depth exploration of PC OS women s experience. RESUL TS: PCOS patients showed significant reductions in almost ali SF-36 domains of quality of life when compared with healthy contrais (physical function 76.5:!:20.5 and 84.6:!:15.9, respectively; physical rale function 56.4:!:43.3 and 72.6:!:33.3; general health 55.2:!:21.0 and 62.5:!:17.2; vitality 49.6:!:21.3 and 55.3:!:21.3; social function 55.3:!:32.4 and 66.2:!:26.7; emotional rale function 34.2:!:39.7 and 52.9:!:38.2; mental health 50.6:!:22.8 and 59.2:!:20.2). Thematic analysis revealed reports of feeling abnormal , sadness, afraid and anxiety. These feelings were related to four symptoms commonly experienced by women with PCOS: excess hair grawth; irregular or absent menstruation, infertility and obesity. CONCLUSIONS: Polycystic ovary syndrame impacts women both physically and psychosocially. Owing to this, women with PCOS need not only medical treatment for. the reproductive, esthetic and metabolic repercussions, but also the care of a multidisciplinary team, since PCOS is not just a physical condition, but also an important psychosocial problem that affects various aspects of a woman s life

Um sistema para estimação da vazão de gás de poços produzindo por Plunger Lift para vaso separador de teste em plataformas de petróleo

This work intends to analyze the behavior of the gas flow of plunger lift wells producing to well testing separators in offshore production platforms to aim a technical procedure to estimate the gas flow during the slug production period. The motivation for this work appeared from the expectation of some wells equipped with plunger lift method by PETROBRAS in Ubarana sea field located at Rio Grande do Norte State coast where the produced fluids measurement is made in well testing separators at the platform. The oil artificial lift method called plunger lift is used when the available energy of the reservoir is not high enough to overcome all the necessary load losses to lift the oil from the bottom of the well to the surface continuously. This method consists, basically, in one free piston acting as a mechanical interface between the formation gas and the produced liquids, greatly increasing the well s lifting efficiency. A pneumatic control valve is mounted at the flow line to control the cycles. When this valve opens, the plunger starts to move from the bottom to the surface of the well lifting all the oil and gas that are above it until to reach the well test separator where the fluids are measured. The well test separator is used to measure all the volumes produced by the well during a certain period of time called production test. In most cases, the separators are designed to measure stabilized flow, in other words, reasonably constant flow by the use of level and pressure electronic controllers (PLC) and by assumption of a steady pressure inside the separator. With plunger lift wells the liquid and gas flow at the surface are cyclical and unstable what causes the appearance of slugs inside the separator, mainly in the gas phase, because introduce significant errors in the measurement system (e.g.: overrange error). The flow gas analysis proposed in this work is based on two mathematical models used together: i) a plunger lift well model proposed by Baruzzi [1] with later modifications made by Bolonhini [2] to built a plunger lift simulator; ii) a two-phase separator model (gas + liquid) based from a three-phase separator model (gas + oil + water) proposed by Nunes [3]. Based on the models above and with field data collected from the well test separator of PUB-02 platform (Ubarana sea field) it was possible to demonstrate that the output gas flow of the separator can be estimate, with a reasonable precision, from the control signal of the Pressure Control Valve (PCV). Several models of the System Identification Toolbox from MATLAB® were analyzed to evaluate which one better fit to the data collected from the field. For validation of the models, it was used the AIC criterion, as well as a variant of the cross validation criterion. The ARX model performance was the best one to fit to the data and, this way, we decided to evaluate a recursive algorithm (RARX) also with real time data. The results were quite promising that indicating the viability to estimate the output gas flow rate from a plunger lift well producing to a well test separator, with the built-in information of the control signal to the PCV

Avaliação de diferentes processos oxidativos avançados no tratamento de resíduos de petróleo

The petroleum industry deals with problems which are difficult to solve because of their relation to environmental issues. This is because amounts of residue are generated which vary in type and danger level. The soil contamination by non aqueous liquid phase mixtures, specifically hydrocarbon petroleum has been a reason for great concern, mainly the aromatic and polycyclic aromatic, which present risk to human health due to its carcinogenic and mutagenic character. The Advanced Oxidative Processes (AOP) are efficient technologies for destruction of organic compounds of difficult degradation and, often, they are present in low concentrations. They can be considered clean technologies, because there is no formation of solid by-products or the transfer of pollutor phases. This work focuses on the study of the degradation of petroleum industrial waste, by Advanced Oxidation Processes. Treatments tackling petroleum residues, contaminated soil, and water occurring in the production of petroleum reached the following Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons (PAH) degradation levels: solid residues 100% in 96 treatment hours; water residue - 100% in 6 treatment hours; soil contamination (COT degradation) - 50.3% in 12 treatment hours. AOP were effective in dealing with petroleum residues thus revealing themselves to be a promising treatment alternative

Estatística não-extensiva aplicada ao cálculo do calor específico eletrônico em estruturas quasiperiódicas

Systems whose spectra are fractals or multifractals have received a lot of attention in recent years. The complete understanding of the behavior of many physical properties of these systems is still far from being complete because of the complexity of such systems. Thus, new applications and new methods of study of their spectra have been proposed and consequently a light has been thrown on their properties, enabling a better understanding of these systems. We present in this work initially the basic and necessary theoretical framework regarding the calculation of energy spectrum of elementary excitations in some systems, especially in quasiperiodic ones. Later we show, by using the Schr¨odinger equation in tight-binding approximation, the results for the specific heat of electrons within the statistical mechanics of Boltzmann-Gibbs for one-dimensional quasiperiodic systems, growth by following the Fibonacci and Double Period rules. Structures of this type have already been exploited enough, however the use of non-extensive statistical mechanics proposed by Constantino Tsallis is well suited to systems that have a fractal profile, and therefore our main objective was to apply it to the calculation of thermodynamical quantities, by extending a little more the understanding of the properties of these systems. Accordingly, we calculate, analytical and numerically, the generalized specific heat of electrons in one-dimensional quasiperiodic systems (quasicrystals) generated by the Fibonacci and Double Period sequences. The electronic spectra were obtained by solving the Schr¨odinger equation in the tight-binding approach. Numerical results are presented for the two types of systems with different values of the parameter of nonextensivity q

Caracterização e modelagem dos sistemas de produção de caprinos leiteiros

The objectives of this research were characterizing the dairy goat production systems and model it using linear program. On the first step of this research, the model was developed using data from farms that was affiliated in the ACCOMIG/Caprileite, used a similar dairy goat production systems and have a partnership program with Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais . The data of research were from a structured questionnaire applied with farmers and monitoring of production systems during a guided visit on their farms. The results permitted identify that all farms were classified as a small and have a intensive production system. The average herd size had 63.75 dairy goats on lactation; it permits a production of 153, 38 kg of goat milk per day. It was observed that existing more than one channel of commercialization for the goat milk and their derivative products. The data obtained, on the first step of this research, was used to develop a linear program model. It was evaluated in two goat production systems, called P1 and P2. The results showed that the P1 system, with an annual birth and lactation during approximately 300 days was the best alternative for business. These results were compared with a mixed (beef and dairy) goat system in the semiarid region, which indicated merged with both systems. Therefore, to achieve profits and sustainability of the system, in all simulations it was necessary a minimum limit of funding of U.S. $ 10,000.00; this value permit earning of U.S. $ 792.00 per month and pay the investment within 5 years

Excitações elementares em super-redes quasiperiódicas com simetria espelho

In this thesis, we investigated the magnonic and photonic structures that exhibit the so-called deterministic disorder. Speci cally, we studied the effects of the quasiperiodicity, associated with an internal structural symmetry, called mirror symmetry, on the spectra of photonics and magnonics multilayer. The quasiperiodicity is introduced when stacked layers following the so-called substitutional sequences. The three sequences used here were the Fibonacci sequence, Thue-Morse and double-period, all with mirror symmetry. Aiming to study the propagation of light waves in multilayer photonic, and spin waves propagation in multilayer magnonic, we use a theoretical model based on transfer matrix treatment. For the propagation of light waves, we present numerical results that show that the quasiperiodicity associated with a mirror symmetry greatly increases the intensity of transmission and the transmission spectra exhibit a pro le self-similar. The return map plotted for this system show that the presence of internal symmetry does not alter the pattern of Fibonacci maps when compared with the case without symmetry. But when comparing the maps of Thue-Morse and double-time sequences with their case without the symmetry mirror, is evident the change in the pro le of the maps. For magnetic multilayers, we work with two di erent systems, multilayer composed of a metamagnetic material and a non-magnetic material, and multilayers composed of two cubic Heisenberg ferromagnets. In the rst case, our calculations are carried out in the magnetostatic regime and calculate the dispersion relation of spin waves for the metamgnetic material considered FeBr2. We show the e ect of mirror symmetry in the spectra of spin waves, and made the analysis of the location of bulk bands and the scaling laws between the full width of the bands allowed and the number of layers of unit cell. Finally, we calculate the transmission spectra of spin waves in quasiperiodic multilayers consisting of Heisenberg ferromagnets. The transmission spectra exhibit self-similar patterns, with regions of scaling well-de ned in frequency and the return maps indicates only dependence of the particular sequence used in the construction of the multilayer

Caracterização hidrodinâmica e morfo-sedimentar do estuário Potengi e áreas adjascentes: subsídios para controle e recuperação ambiental no caso de derrames de hidrocarboneto

This study presents the Environmental Sensibility Mapping to oil spillings on the Potengi estuary - RN and neighboring coastline through remote sensing data, collecting, treatment and integration of the geomorphologic, oceanographic (temperature, salinity, density, direction and intensity), meteorological (wind speed and direction) and high resolution seismic (bathymetry and sonography) data. The Potengi river estuary is located on the eastern coastline of the Rio Grande do Norte State, being inserted in the geological context for the coastal Pernambuco-Paraíba basin and spreading over 18 km; it shelters the Natal harbor zone and an oil terminal, centralizing, therefore, important oil transport operations that can cause accidental spillings. Under the oceanographic point of view, the Potengi estuary is characterized by the absence of any expressive thermic stratification, being classified as partially mixed, B type according to Pritchard (1955), and 2 type in conformity to the stratification-circulation diagram by Hansen & Rattray (1966). Two main wind systems are responsable for the formation of wave sets that occur in the area. The dynamic tide presents, in the Natal Harbor, mean amplitude in spring and quadrature tides, with around 2.8 and 2m, respectively. The mechanism of saline tide mixing was defined through the salinity which is the main parameter for the identification of this mechanism. Important variations of the salinity mean values (36.32 psu), temperature (28.11ºC) and density (22.96 kg/m3) in the estuarine waters presented features belonging to low latitude regions. The water temperature follows the air temperature variations, in the region, with expressive daily amplitudes. In this study, the identification of the estuarine bed morphology through bathymetric and sonographic analysis, had the purpose to evaluate the influence of the superficial and bottom currents for the bottom shaping. In this way, the use of the side scan sonar showed, to be very useful in the identification of the bottom morphology and its relationship with the predominant action of the tidal currents in the Potengi estuary. Besides, it showed how the sonograms can be a support to the comparison of the several patterns derived from the local hydrodynamic variations. The holocene sediments, which fill the estuarine channel, are predominantly sandy, varying from selected, sometimes silty. The sedimentation is controlled by the environmental hydrodynamic conditions, being recognized two important textural facies: Muddy Facies and Sandy Facies. The distribution of these textural facies apparently oscillates owing to the tidal cycle and flow intensity. Each one of the above mentioned data was integrated in a Geographic Information System (GIS), from which was produced the Environmental Sensibility Map to oil spillings with Coastal Sensibility Index (CSI) to the Potengi estuary. The integrated analysis of these data is essential to oil spilling contingency plans, in order to reduce the spilling environmental consequences and to make efficient the endeavours of contention and cleaning up/removal on the Natal Harbor. This study has the aim to collaborate for the increase of informations about the estuarine environment and contribute to a better management of the question: environment/polluting loads

Técnica para segmentação automática de imagens microscópicas de componentes sanguíneos e classificação diferencial de leucócitos baseada em lógica fuzzy

Automatic detection of blood components is an important topic in the field of hematology. The segmentation is an important stage because it allows components to be grouped into common areas and processed separately and leukocyte differential classification enables them to be analyzed separately. With the auto-segmentation and differential classification, this work is contributing to the analysis process of blood components by providing tools that reduce the manual labor and increasing its accuracy and efficiency. Using techniques of digital image processing associated with a generic and automatic fuzzy approach, this work proposes two Fuzzy Inference Systems, defined as I and II, for autosegmentation of blood components and leukocyte differential classification, respectively, in microscopic images smears. Using the Fuzzy Inference System I, the proposed technique performs the segmentation of the image in four regions: the leukocyte’s nucleus and cytoplasm, erythrocyte and plasma area and using the Fuzzy Inference System II and the segmented leukocyte (nucleus and cytoplasm) classify them differentially in five types: basophils, eosinophils, lymphocytes, monocytes and neutrophils. Were used for testing 530 images containing microscopic samples of blood smears with different methods. The images were processed and its accuracy indices and Gold Standards were calculated and compared with the manual results and other results found at literature for the same problems. Regarding segmentation, a technique developed showed percentages of accuracy of 97.31% for leukocytes, 95.39% to erythrocytes and 95.06% for blood plasma. As for the differential classification, the percentage varied between 92.98% and 98.39% for the different leukocyte types. In addition to promoting auto-segmentation and differential classification, the proposed technique also contributes to the definition of new descriptors and the construction of an image database using various processes hematological staining