Heat recovery ventilation systems have become increasingly popular in modern residential buildings, particularly in cold climates. This has led to the research and development of supporting technologies, such as combined intake/exhaust vents. Conventionally, the intake and exhaust airflows of a heat recovery ventilation system use separate vents and penetrations in a building's envelope; combined intake/exhaust vents package these airflows together and use only one penetration. This simplifies heat recovery ventilation system installation and can lead to higher operating efficiencies; the implications are reduced up-front and operating costs as well as broadened access to heat recovery ventilation. Unfortunately, in cold climates, existing combined intake/exhaust vent designs are susceptible to frost accumulation, a mode of failure. The aim of this work was to develop a combined intake/exhaust vent more suitable for cold climate use: the Arctic Dual Hood. The design was developed in iterations informed by experimentation. These experiments included climate chamber evaluations and field performance comparisons. This design process produced a functional prototype with favorable frost mitigation characteristics compared to an existing combined intake/exhaust vent design, as determined through the field performance comparisons. Additionally, this prototype observed the constraints and met the performance requirements imposed by the American Society of Heating, Refrigeration, and Air-Conditioning Engineer's Standard 62.2: Ventilation and Acceptable Indoor Air Quality in Residential Buildings.

Exploitation of viscous and heavy oils on Alaska North Slope (ANS) requires nonthermal enhanced oil recovery (EOR) techniques. Currently, three nonthermal EOR methods, including solvent injection, low salinity water (LSW) flooding, and low salinity polymer (LSP) injection, have been proved to be useful on ANS. ANS viscous and heavy oils can be developed effectively by combining those three nonthermal EOR techniques. In this dissertation, lab experiments have been conducted to investigate the potential of the proposed hybrid nonthermal EOR techniques, including HSW (high salinity water)-LSW-softened LSW flooding, HSW-LSW-LSP flooding, CO₂-enriched LHS (light hydrocarbon solvent)-alternating-LSW flooding, LHS-alternating-LSW flooding, CO₂-enriched LHS (light hydrocarbon solvent)-alternating-LSP flooding, and LHS-alternating-LSP flooding, to improve ANS viscous oil recovery. Besides, the effect of essential clay minerals, including sodium-based montmorillonite (Na-Mt), calcium-based montmorillonite (Ca-Mt), illite, and kaolinite, on LSW flooding has been examined. In addition, the CO₂ influence on solvent-alternating-LSP flooding in enhancing ANS viscous oil recovery has been investigated. Furthermore, the blockage issue during CO₂-enriched LHS-alternating-LSP flooding has been investigated, and its solution has been proposed and analyzed. The EOR potential of the proposed hybrid EOR techniques has been evaluated by conducting coreflooding experiments. Additionally, relative permeability, swelling property, zeta potential, interfacial tension (IFT), and pressure-volume-temperature (PVT) tests have been conducted to reveal the EOR mechanisms of the proposed hybrid EOR techniques. Moreover, water ion analysis of DI-water/natural-sand and DI-water/natural-sand/CO₂ systems has been carried out to reveal the complex reaction between CO₂, sand, and LSP solution. It was found that, compared to conventional waterflooding, all the proposed hybrid EOR techniques could result in better oil recovery potential. It was noticed that the presence of CO₂ in LHS could be more beneficial to the solvent-alternating-LSW/LSP flooding processes during the 1st cycle due to the greater effectiveness of oil viscosity reduction. In particular, severe blockage issue occurred when conducting CO₂-enriched LHS-alternating-LSP flooding using sand pack due to the polymer precipitation. Additionally, the calculated water relative permeabilities are much lower than the typical values, implying more complex interactions between the reservoir rock, heavy oil, and injected water. Moreover, comparing to HSW, LSW could further swell Na-Mt significantly, which may benefit LSW flooding by improving sweep efficiency since in-situ swelling of Na-Mt has the potential to block the higher permeable water-flooded zone and divert the injected brine to lower permeable and unswept area. Comparing to Na-Mt, LSW couldn't swell Ca-Mt and illite further, whereas kaolinite was incapable of swelling in both HSW and LSW. Furthermore, about 60 mole% of solvent could be dissolved into the ANS viscous oil at target reservoir condition, resulting in oil swelling and viscosity reduction effects, which provided better microscopic displacement efficiency. Although the presence of CO₂ in LHS had a negative impact on the oil swelling effect, the influence on the oil viscosity reduction was positive. In addition, reducing the salinity of water could generate more negative zeta potential values on the surface of clay minerals and sand, making it more water wet. Besides, IFT of oil/LSW system is higher than that of oil/HSW system, indicating that IFT reduction is not an EOR mechanism of LSW flooding in our proposed hybrid EOR techniques. Additionally, after introducing CO₂ to the DIwater/natural-sand system, the concentration of multivalent cations was increased, which may be responsible for the polymer precipitation. The blockage issue could be solved by injecting LSW as a spacer between CO₂-enriched LHS injection and LSP injection.

The Arctic and its permafrost terrain are inherently dynamic, complex, and sensitive environments. Understanding the past and current changes occurring in these systems is key in predicting future variations, including the response of permafrost to climate change, and to terrain modifications resulting from natural processes or anthropogenic activities. This study contributes to advance our understanding of permafrost dynamics in varying permafrost environments of northern Alaska and northwestern Canada using a terrain-cryofacies approach. This unique approach helps to increase our understanding of permafrost dynamics from the site-specific scale to over extended areas by recognizing linkages between terrain and subsurface properties, and by identifying similar terrain units in remote sensing analysis. In the Colville River Delta (Alaska), our terrain-cryofacies study integrated data from 79 boreholes with a remote sensing analysis to evaluate the temporal changes in the Nigliq channel positions from 1948 to 2013 and the related permafrost dynamics. Most land cover changes occurred as land exposition (64%), whereas about 36% of the total changes were classified as eroded. The erosion of the older terrain units from the floodplain toposequence, such as the inactive-floodplain cover deposits, implied ground loss volumes of about one-fifth of soil solids and four-fifths of ground ice. Along this channel, we also identified the typical configuration and properties of taliks and cryopegs, as well as subsequent epigenetic permafrost growth. We found that the active channel was underlain by closed taliks, rather than through taliks and thus did not penetrate the entire layer of permafrost connecting supra- and sub-permafrost groundwater. A cryopeg connected to the active channel talik was identified from borehole data in the adjacent terrain units that developed following channel migration. We estimated the likelihood of encountering such taliks and cryopegs over extended areas. The terrain-cryofacies approach was also applied to understand permafrost dynamics of hillslope thermokarst located in multiple ecoregions of northern Alaska and northwestern Canada, including areas affected by interactions with infrastructure. Six features were studied through the combination of field-based and remote sensing methods, whereas 150 others were assessed solely by remote sensing. Studies along a pipeline indicated that embankment construction led to an increase in the active layer thickness, reaching the underlying ice-rich intermediate layer, and causing thaw settlement. This formed a thermokarst-ditch that facilitated channelization of cross-drainage water, and thermal erosion of the ice-rich permafrost that became affected by thermal denudation and caused a retrogressive thaw slump (RTS). The RTS later selfstabilized mainly due to the lateral discontinuity of massive ice (i.e., ice wedge) and the low-relief terrain. We suggested approaches to develop adaptation strategies for infrastructure at risk of RTS based on: these findings and conditions that favor or limit RTS growth by local feedbacks; considering the interaction patterns that we identified between RTS and infrastructure; and the main destabilization processes that we highlighted by terrain units. Further research is necessary, however, and must include testing potential mitigation techniques at multiple sites with monitoring programs to assess the variability in performance with respect to site-specific conditions.

Microfluidics research is a constantly evolving and developing field of research in the biological, chemical, and medical sciences. To perform microfluidic analyses, various types of pump designs have been developed or optimized. These pumps are generally capable of pumping flow in the range of 0.1-100s of microliters (µL) per minute, with the goal of pumping fluid with an extremely consistent flow rate. These pumps include, but are not limited to, peristaltic, syringe, membrane, and lobe pumps. Both commercial and open-source designs have been developed to meet the needs of continued research. Commercial designs are very expensive, but offer limited flexibility to tailor the usage for custom assays. Open-source designs that have been presented may lack support, or may be designed to use fabrication technologies that are less commonly available than conventional desktop 3D printing. Due to this, many laboratories may be limited in their microfluidic research work due to either availability of commercial pumps, or usability of open-source pump designs. This work presents two iterations of a novel design for a 3D-printable microfluidic peristaltic pump. The pumps developed herein have been tested to demonstrate consistent performance operating over long-term periods of up to ten days continuously. These pumps have been tested to demonstrate capability of delivering aqueous flow as slow as flow ranges of 10s of µL/min. These pumps are capable of maintaining an outlet pressure of up to 220 kilopascals (kPa). In a tube of 1 mm inner diameter, this pressure would drive a flow rate of 10 µL/min through tubing up to 6.6 meters long. Finally, this design has been optimized to improve the user experience and make these peristaltic pumps both easy to maintain and easy to operate by a non-technical user.

This work presents the various probabilistic methodology for forecasting petroleum production in shale reservoirs. Two statistical methods are investigated, Bayesian and frequentist, combined with various decline curve deterministic models. A robust analysis of well-completion properties and how they affect the production forecast is carried out. Lastly, a look into the uncertainties introduced by the statistical methods and the decline curve models are investigated to discover any correlation and plays that otherwise would not be apparent. We investigated two Bayesian methods - Absolute Bayesian Computation (ABC) and GIBBS sampler - and two frequentist methods - Conventional Bootstrap (BS) and Modified Bootstrap (MBS). We combined these statistical methods with five empirical models - Arps, Duong, Power Law Model (PLE), Logistic Growth Model (LGA), and Stretched Exponential Decline Model (SEPD) - and an analytical Jacobi 2 theta model. This allowed us to make a robust comparison of all these approaches on various unconventional plays across the United States, including Permian, Marcellus, Eagle Ford, Haynesville, Barnett, and Bakken shale, to get detailed insight on how to forecast production with minimal prediction errors effectively. Analysis was carried out on a total of 1800 wells with varying production history data lengths ranging from 12 to 60 months on a 12-month increment and a total production length of 96 months. We developed a novel approach for developing and integrating informative model parameter priors into the Bayesian statistical methods. Previous work assumed a uniform distribution for model parameter priors, which was inaccurate and negatively impacted forecasting performance. Our results show the significant superior performance of the Bayesian methods, most notably at early hindcast size (12 to 24 months production history). Furthermore, we discovered that production history length was the most critical factor in production forecasting that leveled the performance of all probabilistic methods regardless of the decline curve model or statistical methodology implemented. The novelty of this work relies on the development of informative priors for the Bayesian methodologies and the robust combination of statistical methods and model combination studied on a wide variety of shale plays. In addition, the whole methodology was automated in a programming language and can be easily reproduced and used to make production forecasts accurately.

The first-ever polymer flood pilot to enhance heavy oil recovery on Alaska North Slope is ongoing. After more than 3 years of polymer injection, significant benefit has been observed from the decrease in water cut from 65% to less than 15% in the project producers. The primary objective of this study is to develop a robust history-matched reservoir simulation model capable of predicting future polymer flood performance. In this work, the reservoir simulation model has been developed based on the geological model and available reservoir and fluid data. In particular, four high transmissibility strips were introduced to connect the injector-producer well pairs, simulating short-circuiting flow behavior that can be explained by viscous fingering and reproducing the water cut history. The strip transmissibilities were manually tuned to improve the history matching results during the waterflooding and polymer flooding periods, respectively. It has been found that higher strip transmissibilities match the sharp water cut increase very well in the waterflooding period. Then the strip transmissibilities need to be reduced with time to match the significant water cut reduction. The viscous fingering effect in the reservoir during waterflooding and the restoration of injection conformance during polymer flooding have been effectively represented. Based on the validated simulation model, numerical simulation tests have been conducted to investigate the oil recovery performance under different development strategies, with consideration for sensitivity to polymer parameter uncertainties. The oil recovery factor with polymer flooding can reach about 39% in 30 years, twice as much as forecasted with continued waterflooding. Besides, the updated reservoir model has been successfully employed to forecast polymer utilization, a valuable parameter to evaluate the pilot test's economic efficiency. All the investigated development strategies indicate polymer utilization lower than 3.5 lbs/bbl in 30 years, which is less than that of the same polymer used in a polymer pilot in Argentina.

A major challenge for deep underground mines in tropical regions is high-temperature climate conditions at a working face. The high-temperature conditions can cause discomfort to people working underground and lead to health and safety issues. In some instances, airflow from primary ventilation and central refrigeration systems is not adequate to reduce the ambient temperature below a permissible limit at remotely located working faces. In some mines, mobile cooling systems are used in conjunction with an existing central cooling system. However, mining companies are often skeptical about implementing the combined cooling system due to its high operating costs involved with refrigeration infrastructure. This research examines the potential of a low-cost, maintenance-free vortex tube spot cooling system that operates on compressed air and can work with or without a central cooling system. Using an underground metal mine in Ghana as a case study, the impact of a vortex tube cooling system at a working face was evaluated using the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) technique. An integrated CFD model of vortex tube, ventilation duct, and development heading was developed. The airflow was simulated within the CFD model with a varying number of vortex tubes and locations. The simulation result shows that the mine can achieve a decent temperature drop from 28°C (82.4°F) to 24°C (75.2°F) with 20 vortex tubes at the working face.

"Developing Alaskan heavy oils resources has become necessary as, the production from light oil fields in Alaska's North Slope (ANS) is on the decline. Due to the extremely viscous nature of these heavy oils, they are hard to produce by natural pressure. Miscible gas injection Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR) can be one of the methods for production of these heavy oils. Minimum miscibility pressure (MMP) is an important optimization parameter for EOR processes involving CO₂ or hydrocarbon gas injection. The MMP for a gas-oil system is directly related to the interfacial tension between the injected gas and the reservoir crude oil. In this study, a new technique called Vanishing Interfacial Tension (VIT) was used to measure MMP at reservoir conditions. Experiments were conducted using various gas-oil systems to determine the MMP. The experimental results were modeled using the Peng-Robinson Equation-of-State (EOS) with a commercial simulator (CMG). The Peng-Robinson EOS was tuned with experimental data to predict the MMP accurately. This study has demonstrated the accuracy of the VIT technique in predicting MMP by pendant drop method experiments and simulations using CMG software."--Leaf iii

"This research investigates the rheological and thermal properties and the freeze-thaw characteristics of nanofluids. Nanofluids are dispersions of nano-scale particles (<100 nm) in a base fluid such as water, ethylene glycol, propylene glycol or a mixture of more than one fluid. In cold regions, a mixture of 60% ethylene glycol in water by mass (60:40 EG/W) is normally used as the heat transfer fluid due to its low freezing point. Rheological properties of aluminum oxide nanofluid in the 60:40 EG/W base fluid were investigated and new correlations, expressing viscosity as a function of temperature and particle concentration, were developed. Results from the specific heat experiments on zinc oxide nanofluid in the 60:40 EG/W were compared with available correlations and a new model was developed. The thermal conductivity of silicon dioxide nanofluid in a 60:40 EG/W was measured and compared with existing models, considering the Brownian motion of nanoparticles. A new correlation, expressing thermal conductivity as a function of particle concentration, size, base fluid properties and temperature, was proposed by improving an existing model. Freeze-thaw characteristics of copper oxide nanoparticle dispersions in water were studied for a single freeze-thaw cycle. The freezing rate, agglomeration of nanoparticles and the effect on the freezing point of nanofluid were examined"--Leaf iii

"The Arctic fresh water hydrological cycle is dominated by the melting of the seasonal snow cover and scattered precipitation events during the summer months. Predicting and characterizing potential hydrological response is an important component for engineering infrastructure for the appropriate climatic conditions. A semi-distributed Swedish conceptual model, HBV, has been applied to the Imnavait basin, located in the headwaters of the Kuparuk River on the North Slope of Alaska, to examine runoff during spring and summer months. The methodology began by analyzing the long-term climatic records of the Imnavait basin from 1986 to present. Initial calibration work was completed in both spring and summer periods using the Monte Carlo technique; one set from each period was selected and used in the complete version of HBV. The model was recalibrated from 1988 to 2002 and then validated against the 2003 to 2008 time frame. The overall model performance was adequate for engineering purposes, with the best results when the input precipitation was accurate in terms of timing and magnitude. Differences between observed and modeled results included the impact of snow-damming and evaporation during the spring, while convective storms and melting of basal ice in the active layer distorted the summer period"--Leaf iii