Despite the hemispheric importance of Great Salt Lake (GSL) as a staging area for migratory birds, little is known about the resources that GSL provides to these birds, or how changes to the GSL ecosystem might impact the avian community. Three species of migratory waterbirds that stage at GSL are Wilson’s phalaropes (Phalaropus tricolor), red-necked phalaropes (Phalaropus lobatus), and eared grebes (Podiceps nigricollis). My objective for this research was to study the impacts of prey availability on the staging ecology of these species. In Chapter 2, I examined the use of GSL habitats by both species of phalaropes. In the high-salinity bays of GSL, phalaropes were most strongly associated with shallow water. In the low-salinity bay, there were no strong associations between phalarope presence and particular habitat characteristics. In Chapter 3, I analyzed the behaviors of phalaropes relative to prey densities. Phalaropes commonly foraged in Carrington Bay, which had the highest densities of brine fly (Ephydridae) adults, and in Farmington Bay, which had high densities of benthic macroinvertebrates. Foraging behavior differed between Wilson’s and red-necked phalaropes, with Wilson’s phalaropes spinning more often than red-necked phalaropes. In Chapter 4, I examined interannual and nightly variations in eared grebe fall migration departures in relation to prey availability and environmental conditions. Eared grebes began migration relatively early when lake temperatures were relatively warm, densities of brine shrimp (Artemia franciscana) adults were high, and densities of brine shrimp cysts were low. The likelihood that eared grebes would depart on a given night was positively associated with the average barometric pressure 12 hours prior to sunset. The resources provided by GSL support substantial proportions of the staging populations of phalaropes and eared grebes. Management efforts should seek to maintain the habitats and resources needed by phalaropes and eared grebes at GSL. Future large-scale diversions of freshwater may threaten GSL’s suitability as a staging area for these birds.

Osmotic distillation is a process of removing water from an aqueous solution, driven by water vapour pressure gradient across a hydrophobic membrane. The process occurs at or below ambient temperature and under atmospheric pressure. This research project investigates the osmotic distillation process in hollow fibre modules using hollow fibres PP375, PV375 and PV660 supplied by Memcor Australia. Operating conditions such as temperature, feed concentration and brine cross flow velocity, but not the feed cross flow velocity, were found to have significant effect on the flux. Models for heat and mass transfers were used to study the polarisation phenomena in osmotic distillation. Temperature and concentration profiles at the membrane surfaces due to polarisation were quantified. Scholfield and Ordinary Diffusion models for flux prediction based on the bulk conditions were developed and validated. Models for water activity and viscosity of aqueous glucose and calcium chloride solutions were also developed and validated in this work. / Master of Science (Hons)

Over fifty small sinkholes (~1 meter in depth and width) were found in conjunction with structural damage to homes in an area south of Cleveland, TX. The local geology lacks carbonate and evaporite deposits associated with normal sinkhole development through dissolution. The morphology and distribution of sinkholes, and the geologic setting of the site are consistent with piping erosion. However, the site lacked the significant hydraulic gradient or exit points for sediment associated with traditional piping erosion. In areas of sinkholes, geophysical measurements of apparent electrical conductivity delineated anomalously high conductivity levels that are interpreted as a brine release from a nearby oil-field waste injection well. The contaminated areas have sodium adsorption ratios (SAR) as high as 19, compared to background levels of 3. Sodium has been shown to cause dispersion of soil colloids, allowing for sediment transport at very low velocities. Thus, subsurface erosion of dispersed sediment could be possible without significant hydraulic gradients. This hypothesis is backed by the observation of the depletion of colloidal particles within the E-horizon of sinkholes. However, there is a lack of precedence of waste brines initiating colloid dispersion. Also, sodium dispersion is not thought to be an important process in piping erosion in humid settings such as this one. Therefore, laboratory experiments on samples from the site area, designed to simulate field conditions, were conducted to measure dispersion verses pH, SAR and electrical conductivity (EC). Analysis of the experimental data with neural networks showed that an increase in SAR did increase dispersion. A dispersion prediction map, constructed with the trained neural network and calibrated geophysical data, showed correlation between sinkhole locations and increased predicted dispersion. This research indicates that a contaminant high in sodium content has caused colloidal dispersion, which may have allowed nontraditional subsurface erosion to occur in an area lacking a significant hydraulic gradient.

<p>African medicinal plants are commonly used throughout Africa to treat a variety of ailments including wounds and ulcers, cough and chest complaints, gingivitis, fever and gonorrhoea, indication all related to infection and inflammation. In screening several plant species from an inventory of common medicinal plants from both South and West Africa for diverse medicinal purposes, 6 plants were selected because of their interesting and useful ethnomedicinal values.</p>

The current study investigated application of natural adsorbents in brine treatment. Brines are hypersaline waters generated in power stations and mining industries rich in Mg2+, K+, Ca2+, Na+, SO4 2- , Cl- and traces of heavy metals, thus there is a need for these brines to be treated to recover potable water and remove problematic elements. Natural adsorbents have been successfully used in waste water treatment because of their high surface area and high adsorptive properties when they are conditioned with acid or base. The investigation of pH showed that natural adsorbents did not perform well at low pH of 4 and 6. The adsorbents were able to work efficiently at the natural pH of 8.52 of the brine solution. These results show that natural adsorbents hold great potential to remove cationic major components and selected heavy metal species from industrial brine wastewater. Heterogeneity of natural adsorbents samples, even when they have the same origin, could be a problem when wastewater treatment systems utilizing natural clinoptilolite and bentonite are planned to be developed. Therefore, it is very important to characterize the reserves fully in order to make them attractive in developing treatment technologies.

Esta tesis explica com mejorar la eficiencia del proceso de ultrafiltración en la desalinización de agua de mar. Esto se consigue optimizando diferentes procesos de limpieza como los contralavados y las limpiezas químicas mejoradas. Para conseguirlo se siguen diferentes estrategias como reducir el número de pasos de los contralavados, reducir la frecuencia de los contralavados, usar salmorra proveniente del concentrado de osmosis y reducir el consumo de químicos. Se propone una nueva metodología para analizar los ciclos de limpieza mediante la modelización del proceso. Diferentes tipos de fibra son analizados mediante su permeabilidad y tolerancia a la suciedad. Se presenta una nueva metodología para prevenir la cloración de las membranas de osmosis inversa causadas por las limpiezas químicas mejoradas que se llevan a cabo aguas arriba. Todos los descubrimientos son validados con datos obtenidos de plantas reales. Estas mejoras aumentan la eficiencia del proceso hasta al 98% y reducen el coste de operación de la ultrafiltración en un 7%. / This thesis gives an overview on how to improve efficiency of the ultrafiltration filtration process in seawater desalination. This is achieved by optimizing different cleaning processes such as the backwash and the chemical enhanced backwash. Key success factors rely on reducing the number of backwash steps, improving the backwash frequency, using reverse osmosis brine for backwashing and reducing the chemical consumption. A new methodology to analyze these cleanings cycles is proposed through modeling the process. Different fibers types are also analyzed according to its permeability and its fouling tolerance. A methodology to prevent reverse osmosis chlorination from upstream chemical enhanced backwash cleaning is presented. All the findings are validated through real plant operating data. The proposed improvements increase the process efficiency to 98% and lead to a 7% cost reduction in the ultrafiltration process.

Capturing and storing carbon dioxide (CO2) underground for thousands of years is one way to reduce atmospheric greenhouse gases, often associated with global warming. Leakage of CO2 through wells is one of the major concerns when storing CO2 in depleted oil and gas reservoirs. CO2-injection candidates could be new wells, or old wells that are active, closed or abandoned. To prevent the leakage, the possible leakage paths and the mechanisms triggering these paths must be examined and identified. It is known that the leakage paths can occur due to CO2-rock interaction and CO2-water-cement interaction. Interaction between well cement and carbon dioxide has attracted much renewed interest because of its implication in geological storage of carbon dioxide. The diffusion of CO2-water through well cement is a long-term phenomenon which can take many thousand years. Partial pressure, porosity, permeability, cement type, moisture content and temperature are the factors that affect the carbonation of well cement. The objective of this research is to investigate the chemical reactions of the dissolved CO2 in the synthetic formation water with the plugs of well cement. Cement specimens were left in contact with CO2 saturated brine at 1100 psi and 65

A limited number of laboratory studies and pilot programs have been reported in chemical Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR) flooding of carbonate reservoirs (Adams & Schievelbein, 1987). Fewer still have involved surfactants in limestone reservoirs. No surfactant/polymer flood on a field wide basis of a carbonate reservoir has ever been documented in the literature (Manrique, Muci, & Gurfinkel, 2010). This void represents a colossal opportunity given that nearly a third of the 32 billion barrels of oil consumed in the world each year come from carbonate reservoirs (Sheng, 2011, pp. 1, 254). This thesis is based on experiments with a high hardness (~5,000 ppm divalent ions) carbonate field. Phase behavior, aqueous stability, and core flood experiments were performed using polymer and various surfactants and co-solvents. Both commercially available and laboratory synthesized surfactants were tested. The objective was to optimize the chemical injection design in order to lower interfacial tension between water and oil in the reservoir. Research was also done with alkali intended for use with hard brines. The main challenges when working with hard brine were poor solubilization and low aqueous stability limits. However, highly propoxylated and ethoxylated surfactants mixed with internal olefin sulfonates, hydrophilic sulfates, and sec-butanol were observed to have very high solubilization ratios, fast phase behavior equilibration times, negligible viscous macroemulsion effects, and excellent aqueous stability. Spinning drop interfacial tensiometer tests confirmed low IFT values were obtained for a range of acceptable salinities with hard brine. Three core floods were performed using one of the surfactant formulations developed. One flood was done with field core, brine, and crude oil and failed to meet expectations because of high levels of heterogeneity (vugs) within the core that lead to an elongated oil bank and low and slow oil recovery. The other floods were done with Estillades Limestone. The first Estillades flood used hard synthetic field brine and had better mobility but poor oil recovery. The last core flood had good mobility and recovered 90% of the residual oil to water flooding, but only after a total of 1.1 pore volumes of 1.0 wt% surfactant solution were injected. The results provided in this thesis constitute proof of concept that S/P flooding can be done in high salinity and hardness reservoirs. / text

Water scarcity is one of the biggest issues we have to face as population and water consumption levels increase despite a fixed supply of renewable fresh water. Meeting the challenges that water scarcity poses to food production, ecosystem health, and political and social stability will require new approaches to using and managing water. Desalination already plays an essential role in water management. It constitutes a secure source of safe drinking water supply once demand management measures are fully implemented. Overcoming problems related to brine minimization and disposal is key to sustainable, efficient inland water desalination. The main focus of this was the investigation of technical limits and improvements for application in inland desalination. The first part of the dissertation covers the study of Membrane Distillation (MD) for desalination of water. The second part provides a broad perspective of Reverse Osmosis (RO), pretreatments -comparison of slow sand filtration and microfiltration-, post-mortem study of membranes to determining fouling and scaling causes, and RO brine minimization via Vibratory Shear Enhance Processing (VSEP®) for use in RO brine minimization. The study of Vacuum Membrane Distillation in a hollow fiber membrane was studied. Experimental work is supported by an original mathematical model to expose the physics of VMD and support predictions that extend VMD results beyond these generated in the laboratory. The advantages and disadvantages of each pretreatment, including their effects the effect on the performance of RO, a post-mortem membrane study and an economic analysis. The post-mortem study of membranes used during Yuma Desalting Plant operation. This work was used to identify the best pretreatment and more suitable membrane to treat saline water in the lower Colorado River. The work performed during the brine minimization study using VSEP®. This study included experimental data and an extensive economic analysis comparing Ion Exchange (IX) as pretreatment and VSEP® as post-treatment for RO.

Over fifty small sinkholes (~1 meter in depth and width) were found in conjunction with structural damage to homes in an area south of Cleveland, TX. The local geology lacks carbonate and evaporite deposits associated with normal sinkhole development through dissolution. The morphology and distribution of sinkholes, and the geologic setting of the site are consistent with piping erosion. However, the site lacked the significant hydraulic gradient or exit points for sediment associated with traditional piping erosion. In areas of sinkholes, geophysical measurements of apparent electrical conductivity delineated anomalously high conductivity levels that are interpreted as a brine release from a nearby oil-field waste injection well. The contaminated areas have sodium adsorption ratios (SAR) as high as 19, compared to background levels of 3. Sodium has been shown to cause dispersion of soil colloids, allowing for sediment transport at very low velocities. Thus, subsurface erosion of dispersed sediment could be possible without significant hydraulic gradients. This hypothesis is backed by the observation of the depletion of colloidal particles within the E-horizon of sinkholes. However, there is a lack of precedence of waste brines initiating colloid dispersion. Also, sodium dispersion is not thought to be an important process in piping erosion in humid settings such as this one. Therefore, laboratory experiments on samples from the site area, designed to simulate field conditions, were conducted to measure dispersion verses pH, SAR and electrical conductivity (EC). Analysis of the experimental data with neural networks showed that an increase in SAR did increase dispersion. A dispersion prediction map, constructed with the trained neural network and calibrated geophysical data, showed correlation between sinkhole locations and increased predicted dispersion. This research indicates that a contaminant high in sodium content has caused colloidal dispersion, which may have allowed nontraditional subsurface erosion to occur in an area lacking a significant hydraulic gradient.