Hydrocarbon efforts

Transportation accounts for about one-fourth of the primary energy consumption in the United States. And unlike other sectors of the economy that can easily switch to cleaner natural gas or electricity, automobiles, trucks, nonroad vehicles, and buses are powered by internal-combustion engines burning petroleum products that produce carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides, and hydrocarbons. Efforts are under way to accelerate the introduction of electric, fuel-cell, and hybrid (electric and fuel) vehicles to replace sonic of these vehicles in both the retail marketplace and in commercial, government, public transit, and private fleets. These vehicles dramatically reduce harmful pollutants and reduce carbon dioxide emissions by as much as 50 percent or more compared to gasoline-powered vehicles. 

Once an exploration well has encountered hydrocarbons, considerable effort will still be required to accurately assess the potential of the find. The amount of data acquired so far does not yet provide a precise picture of the size, shape and producibility of the accumulation. 

Exploration activities are aimed at finding new volumes of hydrocarbons, thus replacing the volumes being produced. The success of a company s exploration efforts determines its prospects of remaining in business in the long term. 

Introduction and Commercial Application JUe objective of performing appraisal activities on discovered accumulations is to reduce the uncertainty in the description of the hydrocarbon reservoir, and to provide information with which to make a decision on the next action. The next action may be, for example, to undertake more appraisal, to commence development, to stop activities, or to sell the prospect. In any case, the appraisal activity should lead to a decision which yields a greater value than the outcome of a decision made in the absence of the information from the appraisal. The improvement in the value of the action, given the appraisal information, should be greater than the cost of the appraisal activities, otherwise the appraisal effort is not worthwhile. 

The Lokers had no background or business interest in ehemistry. It was Carl Franklin who told them abont USC s effort to establish a hydrocarbon research institute, and he must have also told them some-... 

Another area of my post-Nobel research that turned into a major continuing effort evolved from the realization that our hydrocarbon resources, the marvelous gift of nature in the form of petroleum oil and natural gas, are finite and not renewable. 

Some of the mixed xylenes that ate produced are used as solvents in the paints and coatings industry (see Solvents, industrial). However, this use has declined, particularly in the United States as environmental efforts to reduce hydrocarbon emissions into the air have increased. 

Butadiene. Although butadiene was produced in the United States in the eady 1920s, it was not until the start of Wodd War 11 that significant quantities were produced to meet the war effort. A number of processes were investigated as part of the American Synthetic Rubber Program. Catalytic dehydrogenation of / -butenes and / -butanes (Houdry process) and thermal cracking of petroleum hydrocarbons were chosen (12). 

Chemical Composition. Wool wax is a complex mixture of esters of water-soluble alcohols (168) and higher fatty acids (169) with a small proportion (ca 0.5%) of hydrocarbons (170). A substantial effort has been made to identify the various components, but results are compHcated by the fact that different workers use wool waxes from different sources and employ different analytical techniques. Nevertheless, significant progress has been made, and it is possible to give approximate percentages of the various components. The wool-wax acids (Table 9) are predominantiy alkanoic, a-hydroxy, and CO-hydroxy acids. Each group contains normal, iso, and anteiso series of various chain length, and nearly all the acids are saturated. 

The most recent synthetic efforts in this area have focused on the preparation of mono- and diformyl-substituted indolo[3,2-l)]carbazoles 202 and 203, which are potent aryl hydrocarbon receptor (AHR) ligands (cf. Section V,C). 

Through the 19.30s, Ipatieff led UOP in its effort to develop two catalytic processes for the production of high-octane fuel alkylation and polymerization— the first, a reaction of a hydrocarbon with an olefin (double-bonded compound) the second, the formation of long molecules from smaller ones. Both processes produce high-octane blending compounds that increase the quality of cracked gasoline. 

Although these potential barriers are only of the order of a few thousand calories in most circumstances, there are a number of properties which are markedly influenced by them. Thus the heat capacity, entropy, and equilibrium constants contain an appreciable contribution from the hindered rotation. Since statistical mechanics combined with molecular structural data has provided such a highly successful method of calculating heat capacities and entropies for simpler molecules, it is natural to try to extend the method to molecules containing the possibility of hindered rotation. Much effort has been expended in this direction, with the result that a wide class of molecules can be dealt with, provided that the height of the potential barrier is known from empirical sources. A great many molecules of considerable industrial importance are included in this category, notably the simpler hydrocarbons. 

The relatively high cost and lack of domestic supply of noble metals has spurred considerable efforts toward the development of nonnoble metal catalysts for automobile exhaust control. A very large number of base metal oxides and mixtures of oxides have been considered, especially the transition metals, such as copper, chromium, nickel, manganese, cobalt vanadium, and iron. Particularly prominent are the copper chromites, which are mixtures of the oxides of copper and chromium, with various promoters added. These materials are active in the oxidation of CO and hydrocarbons, as well as in the reduction of NO in the presence of CO (55-59). Rare earth oxides, such as lanthanum cobaltate and lanthanum lead manganite with Perovskite structure, have been investigated for CO oxidation, but have not been tested and shown to be sufficiently active under realistic and demanding conditions (60-63). Hopcalities are out-... 

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