Established in south-central New Mexico at the end of World War II, White Sands Missile Range is the largest overland military reserve in the western hemisphere. It was the site of the first nuclear ...explosion, the birthplace of the American space program, and the primary site for testing U.S. missile capabilities.
In this environmental history of White Sands Missile Range, Ryan H. Edgington traces the uneasy relationships between the military, the federal government, local ranchers, environmentalists, state game and fish personnel, biologists and ecologists, state and federal political figures, hunters, and tourists after World War II-as they all struggled to define and productively use the militarized western landscape. Environmentalists, ranchers, tourists, and other groups joined together to transform the meaning and uses of this region, challenging the authority of the national security state to dictate the environmental and cultural value of a rural American landscape. As a result, White Sands became a locus of competing geographies informed not only by the far-reaching intellectual, economic, and environmental changes wrought by the cold war but also by regional history, culture, and traditions.
Regime of Obstruction makes visible complex connections between corporate power and the extraction and use of carbon energy. Anchored in sociological and political theory, this volume provides hard ...data and empirical research that traces the power and influence of the fossil fuel industry through economics, politics, media, and higher education.
What if Canada 's so-called environmental nightmare was really an engineering triumph and the key to a stable and sustainable future?For years, Canadians have been hearing nothing but bad news out of ...the Athabasca Oil Sands. From 20th Century economists decrying it as a perpetual money-loser in the face of more easily-extracted foreign oil to green groups around the world declaring it the world's worst industrial enterprise, sometimes it seems as though no good could ever come from this so-called dirty resource.But what if developing Canada's Oil Sands was the key to bridging the gap between current petroleum-based economies and the alternative energies that aren't ready for market yet? What if it meant eliminating the threat of Peak Oil and providing economic stability not just for Canada and the rest of North America, but for the world? And what if the environmental costs of the resource were both not nearly as dire as some would have you believe, but currently better than many other options with the industry already making huge advances in sustainability, energy use and water reclamation?That's exactly the case that Alastair Sweeny, author of BlackBerry Planet, argues is at the core of the Athabasca Sands: a bright future. By digging into the past, present and future of oil sands technology, Sweeny cuts through the hype and hysteria and makes a solid and engaging case that the Sands aren't the environmental boogeyman set to destroy humanity, but rather our best hope for a truly stable and sustainable future.
We show that the oil sands industry releases the 13 elements considered priority pollutants (PPE) under the US Environmental Protection Agency's Clean Water Act, via air and water, to the Athabasca ...River and its watershed. In the 2008 snowpack, all PPE except selenium were greater near oil sands developments than at more remote sites. Bitumen upgraders and local oil sands development were sources of airborne emissions. Concentrations of mercury, nickel, and thallium in winter and all 13 PPE in summer were greater in tributaries with watersheds more disturbed by development than in less disturbed watersheds. In the Athabasca River during summer, concentrations of all PPE were greater near developed areas than upstream of development. At sites down stream of development and within the Athabasca Delta, concentrations of all PPE except beryllium and selenium remained greater than upstream of development. Concentrations of some PPE at one location in Lake Athabasca near Fort Chipewyan were also greater than concentration in the Athabasca River upstream of development. Canada's or Alberta's guidelines for the protection of aquatic life were exceeded for seven PPE—cadmium, copper, lead, mercury, nickel, silver, and zinc—in melted snow and/or water collected near or downstream of development.
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In this in-depth analysis of First Nations opposition to the oil sands industry, James Heydon offers detailed empirical insight into Canadian oil sands regulation. The environmental consequences of ...the oil sands industry have been thoroughly explored by scholars from a variety of disciplines. However, less well understood is how and why the provincial energy regulator has repeatedly sanctioned such a harmful pattern of production for almost two decades. This research monograph addresses that shortcoming.
Drawing from interviews with government, industry, and First Nation personnel, along with an analysis of almost 20 years of policy, strategy, and regulatory approval documents, Sustainable Development as Environmental Harm offers detailed empirical insight into Canadian oil sands regulation. Providing a thorough account of the ways in which the regulatory process has prioritised economic interests over the land-based cultural interests of First Nations, it addresses a gap in the literature by explaining how environmental harm has been systematically produced over time by a regulatory process tasked with the pursuit of 'sustainable development'.
With an approach emphasizing the importance of understanding how and why the regulatory process has been able to circumvent various protections for the entire duration in which the contemporary oil sands industry has existed, this work complements existing literature and provides a platform from which future investigations into environmental harm may be conducted. It is essential reading for those with an interest in green criminology, environmental harm, indigenous rights, and regulatory controls relating to fossil fuel production.
The carbon capture, utilization and storage (CCUS) technique is widely applied in order to solve energy shortages and global warming, in which COsub.2 storage plays an important part. Herein, the ...COsub.2 storage in reservoir pores with a dead-end is investigated using a molecular dynamics simulation. The results indicate that, when a COsub.2 molecule flows through a reservoir pore towards its dead-end, it is readily captured inside said dead-end. When the pressure difference of the COsub.2 injection increases, the transport speed of the COsub.2 becomes faster, and the storage efficiency increases. The rate constants for the absorption of the carbon dioxide at 5 MPa, 10 MPa, and 15 MPa are 0.47 m/s, 2.1 m/s, and 3.1 m/s. With the same main channel, a narrower dead-end with less oil molecules would cause a smaller spatial potential resistance, which would lead to a faster COsub.2 replacement and storage process. The 3 nm main channel with a 1.5 nm dead-end model had the highest absorption rate of 5.3 m/s out of the three sets of models with different dead-ends. When the dead-end’s width was constant, the rate constants for the absorption of carbon dioxide in the 6 nm main channel with a 1.5 nm dead-end model was 1.8 m/s, which was higher than that of the 3 nm–1.5 nm model. This study investigates the mechanism of COsub.2 storage in reservoir pores with a dead-end at the molecular level and provides a scientific basis for the practical application of COsub.2 storage.
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Kutch region has experienced widespread liquefaction and related damage during a series of past earthquakes; however, cyclic behavior of sandy soils of the region is yet to be explored. The current ...study is focused on the dynamic characteristics of natural soil deposits of the high seismicity Kutch region. In the previous studies, variations in fines content (FC) and the nature of fines (plastic, non-plastic) has been controlled and systematic and based on either non-plastic or plastic fines using mostly standard or river sands. However, the present study is different in the approach as the dynamic characteristics of natural sandy deposits with simultaneous presence, and random variations of both the plastic and non-plastic fines are explored. Results from cyclic triaxial tests indicated sandy soils of Kutch region are severe to moderately prone to liquefaction with a strong dependence on plasticity rather than FC. Pore pressure ratio (ru), mean effective pressure (p′) and cyclic stress ratio (CSR) for silty-sands signified effective stress failure, which was found to be coinciding with initial liquefaction. Clayey-sands exhibited strength degradation instead of liquefaction, and the plasticity index (PI) was found to control the magnitude of degradation. Large degradation in secant shear modulus and reduction in damping ratio with the number of cycles was observed in silty-sands whereas clayey-sands exhibited relatively lesser degradation in secant shear modulus and damping ratio.
•Sandy soils of the Kutch region exhibited different dynamic behavior to be strongly dependent on the FC and nature of fines. While silty-sand specimens attained liquefaction within 31 cycles, clayey-sand specimens did not liquefy up to 50 cycles.•Effective stress path analysis revealed that Kutch soil with non-plastic fines, irrespective of total FC, displayed effective stress failure (p¢ reaching zero, coincidental with initial liquefaction) within 31 cycles. Whereas in the presence of plastic fines, effective stress path of clayey-sand specimens ceased to reach to the stress origin indicating cyclic degradation.•Evolution of cyclic stress ratio with the number of cycles was found to be strongly influenced by the FC, and the nature of fines.
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Oil sands bitumen (OSB) is the key component of extracted oil sands, thus further investigation of the mechanism of OSB pyrolysis reaction would be helpful for the development and application of oil ...sands pyrolysis process. First, chemical structure parameters and thermogravimetric (TG) behavior of OSB were experimentally investigated by 13C NMR spectroscopy and TG analysis, respectively, to initially evaluate the correlation between chemical structure parameters and pyrolytic behavior. Further, the ATR–FTIR spectroscopy technology was used to experimentally characterize and calculate the structural parameters of OSB at different pyrolysis final temperatures, and the main thermal evolution rules of different functional groups during the pyrolysis reaction were obtained. Based on this result and by using the model fitting method, the pyrolysis of OSB was found to be a parallel reaction. Moreover, the kinetic calculation results obtained by Straink method and distributed activated energy model method also supported this result. The correlation between chemical structure parameters and activation energy was analyzed, and it was found that the degree of aromatization Y-factor could be used to characterize the pyrolysis reaction activity. Finally, this study proposed a simplified mechanistic model of chemical structure evolution during OSB pyrolysis.
•Pyrolysis mechanism studied by experimental characterization combined with kinetics.•Study of the thermal evolution of OSB chemical structure by ATR-FTIR.•The pyrolysis kinetics of oil sands bitumen are obtained by different models.•The main reaction stage of OSB pyrolysis is classified as a parallel reaction.•Proposed a simplified pyrolysis mechanism model of OSB chemical structure evolution.
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Naphthenic acid fraction compounds (NAFCs) are a toxicologically relevant component of oil sands process-affected materials (OSPM). For the first time, we report on differences in the concentrations ...and distribution of NAFCs from wetlands on an Athabasca oil sands mine site with varied histories of solid and liquid OSPM input. Sampling locations included natural and naturalized reference wetlands, a reclaimed tailings pond, wetlands supplemented with OSPM, opportunistic wetlands, and tailings ponds. Samples were prepared using solid-phase extraction, and analyzed by high-resolution Orbitrap mass spectrometry; NAFC concentrations and characteristics were evaluated for all locations. The NAFCs from tailings ponds were dominated by O3-NAFCs and classical naphthenic acids (NAs; i.e., O2 species) with double bond equivalences of 3 and 4. Reference wetlands had no dominant species, and relatively little NAFC content. The heteroatomic species in opportunistic wetlands were dominated by highly-oxidized NAFC species, where Σ O3:O6 species constituted 55–75% of the assignable spectrum and 3–4% NAs; in tailings ponds NAs constituted 47–51%. A relatively young (4-year-old) wetland built on a former tailings pond had NAFC concentrations between 65 and 80 mg/L, and NAs constituted 47% of the assignable spectrum. There was thus little apparent oxidation of NAFCs at this young wetland. The composition of NAFCs from one wetland (≥15 years old) supplemented with OSPM contained a greater proportion of oxidized species than tailings, suggesting NAFC transformation therein. These data suggest that while NAFCs are persistent in some wetlands, there is preliminary evidence for oxidation in mature wetlands.
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•Differing distributions of naphthenic acid fraction compounds in natural and constructed oil sands wetlands.•Orbitrap-MS delineated oil sands process material-affected from unaffected sites.•Naphthenic acid fraction compounds oxidation occurs in older (≥15 year) wetlands.•A 4-year-old reclaimed tailings pond has NAFCs similar to tailings-derived ones.
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