Publications by authors named "R M McVay"

Orphaned oil and gas wells are unplugged nonproducing wells with no solvent owner of record to plug and mitigate them, such that the responsibility often falls on government agencies and the general public. Unplugged wells pose risks to the environment, climate, and human health. To develop a national framework to quantify the environmental benefits of plugging and optimize mitigation, we analyze oil and gas well data from state agencies across the United States to estimate the number of documented orphaned wells over time and evaluate their attributes.

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Methane emission fluxes were estimated for 71 oil and gas well pads in the western Permian Basin (Delaware Basin), using a mobile laboratory and an inverse Gaussian dispersion method (OTM 33A). Sites with emissions that were below detection limit (BDL) for OTM 33A were recorded and included in the sample. Average emission rate per site was estimated by bootstrapping and by maximum likelihood best log-normal fit.

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Isoprene carries approximately half of the flux of non-methane volatile organic carbon emitted to the atmosphere by the biosphere. Accurate representation of its oxidation rate and products is essential for quantifying its influence on the abundance of the hydroxyl radical (OH), nitrogen oxide free radicals (NO ), ozone (O), and, via the formation of highly oxygenated compounds, aerosol. We present a review of recent laboratory and theoretical studies of the oxidation pathways of isoprene initiated by addition of OH, O, the nitrate radical (NO), and the chlorine atom.

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Luminescent ruthenium diimine complexes have been covalently bound to the surface of a silica polyamine composite (SPC) using peptide coupling agents. The loading of the complexes using this route is quite low (~0.01-0.

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Much of our understanding of atmospheric secondary organic aerosol (SOA) formation from volatile organic compounds derives from laboratory chamber measurements, including mass yield and elemental composition. These measurements alone are insufficient to identify the chemical mechanisms of SOA production. We present here a comprehensive dataset on the molecular identity, abundance, and kinetics of α-pinene SOA, a canonical system that has received much attention owing to its importance as an organic aerosol source in the pristine atmosphere.

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