Carbon capture, storage, and utilization has emerged as an essential technology for near-term CO2 emission control. The largest CO2 projects globally combine storage and oil recovery. The efficiency of this process relies critically on the miscibility of CO2 in crude oils at reservoir conditions. We present a microfluidic approach to quantify the minimum miscibility pressure (MMP) that leverages the inherent fluorescence of crude oils, is faster than conventional technologies, and provides quantitative, operator-independent measurements. To validate the approach, synthetic oil mixtures of known composition (pentane, hexadecane) are tested and MMP values are compared to reported values. Results differ by less than 0.5 MPa on average, in contrast to comparison between conventional methods with variations on the order of 1-2 MPa. In terms of speed, a pressure scan for a single MMP measurement required less than 30 min (with potential to be sub-10 min), in stark contrast to days or weeks with existing approaches. The method is applied to determine the MMP for Pennsylvania, West Texas, and Saudi crudes. Importantly, our fluorescence-based approach enables rapid, automated, operator-independent measurement of MMP as needed to inform the world's largest CO2 projects.

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This paper presents a novel virtual reality navigation (VRN) input device, called the VRNChair, offering an intuitive and natural way to interact with virtual reality (VR) environments. Traditionally, VR navigation tests are performed using stationary input devices such as keyboards or joysticks. However, in case of immersive VR environment experiments, such as our recent VRN assessment, the user may feel kinetosis (motion sickness) as a result of the disagreement between vestibular response and the optical flow. In addition, experience in using a joystick or any of the existing computer input devices may cause a bias in the accuracy of participant performance in VR environment experiments. Therefore, we have designed a VR navigational environment that is operated using a wheelchair (VRNChair). The VRNChair translates the movement of a manual wheelchair to feed any VR environment. We evaluated the VRNChair by testing on 34 young individuals in two groups performing the same navigational task with either the VRNChair or a joystick; also one older individual (55 years) performed the same experiment with both a joystick and the VRNChair. The results indicate that the VRNChair does not change the accuracy of the performance; thus removing the plausible bias of having experience using a joystick. More importantly, it significantly reduces the effect of kinetosis. While we developed VRNChair for our spatial cognition study, its application can be in many other studies involving neuroscience, neurorehabilitation, physiotherapy, and/or simply the gaming industry.

Infrasound observations are increasingly used to constrain properties of volcanic eruptions. In order to better interpret infrasound observations, however, there is a need to better understand the relationship between eruption properties and sound generation. Here we perform two‐dimensional computational aeroacoustic simulations where we solve the compressible Navier‐Stokes equations for pure‐air with a large‐eddy simulation approximation. We simulate idealized impulsive volcanic eruptions where the exit velocity is specified and the eruption is pressure‐balanced with the atmosphere. Our nonlinear simulation results are compared with the commonly used analytical linear acoustics model of a compact monopole source radiating acoustic waves isotropically in a half space. The monopole source model matches the simulations for low exit velocities (<100 m/s or M0.3333em≈0.3333em0.3 where M is the Mach number); however, the two solutions diverge as the exit velocity increases with the simulations developing lower peak amplitude, more rapid onset, and anisotropic radiation with stronger infrasound signals recorded above the vent than on Earth's surface. Our simulations show that interpreting ground‐based infrasound observations with the monopole source model can result in an underestimation of the erupted volume for eruptions with sonic or supersonic exit velocities. We examine nonlinear effects and show that nonlinear effects during propagation are relatively minor for the parameters considered. Instead, the dominant nonlinear effect is advection by the complex flow structure that develops above the vent. This work demonstrates the need to consider anisotropic radiation patterns and jet dynamics when interpreting infrasound observations, particularly for eruptions with sonic or supersonic exit velocities.