Chemical Engineering @ChemengFiles.Com

The famous prize X-prize was created to encourage small aerospace companies to develop a reusable spacecraft of low cost. There is something similar in the field of chemistry?

It would seem so.

The company Barrick Gold has a site in Argentina with a high content of silver, the same this apparently enclosed in a waterproof layer of silica that makes the extraction by conventional methods.
The reduction of particle tamañ0 would be helpful but is energetically costly because the mineral is very hard and abrasive.

This dissertation is concerned with the mathematical modelling of oil recovery by steam injection using analytical techniques.

An integral method for generating approximate solutions to the one and two- (three-) dimensional steam injection processes is presented. Due to the qualitatively different character of the problem the one- and two- (three-) dimensional cases are examined separately.

The applicability of the method for the determination of the rate of growth of the steam zone volume in one-dimensional systems is considered. An extensive study of the heat transfer in the surroundings and the hot liquid zone is carried out to complement the one-dimensional implementation of the technique. The resulting class of moving boundary problems and their methods of solution are discussed in detail. The results obtained are then combined with the integral technique to derive upper and lower bounds, asymptotic solutions and approximate solutions to the rate of growth of the steam zone. The important physical parameters are identified and their significance in the design of the process is outlined. In particular, the very important effect of heat transport in the surroundings and the hot liquid zone is fully accounted.

An investigation involving the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC) has managed, for the first time, accelerating the flowering of a plant by the action of a gene from microalgae. The work, published in Current Biology, could help to improve the yield of crops such as tomato and rice, allowing the best time to produce seeds. According to the authors, the study also attests to the key role of algae, direct predecessors of the plants in their evolution.

CSIC researcher and the study director Federico Valverde, who works at the Instituto de Bioquímica Vegetal y Fotosíntesis (CSIC Joint Center and the University of Seville), contextualizes the research: "A proper flowering is essential for the survival of the plant and therefore directly affects crop productivity. For centuries, farmers have manipulated this feature in order to bring humanity to staple crops like rice, in different environments. "