Hazards caused by leakage of hydrocarbons have long been a problem. In this paper, the critical initiation energy and explosion limits of some hydrocarbon-air mixtures have been measured in confined (rectangle shock tube) and unconfined (plastic bag) condition tests. Two dimensionless parameters are suggested to compare the fire and explosion hazards of different hydrocarbons. Additionally, a s...

Chars produced from the pyrolysis of different waste materials have been investigated in terms of their use as a catalyst for the catalytic cracking of biomass pyrolysis gases during the two-stage pyrolysis-gasification of biomass. The chars were produced from the pyrolysis of waste tyres, refused derived fuel and biomass in the form of date stones. The results showed that the hydrocarbon tar y...

Hydrocarbon compounds can be biodegraded by anaerobic microorganisms to form methane through an energetically interdependent metabolic process known as syntrophy. The microorganisms that perform this process as well as the energy transfer mechanisms involved are difficult to study and thus are still poorly understood, especially on an environmental scale. Here, metagenomic data was analyzed for...

We have used spin labels and electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) to study the correlation between the rotational dynamics of protein and lipid in sarcoplasmic reticulum (SR) membranes. A short-chain maleimide spin label was used to monitor the submillisecond rotational mobility of the Ca-ATPase enzyme (using saturation transfer EPR); a free fatty acid spin label was used to monitor the submic...

Bioremediation of hydrocarbon pollutants is advantageous owing to the cost-effectiveness of the technology and the ubiquity of hydrocarbon-degrading microorganisms in the soil. Soil microbial diversity is affected by hydrocarbon perturbation, thus selective enrichment of hydrocarbon utilizers occurs. Hydrocarbons interact with the soil matrix and soil microorganisms determining the fate of the ...

Marine hydrocarbon seepage emits oil and gas, including methane ( approximately 30 Tg of CH(4) per year), to the ocean and atmosphere. Sediments from the California margin contain preserved tar, primarily formed through hydrocarbon weathering at the sea surface. We present a record of variation in the abundance of tar in sediments for the past 32,000 years, providing evidence for increases in h...

Crude oil is not a specific single mineral substance. It is often called petroleum hydrocarbon because of its predominant make up of carbon and hydrogen, though it sometimes contains other elements1. There are many types of crude oil having widely different properties. Such variability are related to their behaviour and even degradation on spillage. Crude oil can however be divided into two: he...

A self-consistent environment-dependent tight binding method is presented that was developed to simulate eigenvalue spectra, electron densities and Coulomb potential distributions for hydrocarbon systems. The method builds on a non-selfconsistent environment-dependent tight binding model for carbon [Tang et al., Phys. Rev. B 53, 979 (1996)] with parameters added to describe hydrocarbon bonds an...

Here we introduce a MIxS extension to facilitate the recording and cataloguing of metadata from samples related to hydrocarbon resources. The proposed MIxS-HCR package incorporates the core features of the MIxS standard for marker gene (MIMARKS) and metagenomic (MIMS) sequences along with a hydrocarbon resources customized environmental package. Adoption of the MIxS-HCR standard will enable the...

BACKGROUND Patents have been granted for a number of techniques for petroleum biodegradation including use of micro-organisms for degradation of hydrocarbon-based substances and for hydrocarbon degradation in oil reservoirs, but there is a dearth of information on hydrocarbon degradation in different soil textures. OBJECTIVE Hence, this work investigated the effects of different soil textures...