Justifiability

Since the accuracy of experimental data is frequently not high, and since experimental data are hardly ever plentiful, it is important to reduce the available data with care using a suitable statistical method and using a model for the excess Gibbs energy which contains only a minimum of binary parameters. Rarely are experimental data of sufficient quality and quantity to justify more than three binary parameters and, all too often, the data justify no more than two such parameters. When data sources (5) or (6) or (7) are used alone, it is not possible to use a three- (or more)-parameter model without making additional arbitrary assumptions. For typical engineering calculations, therefore, it is desirable to use a two-parameter model such as UNIQUAC. 

This approach to synthesis is one of making a series of best local decisions. Equipment is added only if it can be justified economically on the basis of the information available, albeit an incomplete picture. This keeps the structure irreducible, and features which are technically or economically redundant are not included. 

Another possibility to improve selectivity is to reduce the concentration of monoethanolamine in the reactor by using more than one reactor with intermediate separation of the monoethanolamine. Considering the boiling points of the components given in Table 2.3, then separation by distillation is apparently possible. Unfortunately, repeated distillation operations are likely to be very expensive. Also, there is a market to sell both di- and triethanolamine, even though their value is lower than that of monoethanolamine. Thus, in this case, repeated reaction and separation are probably not justified, and the choice is a single plug-flow reactor. 

Can the useful material lost in the purge streams be reduced by additional reaction If the purge stream contains significant quantities of reactants, then placing a reactor and additional separation on the purge can sometimes be justified. This technique is used in some designs of ethylene oxide processes. 

These small positive and negative errors partially cancel each other. The result is that capital cost targets predicted by the methods described in this chapter are usually within 5 percent of the final design, providing heat transfer coefficients vary by less than one order of magnitude. If heat transfer coefficients vary by more than one order of magnitude, then a more sophisticated approach can sometimes be justified. ... 

The batch cycle time has been reduced from 2.6 to 1.3 hours. This means that a greater number of batches can be processed, and hence, if there are two reactors each with the original capacity, the process capacity has increased. However, the increase in capacity has been achieved at the expense of increased capital cost for the second reactor. An economic assessment is required before we can judge whether the tradeoff is justified. 

Heterogeneous catalysts are more common. However, they degrade and need replacement. If contaminants in the feed material or recycle shorten catalyst life, then extra separation to remove these contaminants before the feed enters the reactor might be justified. If the cataylst is sensitive to extreme conditions, such as high temperature, then some measures can help to avoid local hot spots and extend catalyst life ... 

All the problems briefly described above justify the large effort to characterize asphaltenes by techniques seldom found elsewhere in the petroleum industry. One of these is to analyze asphaltenes by steric exclusion... 

Liquid chromatography is preceded by a precipitation of the asphaltenes, then the maltenes are subjected to chromatography. Although the separation between saturated hydrocarbons and aromatics presents very few problems, this is not the case with the separation between aromatics and resins. In fact, resins themselves are very aromatic and are distinguished more by their high heteroatom content (this justifies the terms, polar compounds or N, S, 0 compounds , also used to designate resins). 

In the calculation of vapor phase partial fugacities the use of an equation of state is always justified. In regard to the liquid phase fugacities, there is a choice between two paths ... 

All properties required by diesel fuel are justified by the characteristics of the diesel engine cycle, in particular the following ... 

Imposing a minimum density is justified by the need to obtain sufficient maximum power for the engine, by means of an injection pump whose flow is controlled by regulating the volume. 

For optimum combustion, the fuel should vaporize rapidly and mix intimately with the air. Even though the design of the injection system and combustion chamber play a very important role, properties such as volatility, surface tension, and fuel viscosity also affect the quality of atomization and penetration of the fuel. These considerations justify setting specifications for the density (between 0.775 and 0.840 kg/1), the distillation curve (greater than 10% distilled at 204°C, end point less than 288°C) and the kinematic viscosity (less than 8 mm /s at -20°C). 

This rule is justified by the need to limit the benzene emissions from evaporation (Tims, 1983) Figure 5.25 shows that emissions increase linearly with the benzene content of the fuel. It is noteworthy that current legislation limits the measured evaporation to 2 g per test conducted in accordance with a standard procedure (Sealed Housing for Evaporative Determination, or SHED). Yet for a fuel containing 5% benzene, an evaporation of 0.7 g benzene /test is observed. 

This justifies all the work undertaken to arrive at fuel denitrification which, as is well known, is difficult and costly. Moreover, technological improvements can bring considerable progress to this field. That is the case with low NO burners developed at IFF. These consist of producing separated flame jets that enable lower combustion temperatures, local oxygen concentrations to be less high and a lowered fuel s nitrogen contribution to NOj. formation. In a well defined industrial installation, the burner said to be of the low NO type can attain a level of 350 mg/Nm, instead of the 600 mg/Nm with a conventional burner. 

Nevertheless, this type of analysis, usually done by chromatography, is not always justified when taking into account the operator s time. Other quicker analyses are used such as FIA (Fluorescent Indicator Analysis) (see paragraph 3.3.5), which give approximate but usually acceptable proportions of saturated, olefinic, and aromatic hydrocarbons. Another way to characterize the aromatic content is to use the solvent s aniline point the lowest temperature at which equal volumes of the solvent and pure aniline are miscible. 

In two stages with recycle to the second stage, the conversion per pass is approximately 50 wt. % and the selectivity to middle distillates is maximal 75 to 80 wt. %. However, the investment is clearly higher and is justified only when feedstocks are difficult to convert and that their content in nitrogen is high. Figure 10.11 represents two variants of the hydrocracking process. 

Traditionally, investments in exploration are made many years before there is any opportunity of producing the oil (Fig. 1.2). In such situations companies must have at least one scenario in which the potential rewards from eventual production justify investment in exploration. 

As decommissioning approaches, enhanced recovery e.g. chemical flooding processes are often considered as a means of recovering a proportion of the hydrocarbons that remain after primary production. The economic viability of such techniques is very sensitive to the oil price, and whilst some are used in onshore developments they can rarely be justified offshore at current oil prices. 

Bottom hole assemblies and certain types of downhole equipment (e.g. logging tools, MWD tools) cost several US 100,000. Some logging tools will have radioactive sources which may need to be recovered or isolated for safety and legal reasons. However, prior to commencing fishing operations, a cost - benefit assessment will have to be made to establish that the time and equipment attributable to the fishing job is justified by the value of the fish or the cost of sidetracking the hole. 

A large investment is made by oil and gas companies in acquiring open hole log data. Logging activities can represent between 5% and 15% of total well cost. It is important therefore to ensure that the cost of acquisition can be justified by the value of information generated and that thereafter the information is effectively managed. 

This section will consider the role of appraisal in the field life cycle, the main sources uncertainty in the description of the reservoir, and the appraisal techniques used to reduce this uncertainty. The value of the appraisal activity will be compared with its cost to determine whether such activity is justified. 

In this example it would therefore be justifiable to spend up to 22 million on appraisal activity which would distinguish between the high, medium, and low STOMP cases. If it would cost more than 22 million to determine this, then it would be better to go ahead without the appraisal. The decision tree has therefore been used to place a value on the appraisal activity, and to indicate when it is no longer worthwhile to appraise. 

For the above reasons, gas Is typically economic to develop only if it can be used locally, i.e. if a local demand exists. The exception to this is where a sufficient quantity of gas exists to provide the economy of scale to make transportation of gas or liquefied gas attractive. As a guide, approximately 10 Tcf of recoverable gas would be required to justify building a liquefied natural gas (LNG) plant. Globally there are few such plants, but an example would be the LNG plant in Malaysia which liquefies gas and transports it by refrigerated tanker to Japan. The investment capital required for an LNG plant Is very large typically in the order of 10 billion. 

The number of injectors required may be estimated in a similar manner, but it is unlikely that the exploration and appraisal activities will have included injectivity tests, of say water injection into the water column of the reservoir. In this case, an estimate must be made of the injection potential, based on an assessment of reservoir quality in the water column, which may be reduced by the effects of compaction and diagenesis. Development plans based on water injection or natural aquifer drive often suffer from lack of data from the water bearing part of the reservoir, since appraisal activity to establish the reservoir properties in the water column is frequently overlooked. In the absence of any data, a range of assumptions of injectivity should be generated, to yield a range of number of wells required. If this range introduces large uncertainties into the development plan, then appraisal effort to reduce this uncertainty may be justified. 

In exploration wells which show hydrocarbon indications, it is often required to test the productivity of the well, and to capture a fluid sample. This can be used as proof of whether further exploration and appraisal is justified. If the well is unlikely to be used as... 

In areas where seabed relief makes pipelines vulnerable or where pipelines cannot be justified on economic grounds, tankers are used to store and transport crude from production centres. The simplest method for evacuation is to pump stabilised crude from a processing facility directly to a tanker. 

Artificial lift techniques are discussed in Section 9.6. During production, the operating conditions of any artificial lift technique will be optimised with the objective of maximising production. For example, the optimum gas-liquid ratio will be applied for gas lifting, possibly using computer assisted operations (CAO) as discussed in Section 11.2. Artificial lift may not be installed from the beginning of a development, but at the point where the natural drive energy of the reservoir has reduced. The implementation of artificial lift will be justified, like any other incremental project, on the basis of a positive net present value (see Section 13.4). 

Wells are worked over to increase production, reduce operating cost or reinstate their technical integrity. In terms of economics alone (neglecting safety aspects) a workover can be justified if the net present value of the workover activity is positive (and assuming no other constraints exist). The appropriate discount rate is the company s cost of capital. 

Although the presented results prove the efficiency of radioscopy, this system have certain characteristics which justify to develop and employ further process integrated testing systems. One of this characteristics is that the integration of radioscopy in industrial applications is doubtful because of reasons of radiation protection. This means, that the results from radioscopy should rather be used to fit other systems (acoustic emission analysis or temperature analysis) for industrial applications. 

There are different possibilities to address the above set of equations which can be solved provided 2in > 3i, and provided the measured ToF information varies between measurement points. For the purpose of the present work we have taken two simplifying assumptions (a) one virtual source predominates at each measurement point, m and (b) each virtual source predominates at more than one measurement point. Note that assumption (b) ensures the condition 2m > 3i that is necessary to obtain solutions for Equations (2) and (3). These assumptions are justified by considering the defect surface as an acoustic secondary field source. At each measurement point the transducer predominantly receives signals from an... 

Where a Member State ascertains tliat a product, bearing the CE-marking and used in accordance with its intended use, is liable to endanger the safety of persons or health, it shall take all appropriate measures to withdraw such a product from the market. That Member State shall immediately Inform the Commission which is obliged to investigate whether or not the measure is justified. Where the Commission considers that the measure is justified, it shall immediately inform the Member State which took the initiative and also the other Member States. This entails that the other Member States must also take action against the product concerned. That latter disposition is referred to as the safeguard clause. 

A picture of the electrical lines of force is given in Fig. XV-12 [114] in the plane CD of the ionic groups, it will be a periodic field, whereas a little further into the solution the effect will be more that of a uniformly charged surface. The Donnan treatment is probably best justified if it is supposed that ions from solution penetrate into the region of CD itself and might in fact, lie between CD and AB. 

This expression is not orbitally dependent. As such, a solution of the Hartree-Fock equation (equation (Al.3.18) is much easier to implement. Although Slater exchange was not rigorously justified for non-unifonn electron gases, it was quite successfiil in replicating the essential features of atomic and molecular systems as detennined by Hartree-Fock calculations. 

In a number of classic papers Hohenberg, Kohn and Sham established a theoretical framework for justifying the replacement of die many-body wavefiinction by one-electron orbitals [15, 20, 21]. In particular, they proposed that die charge density plays a central role in describing the electronic stnicture of matter. A key aspect of their work was the local density approximation (LDA). Within this approximation, one can express the exchange energy as... 

The first reliable energy band theories were based on a powerfiil approximation, call the pseudopotential approximation. Within this approximation, the all-electron potential corresponding to interaction of a valence electron with the iimer, core electrons and the nucleus is replaced by a pseudopotential. The pseudopotential reproduces only the properties of the outer electrons. There are rigorous theorems such as the Phillips-Kleinman cancellation theorem that can be used to justify the pseudopotential model [2, 3, 26]. The Phillips-Kleimnan cancellation theorem states that the orthogonality requirement of the valence states to the core states can be described by an effective repulsive... 

This Legendre expansion converges rapidly only for weakly anisotropic potentials. Nonetheless, truncated expansions of this sort are used more often than justified because of their computational advantages. 

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