Compósitos Portland-biopolímeros para cimentação de poços de petróleo

The oil production in mature areas can be improved by advanced recovery techniques. In special, steam injection reduces the viscosity of heavy oils, thus improving its flow to surrounding wells. On the other hand, the usually high temperatures and pressures involved in the process may lead to cement cracking, negatively affecting both the mechanical stability and zonal isolation provided by the cement sheath of the well. The addition of plastic materials to the cement is an alternative to prevent this scenario. Composite slurries consisting of Portland cement and a natural biopolymer were studied. Samples containing different contents of biopolymer dispersed in a Portland cement matrix were prepared and evaluated by mechanical and rheological tests in order to assess their behavior according to API (American Petroleum Institute) guidelines. FEM was also applied to map the stress distribution encountered by the cement at bottom bole. The slurries were prepared according to a factorial experiment plan by varying three parameters, i.e., cement age, contents of biopolymer and water-to-cement ratio. The results revealed that the addition of the biopolymer reduced the volume of free water and the setting time of the slurry. In addition, tensile strength, compressive strength and toughness improved by 30% comparing hardened composites to plain Portland slurries. FEM results suggested that the stresses developed at bottomhole may be 10 to 100 times higher than the strength of the cement as evaluated in the lab by unconfined mechanical testing. An alternative approach is proposed to adapt the testing methodology used to evaluate the mechanical behavior of oilwell cement slurries by simulating the confined conditions encountered at bottornhole

Efeito da adição de colesterol e ecdisona na produção in vitro do baculovírus spodoptera frugiperda MNPV

Among the pests that attack corn crop in Brazil, there is Spodoptera frugiperda (JE Smith, 1797) (Lepidoptera: Noctuidae), known as fall armyworm, which is the major corn pest. Due to genetic instability during serial passage of baculoviruses in insect cell culture, the viral bioinseticides in vitro production development is the greatest challenge for mass production of this bioproduct. Successive passages of virus using extracellular viruses (BVs), necessary during viral bioinseticides production scaling up, leads to the appearance of aberrant forms of virus, a process so called as "passage effect ". The main consequence of passage effect is the production of occlusion bodies (OB) decrease, preventing its production using in vitro process. In this study, it was carried out a serial passage of baculovirus Spodoptera frugiperda multiple nucleopolyhedrovirus, isolate 18, using Sf21 cells. A decrease in the production of occlusion bodies from 170 to 92 in the third to fourth passage was observed. A factorial experimental design (22) was employed to verify the influence of two input variables, concentration of the hormone 20 - hydroxyecdysone (CH) and cholesterol (CC) on the values of response variables (volumetric and the specific OB production) of the process, seeking to define the optimum operating ranges trying to reverse or minimize the passage effect. The result indicated a negative influence of the cholesterol addition and positive effect in the hormone supplementation which the optimum range found for the concentrations studied were 8 to 10μg/mL and 5 to 6.5 mg / mL, for cholesterol and hormone concentrations respectively. New experiments were performed with addition of hormone and cholesterol in order to check the influence of these additives on the OB production independently. While the best result obtained from the factorial experiment was 9.4 x 107 OB/mL and 128.4 specific OB/cell, with the addition of only 6μg/mL 20-hydroxyecdysone these concentrations increased to 1.9 x 108 OB/mL and 182.9 OB/cell for volumetric and specific OB production, respectively. This result confirms that the addition of the hormone 20-hydroxyecdysone enhances the SfMNPV in vitro production process performance using Sf21 cells

Influência do teor e granulometria da calcita e da temperatura de sinterização no desenvolvimento de massas cerâmicas para revestimento poroso(BIII)

This work aims at studying the influence of the concentration of calcite, its grain size and sintering temperature to obtain porous coating formulations that meet the design specifications. The experiments involved the physical-chemical and mineralogical caracterization of the raw materials, and mechanical tests on specimens dried and sintered, performing a planning mixture and factorial experiment, using the response surface methodology. The ceramic bodies studied were prepared by dry process, characterized, placed in conformity by uniaxial pressing and sintered at temperatures of 940 º C, 1000ºC, 1060ºC, 1120°C and 1180°C using a fast-firing cycle. The crystalline phases formed during sintering at temperatures under study, revealed the presence of anorthite and wolastonite, and quartz-phase remaining. These phases were mainly responsible for the physical and mechanical properties of the sintered especimens. The results shown that as increases the participation of carbonate in the composition of ceramic bodies there is an increase of water absorption and a slight reduction in linear shrinkage for all sintering temperatures. As for the mechanical strength it was observed that it tended to decrease for sintering at temperatures between 940 ° C and 1060 ° C and to increase for sintering at temperatures above 1060 ° C occurring with greater intensity for compositions with higher content of calcite. The resistence decreased with increasing participation of quartz in all sintering temperatures. The decrease in grain size of calcite caused a slight increase in water absorption for formulation with the same concentration of carbonate, remaining virtually unchanged the results of linear shrinkage and mechanical strength. In conclusion, porous ceramic coating (BIII) can be obtained using high concentrations of calcite and keeping the properties required in technical standards and that the particle size of calcite can be used as tuning parameter for the properties of ceramic products.

Compósitos Portland-biopolímeros para cimentação de poços de petróleo

The oil production in mature areas can be improved by advanced recovery techniques. In special, steam injection reduces the viscosity of heavy oils, thus improving its flow to surrounding wells. On the other hand, the usually high temperatures and pressures involved in the process may lead to cement cracking, negatively affecting both the mechanical stability and zonal isolation provided by the cement sheath of the well. The addition of plastic materials to the cement is an alternative to prevent this scenario. Composite slurries consisting of Portland cement and a natural biopolymer were studied. Samples containing different contents of biopolymer dispersed in a Portland cement matrix were prepared and evaluated by mechanical and rheological tests in order to assess their behavior according to API (American Petroleum Institute) guidelines. FEM was also applied to map the stress distribution encountered by the cement at bottom bole. The slurries were prepared according to a factorial experiment plan by varying three parameters, i.e., cement age, contents of biopolymer and water-to-cement ratio. The results revealed that the addition of the biopolymer reduced the volume of free water and the setting time of the slurry. In addition, tensile strength, compressive strength and toughness improved by 30% comparing hardened composites to plain Portland slurries. FEM results suggested that the stresses developed at bottomhole may be 10 to 100 times higher than the strength of the cement as evaluated in the lab by unconfined mechanical testing. An alternative approach is proposed to adapt the testing methodology used to evaluate the mechanical behavior of oilwell cement slurries by simulating the confined conditions encountered at bottornhole

Estudo Comparativo de gráaficos de probabilidade normal para Anáalise de experimentos fatoriais não replicados

Two-level factorial designs are widely used in industrial experimentation. However, many factors in such a design require a large number of runs to perform the experiment, and too many replications of the treatments may not be feasible, considering limitations of resources and of time, making it expensive. In these cases, unreplicated designs are used. But, with only one replicate, there is no internal estimate of experimental error to make judgments about the significance of the observed efects. One of the possible solutions for this problem is to use normal plots or half-normal plots of the efects. Many experimenters use the normal plot, while others prefer the half-normal plot and, often, for both cases, without justification. The controversy about the use of these two graphical techniques motivates this work, once there is no register of formal procedure or statistical test that indicates \which one is best". The choice between the two plots seems to be a subjective issue. The central objective of this master's thesis is, then, to perform an experimental comparative study of the normal plot and half-normal plot in the context of the analysis of the 2k unreplicated factorial experiments. This study involves the construction of simulated scenarios, in which the graphics performance to detect significant efects and to identify outliers is evaluated in order to verify the following questions: Can be a plot better than other? In which situations? What kind of information does a plot increase to the analysis of the experiment that might complement those provided by the other plot? What are the restrictions on the use of graphics? Herewith, this work intends to confront these two techniques; to examine them simultaneously in order to identify similarities, diferences or relationships that contribute to the construction of a theoretical reference to justify or to aid in the experimenter's decision about which of the two graphical techniques to use and the reason for this use. The simulation results show that the half-normal plot is better to assist in the judgement of the efects, while the normal plot is recommended to detect outliers in the data