Field observations, direct

The capacity limit of this sulfur plant was, in a sense, not due to the small range of the flow recorder. A communications breakdown between the unit operators and first-line supervision had resulted in an artificial limitation. The troubleshooting engineer is most effective when he overcomes this failure to communicate. This is best done by personally gathering data, making direct field observations, and most importantly, soliciting the opinions of the shift operators. This type of activity, when joined with sound technical training, makes a powerful combination with which to tackle refinery problems. 

At this juncture I decided that this particular consulting assignment was not my cup of tea. Direct field observations are the core of all process engineering projects, and I felt my client would be better served by a different consultant. However, as we exchanged views, Lloyd raised a decisive point "You realize, Mr. Lieberman, that there is a substantial consulting fee at stake." I decided to compromise and settle for only a half-day of on-site field observations. After all, Lloyd was the client s representative. 

The required data for this research was collected from operation and maintenance reports and direct field observations over a period of two years. Many of the desired information, such as failure occurrence times, reasons of failure, types of repair actions and time to repair were available in mine database, therefore only TBFs values were calculated. All needed calculations related to data analysis and reliability modeling were carried out using Easy/it and Microsoft Excel software. 

This story illustrates the importance of making direct field observations. The relevant pressure gauges and samples were not available until Liz and 1 showed up onsite and asked that they be installed. 

The second element of troubleshooting is direct field observations. There is a piece of data you lack to intellectually grasp the problem. The difficulty is you don t know what that piece of data is. It s like looking for gems in the Australian outback. Often, a client asks me why I so desperately wanted some particular pressure. My answer is that it was physically possible to make the pressure measurement. I want all the data available because I don t know beforehand which piece of data I really need. So I want all of it. How can you tell what samples, temperatures, and pressures are available if you don t go out to the field and look ... 

There are a number of complications in the experimental measurement of the electrophoretic mobility of colloidal particles and its interpretation see Section V-6F. TTie experiment itself may involve a moving boundary type of apparatus, direct microscopic observation of the velocity of a particle in an applied field (the zeta-meter), or measurement of the conductivity of a colloidal suspension. 

Perhaps the most notable observation about these results is how poorly they reflect field observations. Even in clean orthoquartize aquifers undergoing rapid recharge, groundwater below about 60 °C is not observed to approach equilibrium with quartz, or even necessarily follow a clear trend along the direction of flow. Instead, silica concentration is highly variable and commonly in excess of quartz saturation, rather than below it. 

Direct experimental observation of the restructuring of water as a function of an applied field has been reported by several groups. For example, Bockris and Habib used Fourier Transform Infra-Red (FTIR) spectroscopy to show that water molecules stand up as the field in-... 

In the spin-correlated RP the two radicals interact via electron-electron dipolar and exchange interaction which leads to line splitting. The ET process creates the RP in a strongly spin-polarized state with a characteristic intensity pattern of the lines that occur either in enhanced absorption (A) or emission (E).144 145 The spectrum is therefore very intense and can directly be observed with cw EPR (transient EPR) or by pulse methods (field-swept ESE).14 To study the RPs high field EPR with its increased Zeeman resolution proved to be very useful the first experiment on an RP was performed by Prisner et al. in 1995146. From the analysis of the RP structure detailed information about the relative orientation of the two radicals can be extracted from the interaction parameters. In addition kinetic information about the formation and decay of the RP and the polarization are available (see references 145,147). 

In general, the total emission from a particular burning zone is proportional to the y-ray optical depth through the zone, Aty = Kyi p(r) dr. The density structure is thus important for the relative line strengths. Fortunately, both this and the core velocity may be obtained directly from observations of the line profiles at late epochs. The velocity field has then relaxed to a V =r law, and for an optically thin line the emission per volume, j(r), is related to the intensity, 1(e), of the line at the dimensionless frequency e by... 

When they observed final states of m = 0, with both lasers polarized along the field direction, they observed the familiar quasi-Landau resonances spaced at 3a> J2. In contrast, when they excited the m = 1 final state via the intermediate 2p m = 1 state these resonances were absent. Only resonances spaced by 0.64clearly evident if the data are smoothed over 2 cm-1. The periodicity is even more apparent in the Fourier transform of the spectrum, shown in Fig. 9.7. In Fig. 9.7(b) the peak corresponding to the resonance spacing of 0.64[Pg.153]

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