1.
Pumpjack
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A pumpjack is the overground drive for a reciprocating piston pump in an oil well. It is used to mechanically lift liquid out of the if not enough bottom hole pressure exists for the liquid to flow all the way to the surface. The arrangement is used for onshore wells producing little oil. Pumpjacks are common in oil-rich areas, depending on the size of the pump, it generally produces 5 to 40 litres of liquid at each stroke. Often this is an emulsion of oil and water. Pump size is determined by the depth and weight of the oil to remove. A pumpjack converts the motion of the motor to a vertical reciprocating motion to drive the pump shaft. The engineering term for this type of mechanism is a walking beam and it was often employed in stationary and marine steam engine designs in the 18th and 19th centuries. In the early days, pumpjacks worked by rod lines running horizontally above the ground to a wheel on an eccentric in a mechanism known as a central power. The central power, which operate a dozen or more pumpjacks. Among the advantages of this scheme was only having one motor to power all the pumpjacks rather than individual motors for each, however, among the many difficulties was maintaining system balance as individual well loads changed. Modern pumpjacks are powered by a prime mover, common off-grid pumpjack engines run on natural gas, often casing gas produced from the well, but pumpjacks have been run on many types of fuel, such as propane and diesel fuel. In harsh climates, such motors and engines may be housed in a shack for protection from the elements, engines that power water pumpjacks often receive natural gas from the nearest available gas grid. The cranks raise and lower one end of an I-beam which is free to move on an A-frame, on the other end of the beam is a curved metal box called a horse head or donkey head, so named due to its appearance. A cable made of steel—occasionally, fibreglass—called a bridle, connects the head to the polished rod. The cranks themselves also produce counterbalance due to their weight, so on pumpjacks that do not carry heavy loads. Sometimes, however, crank-balanced units can become prohibitively heavy due to the need for counterweights, currently, Lufkin Industries offer air-balanced units, where counterbalance is provided by a pneumatic cylinder charged with air from a compressor, eliminating the need for counterweights. The polished rod has a fit to the stuffing box, letting it move in
2.
Midland, Texas
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Midland is a city in and the county seat of Midland County, Texas, United States, on the Southern Plains of the states western area. A small portion of the city extends into Martin County, at the 2010 census, the population of Midland was 111,147, and a 2015 estimate gave a total of 132,950, making it the twenty-fourth most populous city in the state of Texas. Due to the oil boom in Midland, certain officials have given population estimates above 155,000, the metropolitan area is also a component of the larger Midland−Odessa, Texas Combined Statistical Area, which had an estimated population of 295,987 on July 1,2012. People in Midland are called Midlanders, Midland was founded as the midway point between Fort Worth and El Paso on the Texas and Pacific Railroad in 1881. It is the hometown of former First Lady Laura Bush, and the home of former Presidents George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush. Midland was established in June 1881 as Midway Station, on the Texas, Midland became the county seat of Midland County in March 1885, when that county was first organized and separated from Tom Green County. By 1890, it had one of the most important cattle shipping centers in the state. The city was incorporated in 1906, and by 1910 the city established its first fire department, soon, Midland was transformed into the administrative center of the West Texas oil fields. During the Second World War, Midland was the largest bombardier training base in the country, a second boom period began after the war, with the discovery and development of the Spraberry Trend, still ranked as the third-largest oil field in the United States by total reserves. Yet another boom period took place during the 1970s, with the oil prices associated with the oil. Today, the Permian Basin produces one fifth of the total petroleum. Midlands economy still relies heavily on petroleum, however, the city has diversified to become a regional telecommunications. By August 2006, a period of crude oil production had caused a significant workforce deficit. According to the Midland Chamber of Commerce, at that time there were almost 2,000 more jobs available in the Permian Basin than there were workers to fill them, John Howard Griffin wrote a history of Midland in 1959, Land of the High Sky. In 1967, the U. S. Supreme Court heard the case of Avery v. Midland County, Midland mayor Hank Avery had sued Midland County, challenging the electoral-districting scheme in effect for elections to the County Commissioners Court. The county districts geographically quartered the county, but the city of Midland, in the northwestern quarter, the majority of the U. S. Supreme Court held that the districting inequality violated the Fourteenth Amendments Equal Protection clause. The dissenting minority held that this example of the Warren Courts policy of incorporation at the local-government level exceeded the Courts constitutional authority, Midland is located at 32°0′N 102°6′W, in the Permian Basin in the plains of West Texas. According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has an area of 71.5 square miles
3.
West Texas
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West Texas is a loosely defined part of the U. S. state of Texas, generally encompassing the arid and semiarid lands west of a line drawn between the cities of Fort Worth and Del Rio. There is no consensus on the boundary between eastern and western Texas, West Texas is often subdivided according to distinct physiographic features. The portion of West Texas that lies west of the Pecos River is often referred to as Far West Texas or the Trans-Pecos, the Trans-Pecos lies within the Chihuahuan Desert, the most arid portion of the state. Another part of West Texas is the Llano Estacado, a vast region of high, level plains extending into Eastern New Mexico, to the east of the Llano Estacado lies the “redbed country” of the Rolling Plains and to the south of the Llano Estacado lies the Edwards Plateau. The Rolling Plains and the Edwards Plateau subregions act as transitional zones between eastern and western Texas, the counties included in the West Texas region vary depending on the organization. West Texas has a lower population density than the rest of the state. It was once inhabited by nomadic Native American tribes, such as the Apache, Comanche, and Kiowa. This period was marked with savage war waged between the US Army, frontier Texans, and the Texas Rangers on one side and native peoples on the other. During the later 19th century, the population of Americans. This period was marked by the mapping and geographical intelligence collection of a denied area held by hostile Indian tribes. In turn, the Comanche way of war reached its zenith, having either subjugated or defeated the other Indian clans. In contrast, the support by the US government of Americans settlement. By the end of the 19th century, West Texas had been pacified of hostile Indians, leaving its turbulent history to what remained of outlaw Texans and people such as Judge Roy Bean. With the defeat of the Comanche and their allies and their removal upon demand by Texas from the state, the area was settled by Texans. These decades marked the last great cattle drives, the zenith of American cowboys, small farmers and ranchers battling sheepherders. This continuing socioeconomic trends resulted in the region having a mix of Mexican American and American communities of the modern day. As a result of historical development, many Mexican Americans still have close family ties in Mexico. Of American settlers, during the migration era, the vast majority were either East Texans or other Southerners going west for new opportunities
4.
Boring (earth)
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Boring is drilling a hole, tunnel, or well in the earth. Boring is used for a various applications in geology, agriculture, hydrology, civil engineering, Drilling is also used in vertical and inclined shaft construction. When drilling in stone, one must pay attention to the type of material. There are three different classifications of drill bits used for drilling into stone, soft, medium, soft formation rock bits are used in unconsolidated sands, clays, and soft limestones, etc. Medium formation bits are used in dolomites, limestones, and shale, while hard formation bits are used in shale, mudstones, granite, limestones. Testing of the material in boreholes is also possible, in soft ground the standard penetration test can be used to determine the strength of the material. In rock in-situ stress testing using hydrofracturing or overcoring, Acoustic Televiewer can be used to map discontinuities to determine their orientation and it is also possible once a borehole is complete to measure the permeability. Samples of water and material are also taken for examination and lab testing, in 1961 the United States began Project Mohole, an ambitious attempt to drill through the Earths crust into the Mohorovičić discontinuity. The project was discontinued due to high cost, the Kola Superdeep Borehole was a similar project of the USSR in the 1970s and early 1980s the USSR attempted to drill a hole through the crust, to sample the Mohorovicic Discontinuity. The deepest hole ever drilled failed not because of lack of money or time, at approximately 12,000 metres depth, rock begins to act more like a plastic solid than a rigid solid. Rock temperatures of several hundred degrees Celsius, required that the fluid be refrigerated before being sent to the cutting face of the drill. As the drill bits burnt out and were removed for replacement, the hole simply flowed closed, further attempts are planned by American consortia and further Russian attempts in Finland. Ice cores are drilled by hollow bits, in much the way that sediment cores are drilled. When all that is needed is the hole, hot water drill technology may be used to melt holes in ice or snow for both Arctic and Antarctic research purposes, equipment for such a method is also lightweight when drilling deep holes, compared to traditional drilling equipment. Hot water drilling has been used successfully in the IceCube Neutrino Detector, directional boring Drifter Oil well Standard penetration test Tunnel boring machine Notes Outokumpu Deep Drilling
5.
Earth
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Earth, otherwise known as the World, or the Globe, is the third planet from the Sun and the only object in the Universe known to harbor life. It is the densest planet in the Solar System and the largest of the four terrestrial planets, according to radiometric dating and other sources of evidence, Earth formed about 4.54 billion years ago. Earths gravity interacts with objects in space, especially the Sun. During one orbit around the Sun, Earth rotates about its axis over 365 times, thus, Earths axis of rotation is tilted, producing seasonal variations on the planets surface. The gravitational interaction between the Earth and Moon causes ocean tides, stabilizes the Earths orientation on its axis, Earths lithosphere is divided into several rigid tectonic plates that migrate across the surface over periods of many millions of years. About 71% of Earths surface is covered with water, mostly by its oceans, the remaining 29% is land consisting of continents and islands that together have many lakes, rivers and other sources of water that contribute to the hydrosphere. The majority of Earths polar regions are covered in ice, including the Antarctic ice sheet, Earths interior remains active with a solid iron inner core, a liquid outer core that generates the Earths magnetic field, and a convecting mantle that drives plate tectonics. Within the first billion years of Earths history, life appeared in the oceans and began to affect the Earths atmosphere and surface, some geological evidence indicates that life may have arisen as much as 4.1 billion years ago. Since then, the combination of Earths distance from the Sun, physical properties, in the history of the Earth, biodiversity has gone through long periods of expansion, occasionally punctuated by mass extinction events. Over 99% of all species that lived on Earth are extinct. Estimates of the number of species on Earth today vary widely, over 7.4 billion humans live on Earth and depend on its biosphere and minerals for their survival. Humans have developed diverse societies and cultures, politically, the world has about 200 sovereign states, the modern English word Earth developed from a wide variety of Middle English forms, which derived from an Old English noun most often spelled eorðe. It has cognates in every Germanic language, and their proto-Germanic root has been reconstructed as *erþō, originally, earth was written in lowercase, and from early Middle English, its definite sense as the globe was expressed as the earth. By early Modern English, many nouns were capitalized, and the became the Earth. More recently, the name is simply given as Earth. House styles now vary, Oxford spelling recognizes the lowercase form as the most common, another convention capitalizes Earth when appearing as a name but writes it in lowercase when preceded by the. It almost always appears in lowercase in colloquial expressions such as what on earth are you doing, the oldest material found in the Solar System is dated to 4. 5672±0.0006 billion years ago. By 4. 54±0.04 Gya the primordial Earth had formed, the formation and evolution of Solar System bodies occurred along with the Sun
6.
Petroleum
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Petroleum is a naturally occurring, yellow-to-black liquid found in geological formations beneath the Earths surface, which is commonly refined into various types of fuels. Components of petroleum are separated using a technique called fractional distillation and it consists of hydrocarbons of various molecular weights and other organic compounds. The name petroleum covers both naturally occurring unprocessed crude oil and petroleum products that are made up of refined crude oil. A fossil fuel, petroleum is formed when large quantities of dead organisms, usually zooplankton and algae, are buried underneath sedimentary rock, Petroleum has mostly been recovered by oil drilling. Drilling is carried out studies of structural geology, sedimentary basin analysis. Petroleum is used in manufacturing a variety of materials. Concern over the depletion of the earths finite reserves of oil, the burning of fossil fuels plays the major role in the current episode of global warming. The word petroleum comes from Greek, πέτρα for rocks and Greek, the term was found in 10th-century Old English sources. It was used in the treatise De Natura Fossilium, published in 1546 by the German mineralogist Georg Bauer, Petroleum, in one form or another, has been used since ancient times, and is now important across society, including in economy, politics and technology. Great quantities of it were found on the banks of the river Issus, ancient Persian tablets indicate the medicinal and lighting uses of petroleum in the upper levels of their society. By 347 AD, oil was produced from bamboo-drilled wells in China, early British explorers to Myanmar documented a flourishing oil extraction industry based in Yenangyaung that, in 1795, had hundreds of hand-dug wells under production. The mythological origins of the oil fields at Yenangyaung, and its hereditary monopoly control by 24 families, Pechelbronn is said to be the first European site where petroleum has been explored and used. The still active Erdpechquelle, a spring where petroleum appears mixed with water has been used since 1498, Oil sands have been mined since the 18th century. In Wietze in lower Saxony, natural asphalt/bitumen has been explored since the 18th century, both in Pechelbronn as in Wietze, the coal industry dominated the petroleum technologies. In 1848 Young set up a small business refining the crude oil, Young eventually succeeded, by distilling cannel coal at a low heat, in creating a fluid resembling petroleum, which when treated in the same way as the seep oil gave similar products. The production of oils and solid paraffin wax from coal formed the subject of his patent dated 17 October 1850. In 1850 Young & Meldrum and Edward William Binney entered into partnership under the title of E. W. Binney & Co. at Bathgate in West Lothian, the worlds first oil refinery was built in 1856 by Ignacy Łukasiewicz. The demand for petroleum as a fuel for lighting in North America, edwin Drakes 1859 well near Titusville, Pennsylvania, is popularly considered the first modern well
7.
Hydrocarbon
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In organic chemistry, a hydrocarbon is an organic compound consisting entirely of hydrogen and carbon, and thus are group 14 hydrides. Hydrocarbons from which one atom has been removed are functional groups. Aromatic hydrocarbons, alkanes, alkenes, cycloalkanes and alkyne-based compounds are different types of hydrocarbons, the classifications for hydrocarbons, defined by IUPAC nomenclature of organic chemistry are as follows, Saturated hydrocarbons are the simplest of the hydrocarbon species. They are composed entirely of single bonds and are saturated with hydrogen, the formula for acyclic saturated hydrocarbons is CnH2n+2. The most general form of saturated hydrocarbons is CnH2n+2, where r is the number of rings and those with exactly one ring are the cycloalkanes. Saturated hydrocarbons are the basis of petroleum fuels and are found as linear or branched species. Substitution reaction is their characteristics property, hydrocarbons with the same molecular formula but different structural formulae are called structural isomers. As given in the example of 3-methylhexane and its higher homologues, chiral saturated hydrocarbons constitute the side chains of biomolecules such as chlorophyll and tocopherol. Unsaturated hydrocarbons have one or more double or triple bonds between carbon atoms and those with double bond are called alkenes. Those with one double bond have the formula CnH2n and those containing triple bonds are called alkyne. Those with one triple bond have the formula CnH2n−2, aromatic hydrocarbons, also known as arenes, are hydrocarbons that have at least one aromatic ring. Hydrocarbons can be gases, liquids, waxes or low melting solids or polymers, in terms of shells, carbon consists of an incomplete outer shell, which comprises 4 electrons, and thus has 4 electrons available for covalent or dative bonding. Some hydrocarbons also are abundant in the solar system, lakes of liquid methane and ethane have been found on Titan, Saturns largest moon, confirmed by the Cassini-Huygens Mission. Hydrocarbons are also abundant in nebulae forming polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon compounds, hydrocarbons are a primary energy source for current civilizations. The predominant use of hydrocarbons is as a fuel source. In their solid form, hydrocarbons take the form of asphalt, mixtures of volatile hydrocarbons are now used in preference to the chlorofluorocarbons as a propellant for aerosol sprays, due to chlorofluorocarbons impact on the ozone layer. Methane and ethane are gaseous at ambient temperatures and cannot be liquefied by pressure alone. Propane is however easily liquefied, and exists in propane bottles mostly as a liquid, butane is so easily liquefied that it provides a safe, volatile fuel for small pocket lighters
8.
Natural gas
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It is formed when layers of decomposing plant and animal matter are exposed to intense heat and pressure under the surface of the Earth over millions of years. The energy that the plants originally obtained from the sun is stored in the form of bonds in the gas. Natural gas is a fuel used as a source of energy for heating, cooking. It is also used as fuel for vehicles and as a feedstock in the manufacture of plastics. Natural gas is found in underground rock formations or associated with other hydrocarbon reservoirs in coal beds. Petroleum is another resource and fossil fuel found in proximity to. Most natural gas was created over time by two mechanisms, biogenic and thermogenic, biogenic gas is created by methanogenic organisms in marshes, bogs, landfills, and shallow sediments. Deeper in the earth, at temperature and pressure, thermogenic gas is created from buried organic material. In petroleum production gas is burnt as flare gas. The World Bank estimates that over 150 cubic kilometers of gas are flared or vented annually. Before natural gas can be used as a fuel, most, Natural gas is often informally referred to simply as gas, especially when compared to other energy sources such as oil or coal. However, it is not to be confused with gasoline, especially in North America, Natural gas was used by the Chinese in about 500 BCE. They discovered a way to transport gas seeping from the ground in crude pipelines of bamboo to where it was used to salt water to extract the salt. The worlds first industrial extraction of gas started at Fredonia, New York. By 2009,66000 km³ had been used out of the total 850000 km³ of estimated remaining reserves of natural gas. An annual increase in usage of 2–3% could result in currently recoverable reserves lasting significantly less, unwanted natural gas was a disposal problem in the active oil fields. If there was not a market for natural gas near the wellhead it was expensive to pipe to the end user. In the 19th century and early 20th century, unwanted gas was burned off at oil fields
9.
History of science and technology in China
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Among the earliest inventions were the abacus, the shadow clock, and the first items such as Kongming lanterns. The Tang Dynasty in particular, was a time of great innovation, a good deal of exchange occurred between Western and Chinese discoveries up to the Qing Dynasty. In the 19th and 20th century the introduction of Western technology was a factor in the modernization of China. Much of the early Western work in the history of science in China was done by Joseph Needham, the Warring States period began 2500 years ago at the time of the invention of the crossbow. Needham notes that the invention of the crossbow far outstripped the progress in defensive armor, at this time, there were also many nascent schools of thought in China — the Hundred Schools of Thought, scattered among many polities. The schools served as communities which advised the rulers of these states, mo Di introduced concepts useful to one of those rulers, such as defensive fortification. One of these concepts, fa was extended by the School of Names, the development of a school of logic was cut short by the defeat of Mohisms political sponsors by the Qin Dynasty, and the subsumption of fa as law rather than method by the Legalists. You conquered the empire on horseback, but from horseback you will never succeed in ruling it, derived from Taoist philosophy, one of the newest longstanding contributions of the ancient Chinese are in Traditional Chinese medicine, including acupuncture and herbal medicine. These claims, however, are disputed and rely on much supposition. The Book of Silk was the first definitive atlas of comets and it listed 29 comets that appeared over a period of about 300 years, with renderings of comets describing an event its appearance corresponded to. In architecture, the pinnacle of Chinese technology manifested itself in the Great Wall of China, typical Chinese architecture changed little from the succeeding Han Dynasty until the 19th century. The Qin Dynasty also developed the crossbow, which became the mainstream weapon in Europe. Several remains of crossbows have been found among the soldiers of the Terracotta Army in the tomb of Qin Shi Huang, the Eastern Han Dynasty scholar and astronomer Zhang Heng invented the first water-powered rotating armillary sphere, and catalogued 2500 stars and over 100 constellations. In 132, he invented the first seismological detector, called the Houfeng Didong Yi, according to the History of Later Han Dynasty, this seismograph was an urn-like instrument, which would drop one of eight balls to indicate when and in which direction an earthquake had occurred. On June 13,2005, Chinese seismologists announced that they had created a replica of the instrument, the mechanical engineer Ma Jun was another impressive figure from ancient China. However, Ma Juns most impressive invention was the south-pointing chariot and it incorporated the use of a differential gear in order to apply equal amount of torque to wheels rotating at different speeds, a device that is found in all modern automobiles. Sliding calipers were invented in China almost 2,000 years ago, the Chinese civilization was the earliest civilization to experiment successfully with aviation, with the kite and Kongming lantern being the first flying machines. The Four Great Inventions are the compass, gunpowder, papermaking and printing, paper and printing were developed first
10.
Drill bit
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Drill bits are cutting tools used to remove material to create holes, almost always of circular cross-section. Drill bits come in sizes and shape and can create different kinds of holes in many different materials. In order to create holes drill bits are attached to a drill, the drill will grasp the upper end of a bit called the shank in the chuck. Drill bits come in sizes, described in the drill bit sizes article. A comprehensive drill bit and tap size chart lists metric and imperial sized drill bits alongside the required screw tap sizes, there are also certain specialized drill bits that can create holes with a non-circular cross-section. While the term drill may refer to either a machine or a drill bit for use in a drilling machine. In this article, for clarity, drill bit or bit is used throughout to refer to a bit for use in a drilling machine, Drill bit geometry has several characteristics, The spiral in the drill bit controls the rate of chip removal. A fast spiral drill bit is used in high feed rate applications under low spindle speeds, the point angle, or the angle formed at the tip of the bit, is determined by the material the bit will be operating in. Harder materials require a larger point angle, and softer materials require a sharper angle, the correct point angle for the hardness of the material influences wandering, chatter, hole shape, and wear rate. The lip angle determines the amount of support provided to the cutting edge, a greater lip angle will cause the bit to cut more aggressively under the same amount of point pressure as a bit with a smaller lip angle. Both conditions can cause binding, wear, and eventual failure of the tool. The proper amount of lip clearance is determined by the point angle, the length of a bit determines how deep a hole can be drilled, and also determines the stiffness of the bit and accuracy of the resultant hole. While longer bits can drill deeper holes, they are flexible meaning that the holes they drill may have an inaccurate location or wander from the intended axis. Twist drill bits are available in lengths, referred to as Stub-length or Screw-Machine-length, the extremely common Jobber-length. Most drill bits for use have straight shanks. For heavy duty drilling in industry, bits with tapered shanks are sometimes used, other types shanks used include hex-shaped, and various proprietary quick release systems. The diameter-to-length ratio of the bit is usually between 1,1 and 1,10. Much higher ratios are possible, but the higher the ratio, the best geometry to use depends upon the properties of the material being drilled
11.
Bamboo
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The bamboos /bæmˈbuː/ are evergreen perennial flowering plants in the subfamily Bambusoideae of the grass family Poaceae. The dicotyledonous woody xylem is also absent, the absence of secondary growth wood causes the stems of monocots, including the palms and large bamboos, to be columnar rather than tapering. Bamboos include some of the plants in the world, due to a unique rhizome-dependent system. Certain species of bamboo can grow 91 cm within a 24-hour period, giant bamboos are the largest members of the grass family. Bamboos are of economic and cultural significance in South Asia, Southeast Asia and East Asia, being used for building materials, as a food source. Bamboo has a higher compressive strength than wood, brick, or concrete. The word bamboo comes from the Kannada term bambu, which was introduced to English through Indonesian, the subfamily in its current sense belongs to the BOP clade of grasses, where it is sister to the Pooideae. The woody bamboos do not form a group, instead. Altogether, more than 1,400 species are placed in 115 genera, most bamboo are native to warm and moist tropical and warm temperate climates. However, many species are found in climates, from hot tropical regions to cool mountainous regions. In the Asia-Pacific region they occur across East Asia, from 50°N latitude in Sakhalin south to Northern Australia, and west to India, China, Japan, Korea, India, and Australia, all have several endemic populations. They also occur in numbers in sub-Saharan Africa, confined to tropical areas, from southern Senegal in the north to southern Mozambique. Bamboo is also native through Central America and Mexico, northward into the Southeastern United States, canada and continental Europe is not known to have any native species of bamboo. Recently, some attempts have been made to grow bamboo on a basis in the Great Lakes region of east-central Africa. In the United States, several companies are growing, harvesting, bamboos include some of the fastest-growing plants on Earth, with reported growth rates up to 91 cm in 24 hours. Primarily growing in regions of warmer climates during the late Cretaceous period, some of the largest timber bamboo can grow over 30 m tall, and be as large as 25–30 cm in diameter. However, the range for mature bamboo is species-dependent, with the smallest bamboos reaching only several inches high at maturity. A typical height range that would cover many of the common bamboos grown in the United States is 4. 6–12 m, depending on species
12.
Brine
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Brine is a solution of salt in water. In different contexts, brine may refer to salt solutions ranging from about 3. 5% up to about 26%, fahrenheit could reliably reproduce by freezing brine. By reference, seawater usually freezes at −2 °C, at 100 °C, saturated sodium chloride brine is about 28% salt by weight. At 0 °C, brine can only hold about 26% salt, the thermal conductivity of seawater is 0.6 W/mK at 25 °C. The majority of hydrogen produced through electrolysis is a side product in the production of chlorine. 2 NaCl +2 H2O →2 NaOH + H2 + Cl2 Brine is a fluid used in large refrigeration installations for the transport of thermal energy from place to place. The lowest freezing point obtainable for NaCl brine is −21.1 °C at 23. 3wt% NaCl and this is called the eutectic point. In lower temperatures, a solution can be used to de-ice or reduce freezing temperatures on roads. In cooking, brine is used for food brining and salting, in hydrology, brine is a form of salt water, namely, water with relatively high concentration of salt. Brine mining Saline water Brackish water
13.
Japan
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Japan is a sovereign island nation in Eastern Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies off the eastern coast of the Asia Mainland and stretches from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea, the kanji that make up Japans name mean sun origin. 日 can be read as ni and means sun while 本 can be read as hon, or pon, Japan is often referred to by the famous epithet Land of the Rising Sun in reference to its Japanese name. Japan is an archipelago consisting of about 6,852 islands. The four largest are Honshu, Hokkaido, Kyushu and Shikoku, the country is divided into 47 prefectures in eight regions. Hokkaido being the northernmost prefecture and Okinawa being the southernmost one, the population of 127 million is the worlds tenth largest. Japanese people make up 98. 5% of Japans total population, approximately 9.1 million people live in the city of Tokyo, the capital of Japan. Archaeological research indicates that Japan was inhabited as early as the Upper Paleolithic period, the first written mention of Japan is in Chinese history texts from the 1st century AD. Influence from other regions, mainly China, followed by periods of isolation, from the 12th century until 1868, Japan was ruled by successive feudal military shoguns who ruled in the name of the Emperor. Japan entered into a period of isolation in the early 17th century. The Second Sino-Japanese War of 1937 expanded into part of World War II in 1941, which came to an end in 1945 following the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Japan is a member of the UN, the OECD, the G7, the G8, the country has the worlds third-largest economy by nominal GDP and the worlds fourth-largest economy by purchasing power parity. It is also the worlds fourth-largest exporter and fourth-largest importer, although Japan has officially renounced its right to declare war, it maintains a modern military with the worlds eighth-largest military budget, used for self-defense and peacekeeping roles. Japan is a country with a very high standard of living. Its population enjoys the highest life expectancy and the third lowest infant mortality rate in the world, in ancient China, Japan was called Wo 倭. It was mentioned in the third century Chinese historical text Records of the Three Kingdoms in the section for the Wei kingdom, Wa became disliked because it has the connotation of the character 矮, meaning dwarf. The 倭 kanji has been replaced with the homophone Wa, meaning harmony, the Japanese word for Japan is 日本, which is pronounced Nippon or Nihon and literally means the origin of the sun. The earliest record of the name Nihon appears in the Chinese historical records of the Tang dynasty, at the start of the seventh century, a delegation from Japan introduced their country as Nihon
14.
Distillation
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Distillation is a process of separating the component or substances from a liquid mixture by selective evaporation and condensation. Distillation may result in complete separation, or it may be a partial separation that increases the concentration of selected components of the mixture. In either case the process exploits differences in the volatility of the mixtures components, in industrial chemistry, distillation is a unit operation of practically universal importance, but it is a physical separation process and not a chemical reaction. For example, In the fossil fuel industry distillation is a class of operation in obtaining materials from crude oil for fuels. Distillation permits separation of air into its components — notably oxygen, nitrogen, Distillation of fermented products produces distilled beverages with a high alcohol content, or separates out other fermentation products of commercial value. An installation for distillation, especially of alcohol, is a distillery, the distillation equipment is a still. Distillation is an old method of artificial desalination. Aristotle wrote about the process in his Meteorologica and even that ordinary wine possesses a kind of exhalation, later evidence of distillation comes from Greek alchemists working in Alexandria in the 1st century AD. Distilled water has been known since at least c,200, when Alexander of Aphrodisias described the process. Work on distilling other liquids continued in early Byzantine Egypt under the Greek-Egyptian Zosimus of Panopolis, Distillation in China could have begun during the Eastern Han Dynasty, but archaeological evidence indicates that actual distillation of beverages began in the Jin and Southern Song dynasties. A still was found in a site in Qinglong, Hebei province dating to the 12th century. Distilled beverages were more common during the Yuan dynasty, arabs learned the process from the Alexandrians and used it extensively in their chemical experiments. Clear evidence of the distillation of alcohol comes from the School of Salerno in the 12th century, fractional distillation was developed by Tadeo Alderotti in the 13th century. In 1500, German alchemist Hieronymus Braunschweig published Liber de arte destillandi the first book dedicated to the subject of distillation. In 1651, John French published The Art of Distillation the first major English compendium of practice and this includes diagrams with people in them showing the industrial rather than bench scale of the operation. As alchemy evolved into the science of chemistry, vessels called retorts became used for distillations, riveted joints were often kept tight by using various mixtures, for instance a dough made of rye flour. These alembics often featured a system around the beak, using cold water for instance. Today, the retorts and pot stills have largely supplanted by more efficient distillation methods in most industrial processes
15.
Persian people
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The Persians are an Iranian ethnic group that make up over half the population of Iran. They share a cultural system and are native speakers of the Persian language. The ancient Persians were originally a branch of the ancient Iranian population who entered modern-day Iran by the early 10th century BC. The English term Persian derives from Latin Persia, itself deriving from Greek Persís, in the Bible, it is referred to as Parás —sometimes Paras uMadai —within the books of Esther, Daniel, Ezra and Nehemya. Although Persis was originally one of the provinces of ancient Iran, varieties of this term were adopted through Greek sources, thus, in the Western world, the term Persian came to refer to all inhabitants of the country. 10th-century Iraqi historian Al-Masudi refers to Pahlavi, Dari and Azari as dialects of the Persian language, in 1333, medieval Moroccan traveler and scholar Ibn Battuta, referred to the people of Kabul as a specific sub-tribe of Persians. Lady Mary Sheil, in her observation of Iran during the Qajar era, describes Persians, Kurds and Leks to identify themselves as descendants of the ancient Persians. On March 21,1935, the king of Iran, Reza Shah Pahlavi, issued a decree asking the international community to use the term Iran. However, the term Persian is still used to designate the predominant population of the Iranian peoples living in the Iranian cultural continent. The earliest known written record attributed to the Persians is from the Black Obelisk of Shalmaneser III, the inscription mentions Parsua as a tribal chiefdom in modern-day western Iran. The ancient Persians were originally a branch of the Iranian population that, in the early 10th century BC. They were initially dominated by the Assyrians for much of the first three centuries after arriving in the region, however, they played a role in the downfall of the Neo-Assyrian Empire. The Medes, another branch of population, founded the unified empire of Media as the regions dominant cultural and political power in c.625 BC. Meanwhile, the Persian dynasty of the Achaemenids formed a state to the central Median power. In c.552 BC, the Achaemenids began a revolution which led to the conquest of the empire by Cyrus II in c.550 BC. They spread their influence to the rest of what is called the Iranian Plateau, at its greatest extent, the Achaemenid Empire stretched from parts of Eastern Europe in the west, to the Indus Valley in the east, making it the largest empire the world had yet seen. The Achaemenids developed the infrastructure to support their growing influence, including the creation of Pasargadae and its legacy and impact on the kingdom of Macedon was also notably huge, even for centuries after the withdrawal of the Persians from Europe following the Greco-Persian Wars. The empire collapsed in 330 BC following the conquests of Alexander the Great, until the Parthian era, the Iranian identity had an ethnic, linguistic, and religious value, however, it did not yet have a political import
16.
Muhammad ibn Zakariya al-Razi
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Abū Bakr Muhammad ibn Zakariyyā al-Rāzī, was a Persian polymath, physician, alchemist, philosopher, and important figure in the history of medicine. An early proponent of experimental medicine, he became a successful doctor, as a teacher of medicine, he attracted students of all backgrounds and interests and was said to be compassionate and devoted to the service of his patients, whether rich or poor. He also discovered numerous compounds and chemicals including alcohol and kerosene, through translation, his medical works and ideas became known among medieval European practitioners and profoundly influenced medical education in the Latin West. Some volumes of his work Al-Mansuri, namely On Surgery and A General Book on Therapy, Edward Granville Browne considers him as probably the greatest and most original of all the Muslim physicians, and one of the most prolific as an author. And has been described as a doctor, the father of pediatrics. Razi was born in the city of Ray situated on the Great Silk Road that for centuries facilitated trade and his nisba, Râzī, means from the city if Ray in Persian. It is located on the slopes of the Alborz mountain range situated near Tehran, Iran. In his youth, Razi moved to Baghdad where he studied and practiced at the local bimaristan, later, he was invited back to Rey by Mansur ibn Ishaq, then the governor of Rey, and became a bimaristans head. He dedicated two books on medicine to Mansur ibn Ishaq, The Spiritual Physic and Al-Mansūrī on Medicine, because of his newly acquired popularity as physician, Razi was invited to Baghdad where he assumed the responsibilities of a director in a new hospital named after its founder al-Muʿtaḍid. He spent the last years of his life in his native Rey suffering from glaucoma and his eye affliction started with cataracts and ended in total blindness. The cause of his blindness is uncertain, allegedly, he was approached by a physician offering an ointment to cure his blindness. The lectures of Razi attracted many students, as Ibn al-Nadim relates in Fihrist, Razi was considered a shaikh, an honorary title given to one entitled to teach and surrounded by several circles of students. When someone raised a question, it was passed on to students of the first circle, if they did not know the answer, it was passed on to those of the second circle, when all students would fail to answer, Razi himself would consider the query. Razi was a person by nature, with a considerate attitude towards his patients. He was charitable to the poor, treated them without payment in any form, One former pupil from Tabaristan came to look after him, but as al-Biruni wrote, Razi rewarded him for his intentions and sent him back home, proclaiming that his final days were approaching. According to Biruni, Razi died in Rey in 925 sixty years of age, Biruni, who considered Razi as his mentor, among the first penned a short biography of Razi including a bibliography of his numerous works. After his death, his fame spread beyond the Middle East to Medieval Europe, in an undated catalog of the library at Peterborough Abbey, most likely from the 14th century, Razi is listed as a part author of ten books on medicine. Smallpox appears when blood boils and is infected, resulting in vapours being expelled, thus juvenile blood is being transformed into richer blood, having the color of mature wine
17.
Kerosene
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Kerosene, also known as paraffin, lamp oil and coal oil, is a combustible hydrocarbon liquid which is derived from petroleum, widely used as a fuel in industry as well as households. Its name derives from Greek, κηρός meaning wax, and was registered as a trademark by Abraham Gesner in 1854 before evolving into a genericized trademark and it is sometimes spelled kerosine in scientific and industrial usage. Liquid paraffin is a more viscous and highly refined product which is used as a laxative, paraffin wax is a waxy solid extracted from petroleum. Kerosene is widely used to power jet engines of aircraft and some rocket engines, in parts of Asia, where the price of kerosene is subsidized, it fuels outboard motors on small fishing boats. World total kerosene consumption for all purposes is equivalent to about 1.2 million barrels per day, to prevent confusion between kerosene and the much more flammable and volatile gasoline, some jurisdictions regulate markings or colorings for containers used to store or dispense kerosene. For example, in the United States, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania requires that portable containers used at retail service stations be colored blue and it is miscible in petroleum solvents but immiscible in water. The American Society for Testing and Materials standard specification D-3699-78 recognizes two grades of kerosene, grades 1-K and 2-K, regardless of crude oil source or processing history, kerosenes major components are branched and straight chain alkanes and naphthenes, which normally account for at least 70% by volume. Aromatic hydrocarbons in this range, such as alkylbenzenes and alkylnaphthalenes. Olefins are usually not present at more than 5% by volume, the flash point of kerosene is between 37 and 65 °C, and its autoignition temperature is 220 °C. The pour point of kerosene depends on grade, with aviation fuel standardized at −47 °C. 1-K grade kerosene freezes around -40 °C, heat of combustion of kerosene is similar to that of diesel fuel, its lower heating value is 43.1 MJ/kg, and its higher heating value is 46.2 MJ/kg. In the United Kingdom, two grades of heating oil are defined, BS2869 Class C1 is the lightest grade used for lanterns, camping stoves, wick heaters, and mixed with gasoline in some vintage combustion engines as a substitute for tractor vaporising oil. BS2869 Class C2 is a heavier distillate, which is used as heating oil. Premium kerosene is sold in 5 or 20 liter containers from hardware, camping. Standard kerosene is usually dispensed in bulk by a tanker and is undyed, National and international standards define the properties of several grades of kerosene used for jet fuel. Flash point and freezing point properties are of particular interest for operation and safety, the process of distilling crude oil/petroleum into kerosene, as well as other hydrocarbon compounds, was first written about in the 9th century by the Persian scholar Rāzi. In his Kitab al-Asrar, the physician and chemist Razi described two methods for the production of kerosene, termed naft abyad, using an apparatus called an alembic, one method used clay as an absorbent, whereas the other method used ammonium chloride. The distillation process was repeated until all most of the volatile hydrocarbon fractions had been removed, Kerosene was also produced during the same period from oil shale and bitumen by heating the rock to extract the oil, which was then distilled
18.
Alembic
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An alembic is an alchemical still consisting of two vessels connected by a tube, used for distilling chemicals. Retorts have the cap and the cucurbit made into one, the anbik is also called the raʾs of the cucurbit. The liquid in the cucurbit is heated or boiled, the vapour rises into the anbik, a modern descendant of the alembic is the pot still, used to produce distilled beverages. Dioscorides ambix is a lid for gathering condensed mercury. For Athenaeus it is a bottle or flask, for later chemists it denotes various parts of crude distillation devices. Alembic drawings appear in works of Cleopatra the Alchemist, Synesius, there were alembics with two and three receivers. According to Zosimos of Panopolis, the alembic was invented by Mary the Jewess, the anbik is described by Ibn al-Awwam in his Kitab al-Filaha, where he explains how rose-water is distilled. Amongst others, it is mentioned in the Mafatih al-Ulum of Khwarizmi, some illustrations occur in the Latin translations of works which are attributed to Geber
19.
Kerosene lamp
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A kerosene lamp is a type of lighting device that uses kerosene as a fuel. Kerosene lamps have a wick or mantle as light source, protected by a chimney or globe, lamps may be used on a table. Like oil lamps, they are useful for lighting without electricity, such as in regions without rural electrification, in electrified areas during power outages, at campsites, there are three types of kerosene lamp, flat wick, central draught, and mantle lamp. Kerosene lanterns meant for use have a flat wick and are made in dead flame, hot blast. Pressurized kerosene lamps have a gas generator and gas mantle, these are known as Petromax, Tilley lamps, or Coleman lamps and they produce more light per unit of fuel than wick-type lamps, but are more complex and expensive in construction, and more complex to operate. A hand-pump pressurizes air, which forces liquid fuel from a reservoir into a gas generator, vapor from the gas generator burns, heating a mantle to incandescence and also providing heat to the gas generator. The first description of a lamp using crude mineral oil was provided by al-Razi in 9th century Baghdad. In 1846 Abraham Pineo Gesner invented a substitute for oil for lighting. Later made from petroleum, kerosene became a lighting fuel. Modern versions of the lamp were later constructed by the Polish inventor Ignacy Łukasiewicz in 1853 in Lviv. Kerosene lamps are used for lighting in rural areas of Africa and Asia where electricity is not distributed. Kerosene lamps consume an estimated 77 billion litres of fuel per year, equivalent to 1.3 million barrels of oil per day, a flat-wick lamp is a simple type of kerosene lamp, which burns kerosene drawn up through a wick by capillary action. If this type of lamp is broken it can start a fire. A flat-wick lamp has a tank, with the lamp burner attached. Attached to the tank, four prongs hold the glass chimney. The lamp burner has a flat wick, usually made of cotton, the lower part of the wick dips into the fount and absorbs the kerosene, the top part of the wick extends out of the wick tube of the lamp burner, which includes a wick-adjustment mechanism. Adjusting how much of the wick extends above the tube controls the flame. The wick tube surrounds the wick, and ensures that the amount of air reaches the lamp burner
20.
Alchemy and chemistry in medieval Islam
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Alchemy and chemistry in Islam refers to the study of both traditional alchemy and early practical chemistry by scholars in the medieval Islamic world. The word alchemy was derived from the Arabic word كيمياء or kīmiyāʾ. and may derive from the ancient Egyptian word kemi. After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, the focus of development moved to the Caliphate. Much more is known about Islamic alchemy as it was better documented, in considering Islamic sciences as a distinct, local practice, it is important to define words such as Arabic, Islamic, alchemy, and chemistry. In order to gain a better grasp on the concepts discussed in this article and this may also help to clear up any misconceptions regarding the possible differences between alchemy and early chemistry in the context of medieval times. He therefore proposes that the spelling of chemistry as chymistry refers to a unified science including both alchemy and early chemistry. Principe goes on to argue that, ll their chymical activities were unified by a focus on the analysis, synthesis, transformation. Therefore, there is not a defined contrast between the two fields until the early 18th century, the transmission of these sciences throughout the Eastern and Western hemispheres is also important to understand when distinguishing the sciences of both regions. The beginnings of cultural, religious, and scientific diffusion of information between the Western and Eastern societies began with the conquests of Alexander the Great. By establishing territory throughout the East, Alexander the Great allowed greater communication between the two hemispheres that would continue throughout history. The Quran, the book of Islam, became an important source of theology, morality, law. This development made way for contributions to be made on behalf of the East towards the Western conception of such as alchemy. According to the bibliographer Ibn al-Nadīm, the first Muslim alchemist was Khālid ibn Yazīd, the historicity of this story is not clear, according to M. Ullmann, it is a legend. Jābir ibn Ḥayyān may have born in 721 or 722, in Persian city of Tus, Iran, and have been the son of Ḥayyān. When young Jābir studied in Arabia under Ḥarbī al-Ḥimyarī, later, he lived in Kufa, and eventually became a court alchemist for Hārūn al-Rashīd, in Baghdad. Jābir was friendly with the Barmecides and became caught up in their disgrace in 803, as a result, he returned to Kufa. According to some sources, he died in Tus in 815, a large corpus of works is ascribed to Jābir, so large that its difficult to believe he wrote them all himself. According to the theory of Paul Kraus, many of these works should be ascribed to later Ismaili authors and it includes the following groups of works, The One Hundred and Twelve Books, The Seventy Books, The Ten Books of Rectifications, and The Books of the Balances
21.
Combustibility and flammability
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Combustibility is a measure of how easily a substance will set on fire, through fire or combustion. This is an important property to consider when a substance is used for construction or is being stored and it is also important in processes that produce combustible substances as a by-product. Special precautions are required for substances that are easily combustible. These measures may include installation of fire sprinklers or storage remote from possible sources of ignition, substances with low combustibility may be selected for construction where the fire risk needs to be reduced, such as apartment buildings, houses, or offices. If combustible resources are used there is chance of fire accidents. Fire resistant substances are preferred for building materials and furnishings, for an Authority Having Jurisdiction, combustibility is defined by the local code. BS 476-4,1970 defines a test for combusibility in which 3 specimens of a material are heated in a furnace, otherwise, the material shall be deemed combustible. Various countries have tests for determining noncombustibility of materials, most involve the heating of a specified quantity of the test specimen for a set duration. Usually, the material cannot support combustion and must not undergo a loss of mass. In Canada, for instance, firewalls must be made of concrete, in building construction, buildings are typically divided into combustible and noncombustible ones. Combustible structures have more stringent limits on building height and area. A number of industrial processes produce combustible dust as a by-product, the most common being wood dust. In addition to wood, combustible dusts include metals, especially magnesium, titanium and aluminum, there are at least a 140 known substances that produce combustible dust. While the particles in a combustible dusts may be of any size, as of 2012, the United States Occupational Safety and Health Administration has yet to adopt a comprehensive set of rules on combustible dust. When suspended in air, the particles of combustible dust present a potential for explosions. Accumulated dust, even when not suspended in air, remains a fire hazard, collectors designed to reduce airborne dust account for more than 40 percent of all dust explosions. Other important processes are grinding and pulverizing, transporting powders, filing silos and containers, investigation of 200 dust explosions and fires, between 1980 to 2005, indicated approximately 100 fatalities and 600 injuries. In January 2003, a powder explosion and fire at the West Pharmaceutical Services plant in Kinston, North Carolina resulted in the deaths of six workers
22.
Al-Andalus
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Al-Andalus, also known as Muslim Spain or Islamic Iberia, was a medieval Muslim territory and cultural domain occupying at its peak most of what are today Spain and Portugal. At its greatest geographical extent in the century, southern France—Septimania—was briefly under its control. Rule under these kingdoms led to a rise in cultural exchange, a number of achievements that advanced Islamic and Western science came from al-Andalus including major advances in trigonometry, astronomy, surgery, pharmacology, and other fields. Al-Andalus became an educational center for Europe and the lands around the Mediterranean Sea as well as a conduit for culture. For much of its history, al-Andalus existed in conflict with Christian kingdoms to the north, after the fall of the Umayyad caliphate, al-Andalus was fragmented into a number of minor states and principalities. Attacks from the Christians intensified, led by the Castilians under Alfonso VI, the Almoravid empire intervened and repelled the Christian attacks on the region, deposing the weak Andalusi Muslim princes and included al-Andalus under direct Berber rule. In the next century and a half, al-Andalus became a province of the Berber Muslim empires of the Almoravids and Almohads, ultimately, the Christian kingdoms in the north of the Iberian Peninsula overpowered the Muslim states to the south. In 1085, Alfonso VI captured Toledo, starting a gradual decline of Muslim power, with the fall of Córdoba in 1236, most of the south quickly fell under Christian rule and the Emirate of Granada became a tributary state of the Kingdom of Castile two years later. In 1249, the Portuguese Reconquista culminated with the conquest of the Algarve by Afonso III, finally, on January 2,1492, Emir Muhammad XII surrendered the Emirate of Granada to Queen Isabella I of Castile, completing the Christian Reconquista of the peninsula. The toponym al-Andalus is first attested to by inscriptions on coins minted by the new Muslim government in Iberia, the etymology of the name has traditionally been derived from the name of the Vandals. A number of proposals since the 1980s have contested this, Vallvé proposed a corruption of the name Atlantis, halm derives the name from a Gothic term *landahlauts. Bossong suggests derivation from a pre-Roman substrate and they crossed the Pyrenees and occupied Visigothic Septimania in southern France. Most of the Iberian peninsula became part of the expanding Umayyad Empire and it was organized as a province subordinate to Ifriqiya, so, for the first few decades, the governors of al-Andalus were appointed by the emir of Kairouan, rather than the Caliph in Damascus. Visigothic lords who agreed to recognize Muslim suzerainty were allowed to retain their fiefs, resistant Visigoths took refuge in the Cantabrian highlands, where they carved out a rump state, the Kingdom of Asturias. In the 720s, the al-Andalus governors launched several raids into Aquitaine. At the Battle of Poitiers in 732, the al-Andalus raiding army was defeated by Charles Martel, in 734, the Andalusi launched raids to the east, capturing Avignon and Arles and overran much of Provence. In 737, they climbed up the Rhône valley, reached as far as Burgundy, Charles Martel of the Franks, with the assistance of Liutprand of the Lombards, invaded Burgundy and Provence and expelled the raiders by 739. Relations between Arabs and Berbers in al-Andalus had been tense in the years after the conquest
23.
Western Europe
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Western Europe, or West Europe, is the region comprising the western part of Europe. Below, some different geographic and geopolitical definitions of the term are outlined, prior to the Roman conquest, a large part of Western Europe had adopted the newly developed La Tène culture. This cultural and linguistic division was reinforced by the later political east-west division of the Roman Empire. The division between these two was enhanced during Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages by a number of events, the Western Roman Empire collapsed, starting the Early Middle Ages. By contrast, the Eastern Roman Empire, mostly known as the Greek or Byzantine Empire, survived, in East Asia, Western Europe was historically known as taixi in China and taisei in Japan, which literally translates as the Far West. The term Far West became synonymous with Western Europe in China during the Ming dynasty, the Italian Jesuit priest Matteo Ricci was one of the first writers in China to use the Far West as an Asian counterpart to the European concept of the Far East. In his writings, Ricci referred to himself as Matteo of the Far West, the term was still in use in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Post-war Europe would be divided into two spheres, the West, influenced by the United States, and the Eastern Bloc. With the onset of the Cold War, Europe was divided by the Iron Curtain, behind that line lie all the capitals of the ancient states of Central and Eastern Europe. Although some countries were neutral, they were classified according to the nature of their political. This division largely defined the popular perception and understanding of Western Europe, the world changed dramatically with the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989. The Federal Republic of Germany peacefully absorbed the German Democratic Republic, COMECON and the Warsaw Pact were dissolved, and in 1991, the Soviet Union ceased to exist. Several countries which had part of the Soviet Union regained full independence. Although the term Western Europe was more prominent during the Cold War, it remains much in use, in 1948 the Treaty of Brussels was signed between Belgium, France, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. It was further revisited in 1954 at the Paris Conference, when the Western European Union was established and it was declared defunct in 2011, after the Treaty of Lisbon, and the Treaty of Brussels was terminated. When the Western European Union was dissolved, it had 10 member countries, six member countries, five observer countries. The CIA divides Western Europe into two smaller subregions, regional voting blocs were formed in 1961 to encourage voting to various UN bodies from different regional groups. The European Union is an economic and political union of 28 member states that are located primarily in Europe, some Western and Northern European countries of Iceland, Norway, Switzerland and Liechtenstein are members of EFTA, though cooperating to varying degree with the European Union
24.
Oil field
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An oil field or oilfield is a region with an abundance of oil wells extracting petroleum from below ground. Because the oil reservoirs typically extend over an area, possibly several hundred kilometres across. In addition, there may be exploratory wells probing the edges, pipelines to transport the oil elsewhere, because an oil field may be remote from civilization, establishing a field is often an extremely complicated exercise in logistics. This goes beyond requirements for drilling, to include associated infrastructure, for instance, workers require housing to allow them to work onsite for months or years. In turn, housing and equipment require electricity and water, in cold regions, pipelines may need to be heated. Also, excess gas may be burned off if there is no way to make use of it—which requires a furnace, chimney. More than 40,000 oil fields are scattered around the globe, on land, the largest are the Ghawar Field in Saudi Arabia and the Burgan Field in Kuwait, with more than 60 billion barrels estimated in each. Most oil fields are much smaller, according to the US Department of Energy, as of 2003 the US alone had over 30,000 oil fields. In the modern age, the location of oil fields with oil reserves is a key underlying factor in many geopolitical conflicts. The term oilfield is also used as a shorthand to refer to the petroleum industry. However, it is accurate to divide the oil industry into three sectors, upstream, midstream and downstream. Oil Fields from Space - nighttime satellite images showing fields around the world
25.
Baku
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Baku is the capital and largest city of Azerbaijan, as well as the largest city on the Caspian Sea and of the Caucasus region. Baku is located 28 metres below sea level, which makes it the lowest lying national capital in the world and it is located on the southern shore of the Absheron Peninsula, alongside the Bay of Baku. At the beginning of 2009, Bakus urban population was estimated at just over two million people, officially, about 25 percent of all inhabitants of the country live in Bakus metropolitan area. Baku is divided into administrative districts and 48 townships. Among these are the townships on the islands of the Baku Archipelago, the Inner City of Baku, along with the Shirvanshahs Palace and Maiden Tower, were inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2000. According to the Lonely Planets ranking, Baku is also among the top ten destinations for urban nightlife. The city is the scientific, cultural and industrial center of Azerbaijan, many sizeable Azerbaijani institutions have their headquarters there. The Baku International Sea Trade Port is capable of handling two million tons of general and dry bulk cargoes per year, in recent years, Baku has become an important venue for international events. The city is renowned for its winds, which is reflected in its nickname. Indeed, the city is renowned for its fierce winter snow storms and this is also reflected in the citys nickname as the City of Winds. A less probable folk etymology explains the name as deriving from Baghkuy, baga and kuy are the Old Persian words for god and town respectively, the name Baghkuy may be compared with Baghdād in which dād is the Old Persian word for give. Arabic sources refer to the city as Baku, Bakukh, Bakuya, around 100,000 years ago, the territory of modern Baku and Absheron was savanna with rich flora and fauna. Traces of human settlement go back to the Stone age, from the Bronze age there have been rock carvings discovered near Bayil, and a bronze figure of a small fish discovered in the territory of the Old City. These have led some to suggest the existence of a Bronze Age settlement within the citys territory, further archeological excavations revealed various prehistoric settlements, native temples, statues and other artifacts within the territory of the modern city and around it. In the 1st century, the Romans organized two Caucasian campaigns and reached Baku, near the city, in Gobustan, Roman inscriptions dating from 84–96 AD were discovered. This is one of the earliest written evidences for Baku, during the 8th century Baku was the realm of the Shirvanshahs. The city frequently came under assault of the Khazars and the Rus, shirvanshah Akhsitan I built a navy in Baku and successfully repelled another Rus assault in 1170. After a devastating earthquake struck Shamakhy, the capital of Shirvan, the Shirvan era greatly influenced Baku and the remainder of Azerbaijan
26.
Azerbaijan
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Azerbaijan, officially the Republic of Azerbaijan, is a country in the South Caucasus region, situated at the crossroads of Southwest Asia and Southeastern Europe. It is bound by the Caspian Sea to the east, Russia to the north, Georgia to the northwest, Armenia to the west and Iran to the south. The exclave of Nakhchivan is bound by Armenia to the north and east, Iran to the south and west, the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic proclaimed its independence in 1918 and became the first democratic state in the Muslim orient world. The country was incorporated into the Soviet Union in 1920 as the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic, the modern Republic of Azerbaijan proclaimed its independence on 30 August 1991, prior to the official dissolution of the USSR in December 1991. In September 1991, the Armenian majority of the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region seceded to form the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic, the region and seven adjacent districts outside it became de facto independent with the end of the Nagorno-Karabakh War in 1994. These regions are recognized as part of Azerbaijan pending a solution to the status of the Nagorno-Karabakh. Azerbaijan is a unitary semi-presidential republic, the country is a member state of the Council of Europe, the OSCE and the NATO Partnership for Peace program. It is one of six independent Turkic states, a member of the Turkic Council. Azerbaijan has diplomatic relations with 158 countries and holds membership in 38 international organizations and it is one of the founding members of GUAM, the Commonwealth of Independent States and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons. Its term of office began on 19 June 2006, Azerbaijan is also a member state of the Non-Aligned Movement, holds observer status in World Trade Organization and is a correspondent at the International Telecommunication Union. The Constitution of Azerbaijan does not declare an official religion and all political forces in the country are secularist. However, the majority of the population are of a Shiite Muslim background, Azerbaijan has a high level of human development which ranks on par with most Eastern European countries. It has a rate of economic development and literacy, as well as a low rate of unemployment. According to the Davos World Economic Forum, Azerbaijans economy has scored 37th place within 138 countries in 2016, Global Competitiveness Index 2015 indicates that Azerbaijan scores highest in its region. ASAN services, established with Presidential Decree, are known for eliminating bribery. ASAN Service has been awarded with United Nations Public Service Award 2015, the ruling party, the New Azerbaijan Party, has been accused of authoritarianism and human rights abuses. The original etymology of name is thought to have its roots in the once-dominant Zoroastrianism. In the Avesta, Frawardin Yasht, there is a mention of âterepâtahe ashaonô fravashîm ýazamaide, the name Atropates itself is the Greek transliteration of an Old Iranian, probably Median, compounded name with the meaning Protected by the Fire or The Land of the Fire
27.
Petroleum industry
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The petroleum industry includes the global processes of exploration, extraction, refining, transporting, and marketing of petroleum products. The largest volume products of the industry are fuel oil and gasoline, Petroleum is also the raw material for many chemical products, including pharmaceuticals, solvents, fertilizers, pesticides, synthetic fragrances, and plastics. The industry is divided into three major components, upstream, midstream and downstream. Midstream operations are included in the downstream category. Petroleum is vital to many industries, and is of importance to the maintenance of industrial civilization in its current configuration, and thus is a critical concern for many nations. Oil accounts for a percentage of the world’s energy consumption, ranging from a low of 32% for Europe and Asia. Other geographic regions consumption patterns are as follows, South and Central America, Africa, the world consumes 30 billion barrels of oil per year, with developed nations being the largest consumers. The United States consumed 25% of the oil produced in 2007, the production, distribution, refining, and retailing of petroleum taken as a whole represents the worlds largest industry in terms of dollar value. Petroleum is a naturally occurring liquid found in rock formations and it consists of a complex mixture of hydrocarbons of various molecular weights, plus other organic compounds. It is generally accepted that oil is formed mostly from the carbon rich remains of ancient plankton after exposure to heat, Petroleum in an unrefined state has been utilized by humans for over 5000 years. Oil in general has been used since early history to keep fires ablaze. Its importance to the world economy evolved slowly, with oil used for lighting in the 19th century and wood. The Industrial Revolution generated an increasing need for energy which was met mainly by coal, Imperial Russia produced 3,500 tons of oil in 1825 and doubled its output by mid-century. Batum is renamed to Batumi in 1936, at the turn of the 20th century, Imperial Russias output of oil, almost entirely from the Apsheron Peninsula, accounted for half of the worlds production and dominated international markets. Nearly 200 small refineries operated in the suburbs of Baku by 1884, as a side effect of these early developments, the Apsheron Peninsula emerged as the worlds oldest legacy of oil pollution and environmental negligence. In 1846, Baku the first ever well drilled with percussion tools to a depth of 21 meters for oil exploration, in 1878, Ludvig Nobel and his Branobel company revolutionized oil transport by commissioning the first oil tanker and launching it on the Caspian Sea. Samuel Kier established Americas first oil refinery in Pittsburgh on Seventh avenue near Grant Street, one of the first modern oil refineries were built by Ignacy Łukasiewicz near Jasło, Poland in 1854–56. These were initially small as demand for refined fuel was limited, the refined products were used in artificial asphalt, machine oil and lubricants, in addition to Łukasiewiczs kerosene lamp
28.
Marco Polo
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He learned the mercantile trade from his father and uncle, Niccolò and Maffeo, who travelled through Asia and met Kublai Khan. In 1269, they returned to Venice to meet Marco for the first time, the three of them embarked on an epic journey to Asia, returning after 24 years to find Venice at war with Genoa, Marco was imprisoned and dictated his stories to a cellmate. He was released in 1299, became a merchant, married. He died in 1324 and was buried in the church of San Lorenzo in Venice, Marco Polo was not the first European to reach China, but he was the first to leave a detailed chronicle of his experience. This book inspired Christopher Columbus and many other travellers, there is a substantial literature based on Polos writings, he also influenced European cartography, leading to the introduction of the Fra Mauro map. Marco Polo was born in 1254 in Venice Republic and his exact date and place of birth are archivally unknown. Some historians mentioned that he was born on September 15 but that date is not endorsed by mainstream scholarship, Marco Polos birthplace is generally considered Venice, but also varies between Constantinople, and the island of Korčula. There is dispute as to whether the Polo family is of Venetian origin, the first recorded Polo is Venetian Domenico Polo who was mentioned in 971 regarding the prohibition of trade with the Arabs. Later other Polos were also mentioned in the service of the realm, whether they were related with the family of Marco Polo is uncertain, but this could indicate that his ancestors travelled between Venice and Dalmatia. Some of the first indications of where his family originated and were resident come from Venetian documents and manuscripts. Some scholars argued that this account could go along with the note from Il Milione that his father and uncle, Niccolò and Maffeo Polo, the non-Venetian i. e. Sanuto also mentioned a captain from Korčula, Antonio di Polo. Moule cited two early 17th century Venetian manuscripts questi ueneno de dalmatia, Polo questi uene de Dalmatia, scholars etymologically argued that his family name derives from Latin Paulus, the name of a certain bird species, or like Albert tSerstevens considered - from Eastern origin. However, the habitat of the shorebird is non-existent on Korčula, the surname Polo seems related with other widespread Dalmatian surnames. The lack of evidence makes the Korčula theory as a specific birthplace strongly disputed, in 1168, his great-uncle, Marco Polo, borrowed money and commanded a ship in Constantinople. His grandfather, Andrea Polo of the parish of San Felice, had three sons, Maffeo, yet another Marco, and the travellers father Niccolò and this genealogy, described by Ramusio, is not universally accepted as there is no additional evidence to support it. His father, Niccolò Polo, a merchant, traded with the Near East, becoming wealthy, Niccolò and his brother Maffeo set off on a trading voyage before Marcos birth. In 1260, Niccolò and Maffeo, while residing in Constantinople, then the capital of the Latin Empire, foresaw a political change, they liquidated their assets into jewels and moved away. According to The Travels of Marco Polo, they passed through much of Asia, and met with Kublai Khan and their decision to leave Constantinople proved timely
29.
Galicia (Eastern Europe)
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Galicia is a historical and geographic region in Central-Eastern Europe, once a small Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria that straddled the modern-day border between Poland and Ukraine. The area, which is named after the city of Halych, was first mentioned in Hungarian historical chronicles in the year 1206 as Galiciæ. The nucleus of historic Galicia lies within the regions of western Ukraine, Lviv, Ternopil. In the 18th century, territories that became part of the modern Polish regions of Lesser Poland Voivodeship, Subcarpathian Voivodeship. There is considerable overlap between Galicia and south-west Ruthenia, especially a cross-border region that is inhabited by various nationalities, Halych-Volhynia cut a swathe as a mighty principality under the reign of Roman the Great in 1170–1205. After the expulsion of the Hungarians in 1221, Ruthenians took back rule of the area, Romans son Daniel of Galicia was crowned king of Halych-Volhynia. He founded Lviv, named in honour of his son Leo I, the Ukrainian name Halych comes from the Khwalis or Kaliz who occupied the area from the time of the Magyars. They were also called Khalisioi in Greek, and Khvalis in Ukrainian, the Lypytsia culture supposedly replaced the existing Thracian Hallstatt and Vysotske cultures. Others assert that the name has Slavic origins – from halytsa, meaning a naked hill, the jackdaw was used as a charge in the citys coat of arms and later also in the coat of arms of Galicia. The name, however, predates the coat of arms, which may represent canting or simply folk etymology, although the Hungarians were driven out from Halych-Volhynia by 1221, Hungarian kings continued to add Galicia et Lodomeria to their official titles. In 1527, the Habsburgs inherited those titles, together with the Hungarian crown, in 1772, Empress Maria Theresa, Archduchess of Austria and Queen of Hungary, decided to use those historical claims to justify her participation in the first partition of Poland. In fact, the territories acquired by Austria did not correspond exactly to those of former Halych-Volhynia, Volhynia, including the city of Volodymyr-Volynskyi – after which Lodomeria was named – was taken by Russia, not Austria. On the other hand, much of Lesser Poland – Nowy Sącz and Przemyśl, Zamość, Lublin, the full official name of the new Austrian province was Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria with the Duchies of Auschwitz and Zator. After the incorporation of the Free City of Kraków in 1846, it was extended to Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria, each of those entities was formally separate, they were listed as such in the Austrian emperors titles, each had its distinct coat-of-arms and flag. For administrative purposes, however, they formed a single province, the duchies of Auschwitz and Zator were small historical principalities west of Kraków, on the border with Prussian Silesia. Lodomeria, under the name Volhynia, was not ruled by Austria, dale Dwellers, Krakowiacy, Mazury, Grębowiacy, Głuchoniemcy, Bełżanie, Bużanie, Opolanie, Wołyniacy, Pobereżcy or Nistrowianie. During the Great Migration period of Europe, a variety of nomadic groups invaded the area, overall, Slavs came to dominate the Celtic-German population. In the 12th century, a Rurikid Principality of Halych formed there, Galicia and Volhynia had originally been two separate Rurikid principalities, assigned on a rotating basis to younger members of the Kievan dynasty
30.
Oil well fire
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Oil well fires are oil or gas wells that have caught on fire and burn. Oil well fires can be the result of actions, such as accidents or arson, or natural events. They can exist on a scale, such as an oil field spill catching fire, or on a huge scale. A frequent cause of a fire is a high-pressure blowout during drilling operations. Oil well fires are difficult to extinguish than regular fires due to the enormous fuel supply for the fire. In fighting a fire at a wellhead, typically high explosives, such as dynamite, are used to create a shockwave that pushes the burning fuel, the flame is removed and the fuel can continue to spill out without catching fire. After blowing out the fire, the wellhead must be capped to stop the flow of oil, during this time, the fuel and oxygen required to create another inferno are present in copious amounts. At this perilous stage, one spark or other heat source might re-ignite the oil. To prevent re-ignition, brass or bronze tools, which do not strike sparks, meticulous care is used to avoid heat and sparks, or any other ignition source. Re-ignition at the wellhead may take the form of a powerful explosion. The patent was granted a year after Red Adairs success in combating the Devils Cigarette Lighter gas well fire, with recent advances in technology as well as environmental concerns, many straight forward well fires today are capped while they burn. There are several techniques used to put out oil fires, which vary by resources available. In essence the trade was started by Myron M. Kinley and his lieutenant, Red Adair, went on to become the most famous of oil well firefighters. Techniques include, Dousing with copious amounts of water, using a gas turbine to blast a fine mist of water at the base of the fire. Water is injected behind the exhaust of the turbine in large quantities and this proved popular with tackling stubborn fires in the Kuwait oil fires and was brought to the region by Hungarians equipped with MiG21 engines mounted on a tank, either a T34 or T62. Using dynamite to blow out the fire by forcing the burning fuel and this was one of the earliest effective methods and is still widely used. Dry Chemical can be used on small well fires, in the 1930s mechanical jaws were developed to clamp off the pipe below the fire, but they are seldom used today. The design became the basis for a safety device used on offshore wells, special vehicles called Athey wagons as well as the typical bulldozer protected by corrugated steel sheeting are normally used in the process
31.
Absheron Peninsula
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The Absheron Peninsula is a peninsula in Azerbaijan. It is host to Baku, the biggest and the most populous city of the country, there are three districts, of which two are urban, and one, is suburban district in Absheron region. It extends 60 km eastward into the Caspian Sea, and reaches a width of 30 km. In this part the peninsula is dissected by ravines and characterized by frequent salt lakes, the name Absheron comes from Persian āb šur and the suffix -ān, which marks the plural. This also gave its name to the city of Apsheronsk in Russia, according to Conrad Malte-Brun in 1810, an alternative name for the peninsula was Okoressa. The Absheron Peninsula, has a temperate climate with warm and dry summers, cool and occasionally wet winters. The peninsula is the most arid part of Azerbaijan, the majority of the light annual precipitation occurs in seasons other than summer, but none of these seasons are particularly wet. The natural vegetation of the Absheron Peninsula is dry steppe and semi-desert, due to the semi-arid climate, local agriculture requires irrigation. Beginning in the 1870s, the Absheron Peninsula was the site of some of the worlds earliest petroleum production, much of the landscape remains scarred with rusting oil derricks. Despite serious problems with environmental damage and pollution, the Absheron is known for its flowers, horticulture, mulberries, the northern coast has wide though less-than-pristine beaches which are popular local tourist attractions. Wealthy people have settled in the Absheron Peninsula, including Robert Nobel, geography of Azerbaijan Short Documentary about pollution from chemical and oil industries on the peninsula
32.
Poles
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The Poles are a nation and West Slavic ethnic group native to Poland who share a common ancestry, culture, history and are native speakers of the Polish language. The population of Poles in Poland is estimated at 37,394,000 out of a population of 38,538,000. Polands population inhabits several historic regions, including Greater Poland, Lesser Poland, Mazovia, Silesia, Pomerania, Kuyavia, Warmia, Masuria, a wide-ranging Polish diaspora exists throughout Europe, the Americas and in Australasia. Today the largest urban concentration of Poles is the Katowice urban agglomeration of 2.7 million inhabitants, Poland was also for centuries a refuge for many Jews from all over Europe, a large number emigrated in the twentieth century to Israel. Several prominent Israeli statesmen were born in Poland, including Israels founder David Ben-Gurion, former President of Israel Shimon Peres, the Slavic people have been in the territory of modern Poland for over 1500 years. In the 9th and 10th centuries the tribes gave rise to developed regions along the upper Vistula, the last tribal undertaking resulted in the 10th century in a lasting political structure and state, Poland, one of the West Slavic nations. After 1945 the so-called autochthonous or aboriginal school of Polish prehistory received official backing in Poland, Polish people are the sixth largest national group in the European Union. Estimates vary depending on source, though available data suggest a number of around 60 million people worldwide. There are almost 38 million Poles in Poland alone, there are also Polish minorities in the surrounding countries including Germany, and indigenous minorities in the Czech Republic, Lithuania, Ukraine, and Belarus. There are some smaller indigenous minorities in nearby countries such as Moldova, the term Polonia is usually used in Poland to refer to people of Polish origin who live outside Polish borders, officially estimated at around 10 to 20 million. There is a notable Polish diaspora in the United States, Brazil, France has a historic relationship with Poland and has a relatively large Polish-descendant population. Poles have lived in France since the 18th century, in the early 20th century, over a million Polish people settled in France, mostly during world wars, among them Polish émigrés fleeing either Nazi occupation or later Soviet rule. In the United States, a significant number of Polish immigrants settled in Chicago, Ohio, Detroit, New York City, Orlando, Pittsburgh, Buffalo, the highest concentration of Polish Americans in a single New England municipality is in New Britain, Connecticut. The majority of Polish Canadians have arrived in Canada since World War II, the number of Polish immigrants increased between 1945 and 1970, and again after the end of Communism in Poland in 1989. In Brazil the majority of Polish immigrants settled in Paraná State, smaller, but significant numbers settled in the states of Rio Grande do Sul, Espírito Santo and São Paulo. The city of Curitiba has the second largest Polish diaspora in the world and Polish music, dishes and it is estimated that over half a million Polish people have come to work in the United Kingdom from Poland. Since 2011, Poles have been able to work throughout the EU and not just in the United Kingdom, Ireland. The Polish community in Norway has increased substantially and has grown to a number of 120,000
33.
Pharmacist
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Pharmacists, also known as chemists or druggists, are healthcare professionals who practice in pharmacy, the field of health sciences focusing on safe and effective medication use. A pharmacist is a member of the care team directly involved with patient care. This is mated to anatomy, physiology, and pathophysiology, Pharmacists interpret and communicate this specialized knowledge to patients, physicians, and other health care providers. Among other licensing requirements, different countries require pharmacists to hold either a Bachelor of Pharmacy, Master of Pharmacy, in most countries, the profession is subject to professional regulation. Depending on the scope of practice, pharmacists may contribute to prescribing and administering certain medications in some jurisdictions. Pharmacists may also practice in a variety of settings, including industry, wholesaling, research, academia, military. Historically, the role of pharmacists as a healthcare practitioner was to check. Pharmacists monitor the health and progress of patients to ensure the safe, Pharmacists may practice compounding, however, many medicines are now produced by pharmaceutical companies in a standard dosage and drug delivery form. One of the most important roles that pharmacists are currently taking on is one of pharmaceutical care, Pharmaceutical care involves taking direct responsibility for patients and their disease states, medications, and management of each to improve outcomes. Pharmacists are often the first point-of-contact for patients with health inquiries, thus pharmacists have a significant role in assessing medication management in patients, and in referring patients to physicians. In most countries, pharmacists must obtain a university degree at a school or related institution. In many contexts, students must first complete pre-professional coursework, followed by four years of professional academic studies to obtain a degree in pharmacy. Additional curriculum may cover diagnosis with emphasis on tests, disease state management, therapeutics. On graduation, pharmacists are licensed, either nationally or regionally, some may undergo further specialized training, such as in cardiology or oncology. Specialties include, The Australian Pharmacy Council is the independent accreditation agency for Australian pharmacists and it conducts examinations on behalf of the Pharmacy Board of Australia towards eligibility for registration. The Australian College of Pharmacy provides continuing education programs for pharmacists, wages for pharmacists in Australia appear to have stagnated. The award wages for a pharmacist is $812 a week, Pharmacist graduates are the lowest paid university graduates most years. Most pharmacists do earn above the wage, the average male pharmacist earns $65,000
34.
Poland
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Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe, situated between the Baltic Sea in the north and two mountain ranges in the south. Bordered by Germany to the west, the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south, Ukraine and Belarus to the east, the total area of Poland is 312,679 square kilometres, making it the 69th largest country in the world and the 9th largest in Europe. With a population of over 38.5 million people, Poland is the 34th most populous country in the world, the 8th most populous country in Europe, Poland is a unitary state divided into 16 administrative subdivisions, and its capital and largest city is Warsaw. Other metropolises include Kraków, Wrocław, Poznań, Gdańsk and Szczecin, the establishment of a Polish state can be traced back to 966, when Mieszko I, ruler of a territory roughly coextensive with that of present-day Poland, converted to Christianity. The Kingdom of Poland was founded in 1025, and in 1569 it cemented a political association with the Grand Duchy of Lithuania by signing the Union of Lublin. This union formed the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, one of the largest and most populous countries of 16th and 17th century Europe, Poland regained its independence in 1918 at the end of World War I, reconstituting much of its historical territory as the Second Polish Republic. In September 1939, World War II started with the invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany, followed thereafter by invasion by the Soviet Union. More than six million Polish citizens died in the war, after the war, Polands borders were shifted westwards under the terms of the Potsdam Conference. With the backing of the Soviet Union, a communist puppet government was formed, and after a referendum in 1946. During the Revolutions of 1989 Polands Communist government was overthrown and Poland adopted a new constitution establishing itself as a democracy, informally called the Third Polish Republic. Since the early 1990s, when the transition to a primarily market-based economy began, Poland has achieved a high ranking on the Human Development Index. Poland is a country, which was categorised by the World Bank as having a high-income economy. Furthermore, it is visited by approximately 16 million tourists every year, Poland is the eighth largest economy in the European Union and was the 6th fastest growing economy on the continent between 2010 and 2015. According to the Global Peace Index for 2014, Poland is ranked 19th in the list of the safest countries in the world to live in. The origin of the name Poland derives from a West Slavic tribe of Polans that inhabited the Warta River basin of the historic Greater Poland region in the 8th century, the origin of the name Polanie itself derives from the western Slavic word pole. In some foreign languages such as Hungarian, Lithuanian, Persian and Turkish the exonym for Poland is Lechites, historians have postulated that throughout Late Antiquity, many distinct ethnic groups populated the regions of what is now Poland. The most famous archaeological find from the prehistory and protohistory of Poland is the Biskupin fortified settlement, dating from the Lusatian culture of the early Iron Age, the Slavic groups who would form Poland migrated to these areas in the second half of the 5th century AD. With the Baptism of Poland the Polish rulers accepted Christianity and the authority of the Roman Church
35.
Oil refinery
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Oil refineries are typically large, sprawling industrial complexes with extensive piping running throughout, carrying streams of fluids between large chemical processing units. In many ways, oil refineries use much of the technology of, the crude oil feedstock has typically been processed by an oil production plant. There is usually an oil depot at or near an oil refinery for the storage of incoming crude oil feedstock as well as bulk liquid products, an oil refinery is considered an essential part of the downstream side of the petroleum industry. The lighter elements, however, form explosive vapors in the tanks and are therefore hazardous. Petroleum fossil fuels are burned in internal combustion engines to power for ships, automobiles, aircraft engines, lawn mowers, dirt bikes. Different boiling points allow the hydrocarbons to be separated by distillation, Oil can be used in a variety of ways because it contains hydrocarbons of varying molecular masses, forms and lengths such as paraffins, aromatics, naphthenes, alkenes, dienes, and alkynes. Once separated and purified of any contaminants and impurities, the fuel or lubricant can be sold without further processing, smaller molecules such as isobutane and propylene or butylenes can be recombined to meet specific octane requirements by processes such as alkylation, or more commonly, dimerization. The octane grade of gasoline can also be improved by catalytic reforming, the final step in gasoline production is the blending of fuels with different octane ratings, vapor pressures, and other properties to meet product specifications. Another method for reprocessing and upgrading these intermediate products uses a process to separate usable oil from the waste asphaltene material. Oil refineries are large plants, processing about a hundred thousand to several hundred thousand barrels of crude oil a day. Because of the capacity, many of the units operate continuously, as opposed to processing in batches. The high capacity also makes process optimization and advanced process control very desirable, petroleum products are usually grouped into four categories, light distillates, middle distillates, heavy distillates and residuum. This classification is based on the way crude oil is distilled and separated into fractions as in the above drawing and these are not usually transported but instead are blended or processed further on-site. Chemical plants are often adjacent to oil refineries or a number of further chemical processes are integrated into it. For example, light hydrocarbons are steam-cracked in a plant. Using the Claus process, hydrogen sulfide is afterwards transformed to elementary sulfur to be sold to the chemical industry, the rather large heat energy freed by this process is directly used in the other parts of the refinery. Often an electrical plant is combined into the whole refinery process to take up the excess heat. Desalter unit washes out salt from the oil before it enters the atmospheric distillation unit
36.
Oil Springs, Ontario
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Oil Springs is a village in Lambton County, Ontario, Canada, located along Former Provincial Highway 21 south of Oil City. The village, an enclave within Enniskillen Township, is home to the Oil Museum of Canada, the CKCO-3 Channel 42 Television Tower is located near Oil Springs. Its the fifth tallest guyed antenna in Canada at 994 feet, before the village was formed, the indigenous people already knew about the gum beds and used the sticky oil to waterproof their canoes. Williams discovery triggered North Americas first oil rush and the name was changed to Oil Springs that same year. Within a few years, Oil Springs was a town with four thousand residents and in its peak days boasted paved roads, horse-drawn buses. He also invented the line, a method used to pump oil to the surface from multiple wells using a shared steam engine. Jerker lines are used to pump oil in Oil Springs today. On January 16,1862, Hugh Nixon Shaw using a springboard to chip through rock and it shot oil from over 60 metres below ground to above the treetops at a rate of 3000 barrels per day. A year later, a road was built from Oil Springs to Wyoming rail station. In 1865, the place separated from Enniskillen Township and was incorporated as a village, a year later, Bernard King struck oil at Petrolia,11 kilometres north of Oil Springs. Petrolia quickly replaced Oil Springs as Canadas oil capital, leaving Oil Springs almost abandoned, in 1881, more oil was discovered at a deeper level, resulting in another oil boom for Oil Springs. Two oil pipelines were built to Petrolia, and in 1886, in 1914, Charles Fairbank, son of John Henry, found a gas gusher in Oil Springs that was deemed the biggest gusher in Canada. In the 1930s, a fire destroyed all of the oil rigs on Williams property and by 1974. In 2008, the 150th anniversary of Williams discovery, Canada Post issued a stamp commemorating this first commercial oil well, featuring portraits of Charles Tripp and Williams
37.
Summerland Oil Field
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First developed in the 1890s, and richly productive in the early 20th century, the Summerland Oil Field was the location of the worlds first offshore oil wells, drilled from piers in 1896. This field, which was the first significant field to be developed in Santa Barbara County, produced 3.18 million of barrels of oil during its 50-year lifespan, finally being abandoned in 1939-40. It covers an area of a bit more than a square mile –740 acres – of which 380, the climate is Mediterranean, with an equable temperature regime year-round, and most of the precipitation falling between October and April in the form of rain. The town of Summerland is built on the part of this hillside, taking advantage of the ocean view. The offshore part of the main Summerland field was in shallow water adjacent to the beach, a popular beach extends the length of the former oil field, immediately below the town, and a park – Lookout Park – sits atop the bluffs. Two oil platforms, named Hilda and Hazel, formerly stood on this field, Chevron Corp. dismantled them in 1996, the Summerland field is contained in a series of sedimentary rock units in a trough known as the Carpinteria Basin. Oil in the Casitas Formation is shallow, at a depth of only 140 feet, accounting for its early discovery. In the Vaqueros formation the average depth to oil is 1,400 feet in the main Summerland field, sometime before 1894, enterprising petroleum prospectors recognized the likelihood that economically viable deposits of oil and gas were the source for these seeps, and began digging. The first finds of petroleum were extremely heavy oil – API gravity of 7, so essentially asphalt – but undeterred, they continued searching for more marketable oil. The earliest known oil well in the vicinity of Summerland dates from 1886, and was drilled on the side of Ortega Hill, by 1895, wooden derricks had sprouted across the beaches and bluffs of Summerland, completely changing the character of the community. Founded in 1889, originally the town had been a spiritualist community consisting of a cluster of houses around a central building in which seances were held. H. L. Williams, the founder of the town, had sold lots for $25 each, within a few years, those same lots were commanding prices up to $7,500 because of the seemingly unlimited quantities of oil that could be drawn from the ground. Drilled in 1896, these were the worlds first offshore oil wells, named the Treadwell Wharf, in 1900 this structure alone had 19 wells along its length, which reached 1,230 feet by 75 feet wide. Summerland thereby became a convenient refueling stop for the running between the coastal cities. Development of the Summerland Field was not entirely without controversy, even in its earliest years, in the late 1890s, a crowd of vigilantes headed by Reginald Fernald, a local newspaper publisher, tore down a drilling rig erected on Miramar Beach itself. The Summerland field had a peak in production followed by a precipitous decline. Drillers discovered a new pool in the field in 1929, in the Vaqueros Sandstone, at a depth of about 1,400 feet. Peak annual production for the part of the Summerland field was actually in 1929, at 118,519 barrels, from the Vaqueros
38.
Drilling rig
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A drilling rig is a machine that creates holes in the earth sub-surface. Drilling rigs can be mobile equipment mounted on trucks, tracks or trailers, the term rig therefore generally refers to the complex of equipment that is used to penetrate the surface of the Earths crust. Small to medium-sized drilling rigs are mobile, such as used in mineral exploration drilling, blast-hole, water wells. Hoists in the rig can lift hundreds of tons of pipe, other equipment can force acid or sand into reservoirs to facilitate extraction of the oil or natural gas, and in remote locations there can be permanent living accommodation and catering for crews. Marine rigs may operate thousands of miles distant from the base with infrequent crew rotation or cycle. Oil and natural gas drilling rigs are used not only to identify geologic reservoirs and this frees up the drilling rig to drill another hole and streamlines the operation as well as allowing for specialization of certain services, i. e. completions vs. drilling. New portable drillcat technology uses smaller portable trailer mounted rigs with shorter 3-metre drill pipe, the shorter drill pipe also allows a much smaller mast. Portable trailer mounted drilling rigs have drill ratings from 90 to 200 metres depending on mud pump flow and pressure ratings, other, heavier, truck rigs are more complicated, thus requiring more skill to run. Theyre also more difficult to handle due to the longer 6-to-9-metre drill pipe. Large truck rigs also require a much higher overhead clearance to operate, large truck drills can use over 570 litres of fuel per day, while the smaller Deeprock Style portable drills use a mere 20 to 75 litres of fuel per day. This makes smaller, more portable rigs preferable in remote or hard-to-reach places, Drilling rigs used for rock blasting for surface mines vary in size dependent on the size of the hole desired, and is typically classified into smaller pre-split and larger production holes. Underground mining uses a variety of drill rigs dependent on the purpose, such as production, bolting, cabling. Until internal combustion engines were developed in the late 19th century, the drilling of wells for the manufacture of salt began by the Song Dynasty in China. The well had a small mouth, as small as a small bowl. Archaeological evidence of the tools used in deep-well dwelling are kept. According to Salt, A World History, a Qing Dynasty well, also located in Zigong, diamond drilling has remained essentially unchanged since its inception. In early oil exploration, drilling rigs were semi-permanent in nature, in more recent times drilling rigs are expensive custom-built machines that can be moved from well to well. Some light duty drilling rigs are like a crane and are more usually used to drill water wells
39.
Hammer drill
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A hammer drill, also known as a rotary hammer, roto-drill or hammering drill, is a rotary drill with a hammering action. The hammering action provides a short, rapid hammer thrust to pulverize relatively brittle material and these tools are usually electrically powered, and increasingly powered by batteries. The same technology is used in electric demolition hammers, also known as chipping guns or breakers. With cam-action drills, the chuck has a mechanism whereby the entire chuck and bit move forward and backwards on the axis of rotation, the motion is tied to the rotation of the chuck. This type of drill is used with and without the hammer action. These units are smaller and are commonly powered by cordless technology. They are not typically used for production construction drilling, but rather for occasional drilling of concrete or masonry, an EP hammer has two pistons—a drive piston, and a flying piston. An electric motor turns a crank, which moves the piston back. The flying piston is at the end of the same cylinder. The pistons do not actually touch, but the air pressure in the EP cylinder allows for a more efficient transfer of hammering energy than springs in the cam-action style tools. The majority of modern rotary hammers as well as all electric-powered chipping guns or jack-hammers all utilize this EP technology, modern units allow the hammer and rotation functions to be used separately or in combination, i. e. hammer mode, drill mode, or both. When used in the mode, the tool provides a drilling function similar to a jackhammer. Hammer drills of both working principles are well suited for drilling holes in masonry or stone and they are also both used to drill holes in concrete footings to pin concrete wall forms and to drill holes in concrete floors to pin wall framing. Larger rotary hammers can also be used for doweling, and through-holes in concrete, the hammering action helps to break up the masonry so that it can be removed by the drill bits flutes. A hammer drill has a specially designed clutch that allows it to not only spin the drill bit, the actual distance the bit travels in and out and the force of its blow are both very small, and the hammering action is very rapid—thousands of BPM or IPM. For this reason, a hammer drill drills much faster than a drill through concrete or brick. Holes in hard materials are needed for anchor bolts, concrete screws, hammer drills almost always have a lever or switch that locks off the special hammer clutch, turning the tool into a conventional drill for wood or metal work. Hammer drills are more expensive and more bulky than regular drills, for example, an electrician would use a hammer drill for attaching items to either wood studs or masonry walls
40.
Kola Superdeep Borehole
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The Kola Superdeep Borehole is the result of a scientific drilling project of the Soviet Union in the Pechengsky District, on the Kola Peninsula. The project attempted to drill as deep as possible into the Earths crust, Drilling began on 24 May 1970 using the Uralmash-4E, and later the Uralmash-15000 series drilling rig. Boreholes were drilled by branching from a central hole, the deepest, SG-3, reached 12,262 metres in 1989 and still is the deepest artificial point on Earth. In terms of depth, it is the deepest borehole in the world. The borehole is 9 inches in diameter, the main target depth was set at 15,000 m. On 6 June 1979, the depth record held by the Bertha Rogers hole in Washita County, Oklahoma, United States. In 1983, the drill passed 12,000 m, and drilling was stopped for about a year for numerous scientific and celebratory visits to the site. This idle period may have contributed to a breakdown on 27 September 1984, after drilling to 12,066 m, Drilling was later restarted from 7,000 m. The hole reached 12,262 m in 1989, in that year, the hole depth was expected to reach 13,500 m by the end of 1990 and 15,000 m by 1993. However, because of higher-than-expected temperatures at depth and location,180 °C instead of expected 100 °C, drilling deeper was deemed unfeasible. With the projected increase in temperature with increasing depth, drilling to 15,000 m would have meant working at a temperature of 300 °C. The Kola borehole penetrated about a third of the way through the Baltic continental crust, estimated to be around 35 kilometres deep, the project has been a site of extensive geophysical studies. Instead the change in the wave velocity is caused by a metamorphic transition in the granite rock. In addition, the rock at that depth had been fractured and was saturated with water. This water, unlike water, must have come from deep-crust minerals and had been unable to reach the surface because of a layer of impermeable rock. Another unexpected discovery was a quantity of hydrogen gas, the mud that flowed out of the hole was described as boiling with hydrogen. The project was closed down in late 2006 because of a lack of funding, all the drilling and research equipment was scrapped. The site has been abandoned since 2008, the United States had embarked on a similar project in 1957, dubbed Project Mohole, which was intended to penetrate the shallow crust under the Pacific Ocean off Mexico
41.
Lithology
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It may be either a detailed description of these characteristics or be a summary of the gross physical character of a rock. It is the basis of subdividing rock sequences into individual lithostratigraphic units for the purposes of mapping, in certain applications, such as site investigations, lithology is described using a standard terminology such as in the European geotechnical standard Eurocode 7. The naming of a lithology is based on the rock type, the three major rock types are sedimentary, igneous, metamorphic. Sedimentary rocks are classified by whether they are siliciclastic or carbonate. Siliciclastic sedimentary rocks are then subcategorized based on their size distribution and the relative proportions of quartz, feldspar. Carbonate rocks are classified with the Dunham or Folk classification schemes according to the constituents of the carbonate rock, the name of an igneous rock requires information on crystal size and mineralogy. This classification can often be performed with a QAPF diagram, metamorphic rock naming can be based on texture, protolith, metamorphic facies, and/or the locations in which they are found. Naming based on texture and a pelite protolith can be used to slate and phyllite. Texture-based names are schist and gneiss and these textures, from slate to gneiss, define a continually-increasing extent of metamorphism. Metamorphic facies are defined by the fields in which particular minerals form. In igneous and metamorphic rocks, grain size is a measure of the sizes of the crystals in the rock. In igneous rock, this is used to determine the rate at which the material cooled, large crystals typically indicate intrusive igneous rock, as metamorphic reactions progress, the grains in metamorphic rocks can often be broken down into smaller grains. In clastic sedimentary rocks, grain size is the diameter of the grains and/or clasts that constitute the rock and these are used to determine which rock naming system to use. In the case of sandstones and conglomerates, which cover a range of grain sizes. Examples are pebble conglomerate and fine quartz arenite, in rocks in which mineral grains are large enough to be identified using a hand lens, the visible mineralogy is included as part of the description. The mineralogical composition of a rock is one of the ways in which it is classified. In general, igneous rocks can be categorized by increasing silica content as ultramafic, mafic, intermediate, or felsic, the fabric of a rock describes the spatial and geometric configuration of all the elements that make it up. In sedimentary rocks the main fabric is normally bedding and the scale
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Directional drilling
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Directional drilling is the practice of drilling non-vertical wells. Many prerequisites enabled this suite of technologies to become productive, probably, the first requirement was the realization that oil wells, or water wells, are not necessarily vertical. Initially, proxy evidence such as changes in other wells was accepted. Horizontal directional drill rigs are developing towards large-scale, micro-miniaturization, mechanical automation, measuring the inclination of a wellbore is comparatively simple, requiring only a pendulum. Measuring the azimuth, however, was more difficult, in certain circumstances, magnetic fields could be used, but would be influenced by metalwork used inside wellbores, as well as the metalwork used in drilling equipment. The next advance was in the modification of small gyroscopic compasses by the Sperry Corporation, Sperry did this under contract to Sun Oil, and a spin-off company Sperry Sun was formed, which brand continues to this day, absorbed into Halliburton. These three components combined are referred to as a survey, a series of consecutive surveys are needed to track the progress and location of a wellbore. Prior experience with rotary drilling had established several principles for the configuration of drilling equipment down hole that would be prone to drilling crooked hole, counter-experience had also given early directional drillers principles of BHA design and drilling practice that would help bring a crooked hole nearer the vertical. In 1934, H. John Eastman & Roman W. Hines of Long Beach, California, became pioneers in directional drilling when they and George Failing of Enid, Oklahoma, saved the Conroe, Texas, Failing had recently patented a portable drilling truck. He had started his company in 1931 when he mated a drilling rig to a truck, the innovation allowed rapid drilling of a series of slanted wells. This capacity to quickly drill multiple relief wells and relieve the enormous gas pressure was critical to extinguishing the Conroe fire, Eastman Whipstock, Inc. would become the worlds largest directional company in 1973. Combined, these tools and BHA designs made directional drilling possible. The next major advance was in the 1970s, when downhole drilling motors became common and these allowed the drill bit to continue rotating at the cutting face at the bottom of the hole, while most of the drill pipe was held stationary. Coupled with the development of measurement while drilling tools, directional drilling became easier, certain profiles cannot be drilled while the drill pipe is rotating. Drilling directionally with a downhole motor requires occasionally stopping rotation of the drill pipe, several companies have developed tools which allow directional control while rotating. These tools are referred to as rotary steerable systems, RSS technology has made access and directional control possible in previously inaccessible or uncontrollable formations. For instance, on an oil platform or jacket offshore,40 or more wells can be grouped together, the wells will fan out from the platform into the reservoir below. This concept is being applied to wells, allowing multiple subsurface locations to be reached from one pad
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Petroleum geology
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Petroleum geology is the study of origin, occurrence, movement, accumulation, and exploration of hydrocarbon fuels. It refers to the set of geological disciplines that are applied to the search for hydrocarbons. These wells present only a 1-dimensional segment through the Earth and the skill of inferring 3-dimensional characteristics from them is one of the most fundamental in petroleum geology. Recently, the availability of inexpensive, high quality 3D seismic data and data from various electromagnetic geophysical techniques has greatly aided the accuracy of such interpretation, the following section discusses these elements in brief. For a more in-depth treatise, see the second half of this article below, the reservoir is a porous and permeable lithological unit or set of units that holds the hydrocarbon reserves. Analysis of reservoirs at the simplest level requires an assessment of their porosity, some of the key disciplines used in reservoir analysis are the fields of structural analysis, stratigraphy, sedimentology, and reservoir engineering. The seal, or cap rock, is a unit with low permeability that impedes the escape of hydrocarbons from the reservoir rock, common seals include evaporites, chalks and shales. Analysis of seals involves assessment of their thickness and extent, such that their effectiveness can be quantified, the trap is the stratigraphic or structural feature that ensures the juxtaposition of reservoir and seal such that hydrocarbons remain trapped in the subsurface, rather than escaping and being lost. Analysis of maturation involves assessing the history of the source rock in order to make predictions of the amount. Finally, careful studies of migration reveal information on how hydrocarbons move from source to reservoir, several major subdisciplines exist in petroleum geology specifically to study the seven key elements discussed above. In terms of source analysis, several facts need to be established. Firstly, the question of there actually is any source rock in the area must be answered. If the likelihood of there being a rock is thought to be high, the next matter to address is the state of thermal maturity of the source. Maturation of source rocks depends strongly on temperature, such that the majority of oil occurs in the 60° to 120°C range. Gas generation starts at similar temperatures, but may continue up beyond this range, in order to determine the likelihood of oil/gas generation, therefore, the thermal history of the source rock must be calculated. This is performed with a combination of analysis of the source rock and basin modelling methods, such as back-stripping. A full scale basin analysis is carried out prior to defining leads. This study tackles the petroleum system and studies source rock, burial history, maturation, migration and focus, all these elements are used to investigate where potential hydrocarbons might migrate towards
![{EL}_{oil}=\frac{{WI}\times{LOE}}{{NRI}[{P_o}+({P_g}\times{GOR})/1,000]\times(1-{T})}](https://wikimedia.org/api/rest_v1/media/math/render/svg/9c20cf20dbf2d833998bf8012c936c13dc0d5d9f)
![{EL}_{gas}=\frac{{WI}\times{LOE}}{{NRI}[({P_o}\times{Y})+{P_g}]\times(1-{T})}](https://wikimedia.org/api/rest_v1/media/math/render/svg/da11cff6a2a264e508559b9230cf050348ee3367)
