In 2003 BP installed a dense array of seimic recording equipment on the sea bottom above the Vallhall oil field in the North Sea. Nearly 2500 state-of-the-art seismometers were attached to 120 km of cables that cover a 45 square km area and are connected to a recording platform. The installation is the first of its kind anywhere in the world and cost nearly US$45million. Such permanent monitoring allows the acquisition of ship-borne seismic surveys at regular intervals in time (so-called 4D seismics) for the life of the field (hence the name Life of Field Seismic or LoFS). Because the surveys are identical each time the data can be used to very accurately monitor changes in the reservoir, for example, the migration of oil due to production. The multicomponent sensors can also be used to record less conventional data. For example, in this part of the North Sea shear-waves are much better than the conventional first arriving P-waves at imaging through the cloud of gas that lies above the reservoir. This new way of monitoring an oil field has dramatically improved reservoir management and productivity, and reduce costs in the long term. The sensors are continuously recording, even when active-source (airguns) ship surveys are not being conducted. Thus there is great untapped potential in using these data to study small earthquakes in the subsurface. Such microseismic events are useful because they provide information about regional tectonics and production related forces. They provide information about fault locations and fluid migration, knowledge of which are of great importance to production. Furthermore, such stress releases can lead to well failure (borehole breakout), which costs the industry billions of pounds each year and can be quite dangerous. We are proposing a study of these micro-earthquakes by developing sophisticated imaging techniques that will use the sensors like eyes that can look in different directions into the Earth. Whilst these earthquakes a very small (they release roughly the same amount of energy as breaking a pencil) they can be accurately located and studied because of the redundancies afforded by such an immense amount of data. We can use standard techniques from conventional earthquake seismology to infer the orientation of fault planes and the stress field in the reservoir. A further synergy comes from the detailed information about the field that BP has at hand (e.g., velocity structure). We will work closely with BP staff and will be allowed to use their massive computing clusters to process the data. We are one of the very first organisations being allowed to look at this exciting dataset and the project will produce high-profile results. This is a unique and timely opportunity.

The Petrochemical Industry is very important to the United Kingdom both as a major employer and exporter. Petrochemical facilities extend over very large areas and have extensive, complex infrastructure to transport and store chemicals and gases under high temperatures and pressures. The health and saftey of the workers and of nearby residents is of paramount importance and companies such as BP extend considerable effort and spend very large sums of money to ensure that their petrochemical facilities are as safe as possible. The current health & safety and pollution monitoring approaches at Petrochemical facilities involves the deployment of a large number of gas detectors as key locations around the petrochemical facility. These gas detectors while being extremely accurate are limited in the extent of the area that they can detect gas emissions coming from. Apart from missing gas leaks point-based detectors do not have the capability of identification patterns on infrastructure indicative of stress or weakening of restraining material. Currently available imaging based gas monitoring instruments are not capable of meeting the essential requirements of the Petrochemical industry. Both Thermal cameras with filters and filter-based snapshot systems can detect the presence of high concentrations of a number of gas species but have very poor sensitivity, they cannot differentiate different species from a complex gas and are severely affected by the presence of water vapour in the atmosphere. Imaging Fourier Transform Interferometers (FTIRs) have the potential to overcome the sensitivity and accuracy limitations of these other technologies but current systems are very expensive, very heavy and have a very high power supply requirement with consequent severe effects on the portability and deployment in environments with hazardous leaking gas. There is therefore an urgent need for the development of a low-cost, highly portable imaging FTIR system that can differentiate and quantify gas species at the sensitivity required by the Petrochemical industry. The proposed instrument will be a development of a mid-infrared Fourier Transform Spectrometer, based on a novel static optical configuration, that has been developed at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL). This instrument, known as the micro Fourier Transform Spectrometer (microFTS), employs a simple optical arrangement to split and then recombine light to form a complex modulated interference pattern (known as an interferogram). The instrument is compact (50 mm by 50 mm by 30 mm), lightweight (~0.9 kg) and has a very high data acquisition time rate (~1 x 10-4 s-1). An important, additional component of the project will be the development of an easy-to-use gas identification and analysis software package which will enable the microFTS data to be processed into images showing both the presence and the concentration of the gas species of most importance to the Petrochemical industry. This project will involve collaboratoration with the National Physical Laboratory (NPL). The project will utilise new, state-of-the-art analytical facilities at NPL which will enable a comprehensive evaluation of the sensitivity of the new microFTS instrument in detecting the gas species of most importance to the Petrochemical industry (e.g. methane, carbon monoxide , carbon dioxide, ammonia, acetic acid), at a range of temperatures (both gas and background), concentrations and mixtures. The project will also involve extensive collaboration with BP. A series of extensive field-based evaluation campaigns of the microFTS instrument will be carried out at the BP facilities at Saltend, near Hull. The opportunity to evaluate the design and capabilities of the instrument in real situations under normal atmospheric conditions will be enbale to ensure that the instrument produced at the end of project is an instrument that industry would wish to uti

Understanding the mechanisms that lead to the breakup and evaporation of liquids is a key step towards the design of efficient and clean combustion systems. The complexity of the processes involved in the atomisation of Diesel fuels is such that many facets involved are still not understood. The morphological composition of a typical Diesel spray includes structures such as ligaments, amorphous and spherical droplets, but the quantity of fuel occupied by perfectly spherical droplets can represent a small proportion of the total injected volume. These relatively large non-spherical structures have never been thoroughly investigated and documented in high-pressure sprays, even though the increase in heat transfer surface area of deformed droplets is an influential factor for predicting the correct trend of evaporating Diesel sprays. The characterisation of fuel spray droplets is generally conducted using laser diagnostics that can measure droplet diameters with a high level of accuracy, but they are fundamentally unable to measure the size or shape of non-spherical droplets and ligaments. Hence the data obtained through these diagnostic techniques provide a partial and biased characterisation of the spray. The experimental bias towards spherical droplets is compounded by the complexity of modelling the heating and evaporation of deformed droplets. Consequently, theoretical models for liquid fuel atomisation and vaporisation are based on a number of simplifying hypotheses including the assumption of dispersed spherical droplets. Our proposal seeks to initiate a step change in the description of petroleum and bio fuel spray formation by developing diagnostics and numerical models specifically focused on non-spherical droplets and ligaments. Our approach will build upon recent advances with microscopic imaging to build novel diagnostics and algorithms that can measure the shape, size, velocity and gaseous surrounding of individual droplets and ligaments. This morphological classification, along with the velocity measurements, will be used to develop new phenomenological and numerical models for spray breakup, heating and evaporation. The models will then be implemented into computational fluid dynamics (CFD) codes to simulate spray mixing under modern engine conditions, and generate information where optical diagnostics cannot be applied. These goals will be achieved by combining the expertise of the academic and industrial partners with that of international experts from the University of Bergamo, CORIA, and Moscow State University. The project's concerted approach, aimed at removing the experimental and numerical biases towards spherical droplets, will establish a unique world leading research capability with potential impact for numerous practical spray applications. The project would underpin research in areas that rely upon the atomisation or evaporation of liquids, including the efficient delivery of liquid fuel, pharmaceutical drugs, cryogens, lubricants and selective catalytic reductants.

Bio-refinery has been proposed as a solution to replace oil-derived products with sustainable biotechnologies, which is to produce value-added chemicals from renewable feedstocks. Biomass conversion processes are hampered by the high costs linked to product purification and recovery, which in many cases can be as high as 50%-80% of the total production cost. The primary reason that product recovery cost is so high is because organic acid fermentation needs to be controlled at neutral pH to ensure that the fermentation microorganisms is at its optimal performance condition. When product, organic acid is produced and gradually accumulates in the fermenter, broth pH decreases and drifts immediately. Base will then be added to adjust pH, which results in formation of the organic acid salt. Given that pKa values for most organic acids of commercial interests are between 3 and 5, the use of production hosts that can produce organic acids efficiently below pH 4.0, will decrease or eliminate the formation of organic acid salts. There is therefore, a need to develop new production hosts that have an optimum pH below 4.0. Several species of filamentous fungi can naturally produce high levels of organic acids, however they are difficult to work with because of their filamentous growth, lack of genetic versatility, and the risk of potential harmful by-products such as aflatoxins. Varieties of yeast strains are known for their capability of growth under acidic conditions, and are more amenable to genetic manipulation. Saccharomyces bulderi (aka Kazachstania bulderi), isolated in anaerobic maize silage, is a Saccharomyces sensu lato yeast species with novel physiological characteristics, able to sustain efficient growth rate over a wide range of pHs between 5.0 and 2.5. Such growth characteristics are the results of specific physiological adaptations occurred in this species, making K. bulderi an excellent candidate to be developed as a new production host for low pH fermentation. The genus Kazachstania has around 63 associated species, and despite the fact is closely related to Saccharomyces only limited genetic studies and molecular tools are available. This genus is quite diversified in term of phenotypes, morphologies, genome sizes and chromosome numbers, compared to the genus Saccharomyces. Here, we propose to fully characterise the three known species of K. bulderi at genetic and genomic level. We intent to carry out whole genome sequencing, assemble the genomes into chromosomes, determine polymorphisms, ploidy and chromosomal rearrangements. This knowledge will give us the molecular starting point to understand this species and to create an array of genetic tools for its swift manipulation. Specifically we will engineer the strains to produce a proxy organic acid (i.e. lactic acid) as a proof of concept level. Data on global gene expression collected for these strains grown at high and low pH will help us to identify the key players responsible for the specific physiological adaptations to acidic environments. Hybridisation between yeast species occurs readily in natural and domesticated environments, bringing together different traits in the same genetic background. Hybrids can be resilient to specific conditions and therefore perform better in some harsh industrial environments. We intend to cross different strains and species of Kazachstania genus and assess the resulting hybrids for genome stability and mitochondria DNA inheritance (since different type of mitochondria can affect phenotype). Hybrids with improved biomass at low pH will be selected. The ultimate goal is to be able to evaluate K. bulderi as a new production host for the production of organic acids by fermentation.

The long flexible slender multi-layered pipes, called unbonded flexible risers, are considered as the new-generation risers for deep water applications. However their complex design and highly non-linear behviour coupled with the fact that they undergo types of extreme loadings which are different to those experienced by conventional rigid risers, currently pose many challenges to the offshore industry. The focus this work is on developing fluid, structural, and coupling models and the numerical procedures for the prediction of dynamic response of flexible risers due to vortex induced vibration, in cases where accurate simulation of their complex non-linear behaviour is a critical step in the analysis. In the structural simulation, it is intended to adopt a multi-scale non-linear finite element procedure which consistently links simulations conducted at a detailed small scale and a large structural scale. The fluid simulation work involves the development of a quasi-three-dimensional fluid code to model the cross flow around the flexible risers. The structural and fluid codes will be coupled together by developing an efficient fluid-solid interaction algorithm. The results from the numerical simulation will be validated against the results of experiments which will also be carried out as part of the project.