Nitretação em plasma com gaiola catódica: caracterização e avaliação do desempenho da camada nitretada em facas de corte

Nowadays, in the plastic industry are used mills that accomplish the recycling of residues generated in the production of its components. These mills contain cut sheets that suffer accelerated wear, once they are submitted constantly to the tribologic efforts, decreasing its useful life. To reduce this problem, it s used noble steels or takes place superficial treatments. The ionic nitriding process presents some limitations related to the uniformity of the layer in pieces with complex geometry, committing its application in pieces as knives, head offices, engagements, etc. However, the new technique of nitriding in cathodic cage eliminates some problems, as the restrictions rings, inherent to the conventional ionic nitriding. In present work, was studied the use viabilization of steels less noble, as SAE 1020, SAE 4320 and SAE 4340, nitreded by two different techniques, to substitute the AISI 01 steels, usually used in the cut knifes fabrication, seeking to reduce the costs and at the sane time to increase the useful life of these knifes. The steel most viable was the SAE 4340, nitrided in cathodic cage, because it presented uniformity in thickness and in the hardness of the layer, besides of increased 58% in the average its useful life

Simulador de escoamento multifásico em poços de petróleo (SEMPP)

The multiphase flow occurrence in the oil and gas industry is common throughout fluid path, production, transportation and refining. The multiphase flow is defined as flow simultaneously composed of two or more phases with different properties and immiscible. An important computational tool for the design, planning and optimization production systems is multiphase flow simulation in pipelines and porous media, usually made by multiphase flow commercial simulators. The main purpose of the multiphase flow simulators is predicting pressure and temperature at any point at the production system. This work proposes the development of a multiphase flow simulator able to predict the dynamic pressure and temperature gradient in vertical, directional and horizontal wells. The prediction of pressure and temperature profiles was made by numerical integration using marching algorithm with empirical correlations and mechanistic model to predict pressure gradient. The development of this tool involved set of routines implemented through software programming Embarcadero C++ Builder® 2010 version, which allowed the creation of executable file compatible with Microsoft Windows® operating systems. The simulator validation was conduct by computational experiments and comparison the results with the PIPESIM®. In general, the developed simulator achieved excellent results compared with those obtained by PIPESIM and can be used as a tool to assist production systems development

Investigação e gerenciamento de áreas contaminadas por postos revendedores de combustíveis em Natal

Activities that have fuel subterranean storage system are considered potentially polluting fuels by CONAMA Resolution 273, due to the possibility of leak, outpouring and overflow of fuel into the ground. Being even more worrying when contaminate groundwater for public supply, as the case of Natal City. For this reason, the Public Ministry/RN, in partnership with UFRN, developed the project environmental suitability of Gas stations in Natal, of which 36% showed evidence of contamination. This paper describes the four stages of the management of contaminated areas: preliminary assessment of environmental liabilities, detailed confirmatory investigation of the contamination, risk analysis to human health (RBCA), as well as the remediation plan of degraded areas. Therefore it is presented a case study. For the area investigated has been proposed a mathematical method to estimate the volume of LNAPL by a free CAD software (ScketchUp) and compare it with the partition method for grid area. Were also performed 3D graphics designs of feathers contamination. Research results showed that passive benzene contamination in groundwater was 2791.77 μg/L, when the maximum allowed by CONAMA Resolution 420 is 5 μg/L which is the potability standards. The individual and cumulative risks were calculated from 4.4 x10-3, both above the limits of 1.0 x10-5 or by RBCA 1.0 x10-6 by the Public Ministry/RN. Corrective action points that remediation of dissolved phase benzene is expected to reach a concentration of 25 μg/L, based on carcinogenic risk for ingestion of groundwater by residents residential, diverging legislation. According to the proposed model, the volume of LNAPL using the ScketchUp was 17.59 m3, while by the grid partitioning method was 14.02 m3. Because of the low recovery, the expected removal of LNAPL is 11 years, if the multiphase extraction system installed in the enterprise is not optimized

Projeto de um sistema emulador de escoamentos e vaso de separação primária

The purpose of this study was to develop a pilot plant which the main goal is to emulate a flow peak pressure in a separation vessel. Effect similar that is caused by the production in a slug flow in production wells equipped with the artificial lift method plunger lift. The motivation for its development was the need to test in a plant on a smaller scale, a new technique developed to estimate the gas flow in production wells equipped with plunger lift. To develop it, studies about multiphase flow effects, operation methods of artificial lift in plunger lift wells, industrial instrumentation elements, control valves, vessel sizing separators and measurement systems were done. The methodology used was the definition of process flowcharts, its parameters and how the effects needed would be generated for the success of the experiments. Therefore, control valves, the design and construction of vessels and the acquisition of other equipment used were defined. One of the vessels works as a tank of compressed air that is connected to the separation vessel and generates pulses of gas controlled by a on/off valve. With the emulator system ready, several control experiments were made, being the control of peak flow pressure generation and the flow meter the main experiments, this way, it was confirmed the efficiency of the plant usage in the problem that motivated it. It was concluded that the system is capable of generate effects of flow with peak pressure in a primary separation vessel. Studies such as the estimation of gas flow at the exit of the vessel and several academic studies can be done and tested on a smaller scale and then applied in real plants, avoiding waste of time and money.

Sistema inteligente para detecção de vazamentos em dutos de petróleo usando transformada Wavelet e redes neurais

This work consists in the use of techniques of signals processing and artificial neural networks to identify leaks in pipes with multiphase flow. In the traditional methods of leak detection exists a great difficulty to mount a profile, that is adjusted to the found in real conditions of the oil transport. These difficult conditions go since the unevenly soil that cause columns or vacuum throughout pipelines until the presence of multiphases like water, gas and oil; plus other components as sand, which use to produce discontinuous flow off and diverse variations. To attenuate these difficulties, the transform wavelet was used to map the signal pressure in different resolution plan allowing the extraction of descriptors that identify leaks patterns and with then to provide training for the neural network to learning of how to classify this pattern and report whenever this characterize leaks. During the tests were used transient and regime signals and pipelines with punctures with size variations from ½' to 1' of diameter to simulate leaks and between Upanema and Estreito B, of the UN-RNCE of the Petrobras, where it was possible to detect leaks. The results show that the proposed descriptors considered, based in statistical methods applied in domain transform, are sufficient to identify leaks patterns and make it possible to train the neural classifier to indicate the occurrence of pipeline leaks

Desenvolvimento de um simulador de bombeio por cavidades progressivas

The method of artificial lift of progressing cavity pump is very efficient in the production of oils with high viscosity and oils that carry a great amount of sand. This characteristic converted this lift method into the second most useful one in oil fields production. As it grows the number of its applications it also increases the necessity to dominate its work in a way to define it the best operational set point. To contribute to the knowledge of the operational method of artificial lift of progressing cavity pump, this work intends to develop a computational simulator for oil wells equipped with an artificial lift system. The computational simulator of the system will be able to represent its dynamic behavior when submitted to the various operational conditions. The system was divided into five subsystems: induction motor, multiphase flows into production tubing, rod string, progressing cavity pump and annular tubing-casing. The modeling and simulation of each subsystem permitted to evaluate the dynamic characteristics that defined the criteria connections. With the connections of the subsystems it was possible to obtain the dynamic characteristics of the most important arrays belonging to the system, such as: pressure discharge, pressure intake, pumping rate, rod string rotation and torque applied to polish string. The shown results added to a friendly graphical interface converted the PCP simulator in a great potential tool with a didactic characteristic in serving the technical capability for the system operators and also permitting the production engineering to achieve a more detail analysis of the dynamic operational oil wells equipped with the progressing cavity pump

Controlador preditivo não linear aplicado ao controle de golfadas em processos de produção de petróleo

Slugging is a well-known slugging phenomenon in multiphase flow, which may cause problems such as vibration in pipeline and high liquid level in the separator. It can be classified according to the place of its occurrence. The most severe, known as slugging in the riser, occurs in the vertical pipe which feeds the platform. Also known as severe slugging, it is capable of causing severe pressure fluctuations in the flow of the process, excessive vibration, flooding in separator tanks, limited production, nonscheduled stop of production, among other negative aspects that motivated the production of this work . A feasible solution to deal with this problem would be to design an effective method for the removal or reduction of the system, a controller. According to the literature, a conventional PID controller did not produce good results due to the high degree of nonlinearity of the process, fueling the development of advanced control techniques. Among these, the model predictive controller (MPC), where the control action results from the solution of an optimization problem, it is robust, can incorporate physical and /or security constraints. The objective of this work is to apply a non-conventional non-linear model predictive control technique to severe slugging, where the amount of liquid mass in the riser is controlled by the production valve and, indirectly, the oscillation of flow and pressure is suppressed, while looking for environmental and economic benefits. The proposed strategy is based on the use of the model linear approximations and repeatedly solving of a quadratic optimization problem, providing solutions that improve at each iteration. In the event where the convergence of this algorithm is satisfied, the predicted values of the process variables are the same as to those obtained by the original nonlinear model, ensuring that the constraints are satisfied for them along the prediction horizon. A mathematical model recently published in the literature, capable of representing characteristics of severe slugging in a real oil well, is used both for simulation and for the project of the proposed controller, whose performance is compared to a linear MPC

Estudo numérico de escoamento turbulento em padrão anular gás-líquido em dutos verticais

Multiphase flows in ducts can adopt several morphologies depending on the mass fluxes and the fluids properties. Annular flow is one of the most frequently encountered flow patterns in industrial applications. For gas liquid systems, it consists of a liquid film flowing adjacent to the wall and a gas core flowing in the center of the duct. This work presents a numerical study of this flow pattern in gas liquid systems in vertical ducts. For this, a solution algorithm was developed and implemented in FORTRAN 90 to numerically solve the governing transport equations. The mass and momentum conservation equations are solved simultaneously from the wall to the center of the duct, using the Finite Volumes Technique. Momentum conservation in the gas liquid interface is enforced using an equivalent effective viscosity, which also allows for the solution of both velocity fields in a single system of equations. In this way, the velocity distributions across the gas core and the liquid film are obtained iteratively, together with the global pressure gradient and the liquid film thickness. Convergence criteria are based upon satisfaction of mass balance within the liquid film and the gas core. For system closure, two different approaches are presented for the calculation of the radial turbulent viscosity distribution within the liquid film and the gas core. The first one combines a k- Ɛ one-equation model and a low Reynolds k-Ɛ model. The second one uses a low Reynolds k- Ɛ model to compute the eddy viscosity profile from the center of the duct right to the wall. Appropriate interfacial values for k e Ɛ are proposed, based on concepts and ideas previously used, with success, in stratified gas liquid flow. The proposed approaches are compared with an algebraic model found in the literature, specifically devised for annular gas liquid flow, using available experimental results. This also serves as a validation of the solution algorithm

Modelagem numérica de escoamento em padrão anular com transferência de calor e massa

Annular flow is the prevailing pattern in transport and energy conversion systems and therefore, one of the most important patterns in multiphase flow in ducts. The correct prediction of the pressure gradient and heat transfer coefficient is essential for optimizing the system s capacity. The objective of this work is to develop and implement a numerical algorithm capable of predicting hydrodynamic and thermal characteristics for upflow, vertical, annular flow. The numerical algorithm is then complemented with the physical modeling of phenomena that occurs in this flow pattern. These are, turbulence, entrainment and deposition and phase change. For the development of the numerical model, axial diffusion of heat and momentum is neglected. In this way the time-averaged equations are solved in their parabolic form obtaining the velocity and temperature profiles for each axial step at a time, together with the global parameters, namely, pressure gradient, mean film thickness and heat transfer coefficient, as well as their variation in the axial direction. The model is validated for the following conditions: fully-developed laminar flow with no entrainment; fully developed laminar flow with heat transfer, fully-developed turbulent flow with entrained drops, developing turbulent annular flow with entrained drops, and turbulent flow with heat transfer and phase change

Simulação do escoamento multifásico no interior de bombas de cavidades progressivas metálicas

The progressing cavity pumping (PCP) is one of the most applied oil lift methods nowadays in oil extraction due to its ability to pump heavy and high gas fraction flows. The computational modeling of PCPs appears as a tool to help experiments with the pump and therefore, obtain precisely the pump operational variables, contributing to pump s project and field operation otimization in the respectively situation. A computational model for multiphase flow inside a metallic stator PCP which consider the relative motion between rotor and stator was developed in the present work. In such model, the gas-liquid bubbly flow pattern was considered, which is a very common situation in practice. The Eulerian-Eulerian approach, considering the homogeneous and inhomogeneous models, was employed and gas was treated taking into account an ideal gas state. The effects of the different gas volume fractions in pump volumetric eficiency, pressure distribution, power, slippage flow rate and volumetric flow rate were analyzed. The results shown that the developed model is capable of reproducing pump dynamic behaviour under the multiphase flow conditions early performed in experimental works

Corrosion behavior of Ti-13Nb-13Zr alloy used as a biomaterial

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES)

Influência da velocidade de avanço do rebolo nos danos de aços endurecidos retificados

A tendência mundial é o aumento da produtividade e da produção de peças cada vez mais sofisticadas, com elevado grau de tolerância geométrica, dimensional, com bom acabamento superficial, com baixo custo. A retificação é responsável pelo acabamento final no processo de usinagem de um material. No entanto, danos gerados nesta fase de produção comprometem todos os recursos utilizados nas fases anteriores. Grande parte dos problemas ocorridos na retificação deve-se à enorme temperatura gerada pelo processo devido às condições de usinagem. Atribui-se à velocidade de avanço, que está diretamente relacionada com a produtividade, os danos ocorridos na retificação, ficando esta variável limitada até valores que não proporcione danos. Neste trabalho, através da variação da velocidade de avanço no processo de retificação cilíndrica externa do aço ABNT D6, racionalizando a aplicação de dois fluidos de corte e usando um rebolo superabrasivo de CBN (nitreto de boro cúbico) com ligante vitrificado, avaliou-se a influência da velocidade de avanço nos danos superficiais de aços endurecidos. Os resultados permitiram concluir que a velocidade de avanço associada a uma eficiente refrigeração e lubrificação, não provocou danos térmicos (queima, trincas, tensões de tração) ao material. Tensões residuais e a rugosidade do material retificado apresentaram uma correlação com as condições de usinagem. O trabalho concluiu ser capaz um aumento dos índices de produtividade sem provocar danos nos componentes retificados.

Effects of the high temperature plasma immersion ion implantation (PIII) of nitrogen in AISI H13 steel

Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq)

FeNbP in ultra-low carbon Nb-added steel containing high P

Precipitation of FeTiP is reported to occur in Ti-added IF steels containing high P during thermomechanical processing. An ultra-low carbon (ULC) Nb-added steel ingot containing a higher P content (< 0.8 wt-%) was produced via aluminothermic reduction of Fe2O3 followed by double electron beam melting (EBM). FeNbP coarse precipitates were observed in the as-cast microstructure. After soaking at 1050C for 1 h, the plate was hot rolled from 31 mm down to 7 mm in thickness (total reduction of 77%). During cold rolling of these hot bands we observed embrittlement. We believe that this embrittlement can be attributed to the presence of the FeNbP precipitates. Light optical and scanning electron microscopy (SEM/EDS) were used to characterize the microstructure of this ULC steel. (C) 2000 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

A metallurgical study of aluminium alloys used as aircraft components

The effects of heat treatment on morphologies and microstructures of Al 2024 and Al 7050 alloys, used as aircraft components, were studied by metallographic techniques. Light microscopy (LM) and quantitative image analysis were used to characterize the precipitate dispersion and morphology for these alloys. The application of the scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and energy dispersive spectroscopy (EDS) combined techniques for studying these multiphase systems makes it possible to distinguish and quantify the different phases in the surface structure. Xray diffraction also permitted a qualitative comparison of the structures before and after heat treatments.