QS Energy Inc (QSEP)

[As I See It]

Very soon QSEP will be in possession of a significant amount of new data regarding the efficacy of its Applied Oil Technology obtained from operations on a commercial pipeline. While shareholder discussions have mostly focused on viscosity reduction, I think that the AOT's ability to suppress turbulence at the same time, will begin to gain increasing importance as the discussions move forward.

Here is what to look for:

From Dr. Tao:

It is clear from Eqs. (1.1) and (1.3) that the transfer of fluids via laminar flow is energetically far more efficient than that via turbulent flow. For example, to increase the flow rate by 30% we only need to increase the pressure by 30% for laminar flow, but for turbulent flow we need to increase the pressure by 58.3%; much more energy is needed. Therefore, suppressing turbulence is crucial. This is also the reason why many pipelines use a drag-reducing agent (DRA), an additive made of polymer chains, to suppress turbulence.

As flow rates increase and other factors in a crude oil pipeline push the Reynolds Number beyond approx. 2300, turbulent flow replaces laminar flow. Turbulence occurs as the oil pushes up against the inside wall of the pipe and the pipe pushes the oil back down causing a swirling effect.
DRAs are polymer chains that interact with the oil and the wall to help reduce the contact of the oil with the wall. The aggregation into short chains of suspended particles in the base liquid, by the AOT, has a similar effect.

From Dr. Tao:

When we apply a strong electric field along the flow direction in a small section of pipeline (Fig. 1), the strong field polarizes the suspended particles inside the base liquid and aggregates them into short chains along the flow direction. Such aggregation breaks the rotational symmetry and makes the fluid viscosity anisotropic. Along the flow direction,the viscosity is significantly reduced, but in the directions perpendicular to the flow, the viscosity is substantially increased. Therefore, all vortices and rotating motions are suppressed; hence the turbulence is suppressed. Only the flow along the pipeline is enhanced. Our recent field tests on pipelines fully support the theoretical prediction. The method is extremely energy efficient since it only aggregates the particles and does not heat the suspensions.

Not only has Dr. Tao calculated the theoretical basis for turbulence suppression, but field tests have subsequently confirmed those predictions. In China, on a commercial pipeline, the old blue prototype AOT was able to maintain laminar flow at a Reynolds Number of 6348, far above the 2300 level that would normally indicate turbulent flow.

One last thought from Dr. Tao:

The viscosity of most fluids is isotropic. The important exception is nematic liquid crystal. When its molecules are aligned by a magnetic field in the field direction, it has very low viscosity along the field direction. Meanwhile, its viscosity in the directions perpendicular to the magnetic field is very high[13]. The nematic liquid crystal example provides important insight for our case..........

The electric-field-treated crude oil is now similar to a flow of nematic liquid crystal with its molecule alignment in the flow direction [13]. In Fig. 3, we plot the original viscosity versus the viscosities of treated suspensions at various volume fractions. As the volume fraction is getting higher, the viscosity reduction along the flow direction is getting more significant and the viscosity perpendicular to the flow is also getting much higher. Since the viscosity in the directions other than the flow direction is increased substantially, the turbulence is suppressed as the vortices in turbulence must have the fluid moving in the direction transverse to the pipe line axis.For this purpose,the aggregated short chains play a similar function as polymer additives in DRA. However, this ER technology has no additives and thus is friendly to the refineries in the crude oil case. Moreover, the technology also significantly reduces the viscosity along the flow direction and enhances the flow output, while DRA cannot reduce the oil’s viscosity.

GLTA