Avaliação do comportamento de fluidos micelares na recuperação avançada de petróleo

In heavy oil fields there is a great difficulty of the oil to flow from the reservoir to the well, making its production more difficult and with high cost. Most of the original volumes of oil found in the world are considered unrecoverable by the use of the current methods. The injection of micellar solutions has a direct action in the oil interfacial properties, resulting in an enhanced oil recovery. The objective of this research was the study and selection of micellar solutions with ability to decrease the interfacial interactions between fluids and reservoir formation, increasing oil production. The selected micellar solutions were obtained using commercial surfactants and surfactants synthesized in laboratory, based on the intrinsic properties of these molecules, to use in the enhanced oil recovery. Petroleum Reservoirs were simulated using sandstone plugs from Botucatu formation. Experiments with conventional and enhanced oil recovery techniques were accomplished. The obtained results showed that all micellar solutions were able to enhance oil recovery, and the micellar solution prepared with a SB anionic surfactant, at 2% KCl solution, showed the best recovery factor. It was also accomplished an economic analysis with the SB surfactant solution. With the injection of 20% porous volume of micellar solution, followed by brine injection, the increment in petroleum recovery can reach 81% recovery factor in the 3rd porous volume injected. The increment in the total cost by the addition of surfactant to the injection water represents R$ 7.50/ton of injected fluid

Repercussão da integração de conteúdos das disciplinas nos trabalhos finais de graduação de CAU-UFRN (2003 a 2010)

The changes in the teaching of Architecture in Brazilian Universities, from the 1990s onwards, with the upgrading of the Architecture project as an object of research and scientific knowledge and more specifically, the adoption by the Architecture and Urbanism Course (CAU) from the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte (UFRN) of the principle of content integration of the disciplines, aroused the interest in research on issues related to the Design process and the teaching of design in this context. After 20 years of its implementation and recognized as being a major step forward in teaching the teaching/learning process, the integration is the central focus of this research, which will seek to identify changes in the teaching design and its refutation in projects developed by students at the end of their course. In general, it is understood that the need to integrate knowledge from diverse areas of Architect’s professional activity, who seeks through an exercise of summary, identify solutions to the issues involved in a project. On the assumption that the integration of content of disciplines fosters the teaching/learning of Architecture project, which can be evident in the Final Course Assignment (FCA), it becomes necessary to understand, in the light of theories of education, such as the principles of curriculum organization, such as interdisciplinarity and multidisciplinarity, transdisciplinarity and transversality are related to the term integration, is more understood and disseminated among the professors of the Architecture courses. The object of this study is consequently the relationship between the integration of subject content and Architecture projects developed by students from CAU-UFRN, in the context of Final Graduation projects (FCAs) completed in the period of duration of the Teaching Project A5-from 2003. The study has the main objective of investigating to what extent the integration of disciplinary content affects the development of the Final Assignment of UFRN, from the analysis of drawings and texts of the projects of the learners and the testimonies of teachers and undergraduate students. From a methodological point of view, the research “Architecture, Project and Knowledge Production: Academic Production – FCAs, Thesis and dissertations in PA/Brazil” carried out by the PROJETAR/UFRN team has been adopted as the basis for the construction of the analytical instruments. In order to identify aspects of their experience by various actors which were not recorded in FCA, electronic forms were applied between teachers and students, through the internet. The integration of subject content based Teaching Project of CAU-UFRN institutionalises the interdisciplinarity, organizing the curriculum by thematic semesters, in which the disciplines work the same focus and at the same site. The integrated work which derives from there tries to articulate the content of each discipline of the period and represents a general practice and has been evaluated by teachers and students, and considered as a facilitator of the teaching/learning process. The analysis of the data collected from the textual content and graphic of the sample of FCAs of CAU-UFRN suggests that the content of the various areas of knowledge are assimilated by the student and used as a resource for the design and development of Architecture projects. In other words, there is in the end product of the students record of the integration of content, whether in speech or in drawing, reaffirming the importance of the convergence of various knowledge in the Architectonic project. However, the integration of content from the point of view of their articulation and operationalization, which involves teachers and students in the same period, has as a condition sine qua non for the success of this educational principle, the provision of these to work as part of a team, for the dialogic practice, which creates areas of intersection not only between disciplines, but between the knowledge of each of the participants.

Professores de ciências naturais: necessidades formativas para ensinar a medir em trabalhos práticos e experimentais

This paper presents a research realized with Physics, Chemistry and Biology teachers, and it aimed to evaluate: 1) the development level of those teachers regarding the abilities that make possible to teach high school students about how to measure in practical and experimental work; 2) the formatives necessities regarding those abilities; and 3) the order of priority for teacher´s formation regarding those abilities. The study is based on the activity theory, from A. N. Leontiev (1983), since we considerer the teacher´s formation a kind of activity for which the category necessity is source of motivation and in which is a necessary condition for professionality and for the professional development. A questionnaire with open and closed questions was applied to 116 teachers during three pedagogic workshops realized to dynamize the science laboratory. The instrument allowed us to obtain the personal and professional profile of the participants, as well as their development level, their formative necessities and their order of priority about the teaching of the abilities related to the work of testing measuring hypothesis, regarding: a) to operationalize variables of a hypothesis in experimental work; b) to measure in practical and experimental work; c) to estimate possible measuring mistakes and use proper procedures to minimize them; d) to estimate the validity of a measuring; and e) to estimate the confiability of a measuring. The research results indicated some limitations of the teachers about their development level in all the analyzed abilities. More than 90% of the teachers considered those deficiencies as necessities of the continuing formation. Most of them (about 54%) expressed immediate priority for formation in each one of the abilities. From a correlation, using the statistic chi-square test, between the development level and the formative necessities for the five abilities, the obtained results allow us to assure that, for all those teaching abilities, there is a strong correlation between the development level and the formative necessity. This situation is symptomatic of the importance of approaching more the science teaching and the teacher´s formation on practical and experimental work in high school as key-component of scientific education in basic education. The obtained results can contribute, as subsidy, for continuing formation courses, having as base the necessities that constitute motivation elements of the teachers for professional development

Entre orquídeas e girassóis :o laboratório de Enfermagem na visão de estudantes

To study the teaching/learning process about the Nursing procedures carried out in the laboratory, and learn both the sapiens and the demens dimensions of such process, is the main purpose of this study. The objectives are to: identify the major laboratory contributions to the teaching/learning process from the point of view of undergraduate students and the feelings they express; describe the difficulties they have identified; and analyze the relevance of the laboratory to this process. As part of the inquiry procedure, four core group meetings were held with 26 undergraduate students who had completed the course on Semiology and Semiotics in Nursing, which is the course where the Nursing laboratory is most needed as a learning space. The analysis, based on a qualitative approach, had as fundamental theoretical support studies made by Friedlander and Hayashida, who deal with learning/teaching in the Nursing laboratory, and by authors who favor humanization in teaching such as, among others, Freire, Maturana, Morin, Assmann. Results point toward the relevance of the Nursing laboratory as a facilitator for the learning/teaching process. In their speech the students repeatedly state that the development of procedures in simulated situations enable them to become more self-assured and technically prepared for caring. In addition, they emphasize that feelings such as fear, lack of confidence, anxiety, anguish and panic become diminished at the time of their clinic experience when they have had previous learning in the laboratory. They have also acknowledged that some difficulties of structural nature have become obstacles to a high-quality learning development. In summary, in spite of the difficulties that have been pointed out by the students concerning the use of the Nursing laboratory in the learning/teaching process, they also recognize that this is the locus par excellence where they can develop their skills and appease their anxieties

Cosmoeducação: uma abordagem transdisciplinar no ensino de astronomia

This work proposes a transdisciplinary approach that integrates transpersonal psychology exercises with astronomy teaching, seeking to allow one to reintegrate the sky in his/her daily life, expand his/her environmental awareness and eventually experiment the unity between human and cosmos. This proposal intends to collaborate with the supplying of education, which lacks initiatives of this kind, with the promotion of an integration of the scientific knowledge with the human experience that transcends the materialistic and fragmentary objectives of the current educational system. As a result of that lack, the teachers formation is also poor as for an integral and transdisciplinary approach. Besides, we also approached in this research the necessity to propose alternatives so that the educators may work in a more assertive way with the environmental and anthropological crisis in which we are living. Our working hypothesis is that the contents of astronomy, when they are dealt in a holisticanthropological focus and are related with transpersonal psychology practices, can come to be an efficient cultural-academic vehicle, capable of propitiating an expansion of consciousness and changes in the way one conceives the world. Such changes are necessary so that a more solidary, fair and ecologically balanced life may come to exist and prevail in the planet. Part of the collection of data was done through the ethnographic method, once an anthropological interpretation is inextricably associated with this kind of educational intervention, which will naturally include ethno-visions of the universe as well as specific cultural elements. In the beginning the scope of this research was a group of students attending the Astronomy assignment in an undergraduate Geography course (UFRN), in which we accomplished participant observation, half-open interviews and the first experimental practices mentioned. After the evaluation of the first data collected from that initial group, we elaborated an academic extension course, Laboratory in Cosmoeducation, and we offered it to teachers of the 1st and 2nd cycles of the fundamental level of the Alceu Amoroso Lima State School, located in the North Zone of Natal. We prized self-experimentation in that course, so that the teachers could enrich their repertoire of personal experiences, stimulating meditative reflections and eventual changes in the ways of conceiving the world and in their pedagogical practice. The transdisciplinary attitude permeated all our educational action, because this approach transcends the boundaries of disciplines, seeking essentially the integral development of the human being. The process has made us realize that the practice of looking at the sky , as a way of reintegrating it into daily life, provokes a process of expansion of the consciousness and of reintegration of the self in a wider level of environmental interrelation. According to the results, the occurrence of conceptual and existential changes of the world vision of the participant teachers was evident, reassuring ourselves of the idea that the interface between astronomy teaching and the practices of transpersonal psychology can contribute to the recovery of a holistic relationship between the human being and the cosmos and to inspire the arising of a more wide-ranging ethics, based on universal, impartial and sustainable values