Per this linked article you posted...It states: "This technical paper aims at analyzing Mr. Tao’s experiment, rectifying its limitations and proposing a better experimental setup for the pilot experiment so that it can be further extrapolated to the industrial point of application." This is old. Though the article is from June, the info in it predates Dr. Tao's more recent tests and analysis. Per Dr. Tao et al:
"When a strong electric field is applied along the flow direction in a small section of the pipeline, the suspended particles are polarized by the electric field. The dipolar interactions quickly aggregate the particles into short chains along the field direction. Under such a condition, the space symmetry is broken. Similar to the flow of nematic liquid crystal with its molecule alignment in one direction, the viscosity is no longer isotropic [8]. Along the axial direction, viscosity is down to the minimum as these aggregates are streamlined along the flow direction with a very low intrinsic viscosity. Hence the crude oil flow inside the pipeline is greatly enhanced.
However, the theoretical prediction that the applied electric field could aggregate suspended particles inside crude oil was not obvious. The issue somehow becomes controversy. For example, I.N. Evdokinov and K.A. Kornishin in 2009 claimed that magnetic field and electric field cannot aggregate particles inside crude oil [9]. In the area of electrorheological (ER) fluids, it was well established that a strong electric field aggregates the sus- pended dielectric particles of micrometer size into chains and chain-based thick columns, which are close packed and have the body-centered tetragonal (BCT) lattice structure [10–12]. Similar electric-field induced aggregations have been observed in colloidal suspensions with particles in micrometer or sub-micrometer size [13]. It is also straightforward to show that at a sufficiently strong electric field, the interaction between induced dipole and local electric field inside crude oil is stronger than the thermal motion, leading to the particle aggregation. The controversy comes from a simple fact that crude oil is very dark and the suspended particles inside crude oil, such as paraffin particles, are typically in nano- scale; they cannot be observed under microscope or with conven- tional optical devices. In fact, we even did not succeed in using X-ray or TEM to monitor the suspended particles inside the crude oil. To resolve this outstanding issue, which is also the key for the new technology, we must have some direct evidence to show electric field induced particle aggregation inside crude oil. For this purpose, we recently carried out neutron scattering studies at NIST Center for Neutron Research (NCNR).
The small angle neutron scattering experiment fully verified our theoretical prediction. Under a strong electric field, the suspended nano-particles inside crude oil aggregate into short chains along the field direction. The experiment enables us to determine the induced chain size and shape, verifying that the electric field works for all kinds of crude oils, including paraffin base crude oil, asphalt base crude oil, and mixed base crude oil. The basic physics of such field induced viscosity reduction verified by the neutron scattering is general and should be applicable to many other areas [14]." Tsunami coming
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AI
