Journal of Geography, Environment and Earth Science International

The rate of disorganized building construction in Nigeria especially Port Harcourt Metropolis is to a great degree aggravating building collapse, due to construction inefficiencies, leading to loss of lives and properties. This is resulting in genuine difficulties to building business owners/partners, land lords and users culminating in failure /wastage of cash related endeavors. Each developed building structure has to satisfy the needs of urban residents in meeting the socio-economic goals of prosperity, serviceability and economy. It is against this setting the structural stability of buildings needs to be examined to fix up the inevitable responsibility on a set of city planning officials and building developers for building collapses. In the absence of a rigorous technically approved non corrupt examination of building stability, the entire process of achieving socio-economic growth of urban citizens fails, affecting the overall development of Port Harcourt Metropolis. The examination is coordinated through basic and discretionary data. The basic data was delivered utilizing composed well organized surveys to help the city planners to accomplish the overall success of making Port Harcourt Metropolis, a well developed urban conglomeration. To ensure the planned examination technically efficient and viable, Cronbach's alpha and t-test were used for the examination. The result revealed that five fundamental segments of wisdom based knowledge enhancement planning and administrative factors, if properly implemented, can yield honest, good and critical frameworks for overcoming breakdown or disillusionment of responsible establishments in the state. The factors for poor stability of building structures are: Non-approval of building controls, inadequate learning of advancement materials, Lack of on the site area specific readily implemented technical details, insufficient resources and Construction issues. As per the Millennium/Sustainable Development Goals (MDG/SDG), this examination fills in as a fundamental gadget for approach makers to ensure that development standard is passed as a law in Port Harcourt Metropolis of Rivers state, to avoid repetition of construction inefficiencies.

Volumetric reserve estimation had been carried out as well as deducing the reservoir geometry of Idje field. Idje field is an 8.4 km² area between latitudes 4°31’49”N and 4°33’23” N and longitudes 4°34’43”E and 4°36'17"E offshore Niger Delta in a water depth of approximately 1000 m on the continental slope. Well logs suites from ten wells comprising gamma-ray, resistivity, neutron and density were obtained and analyzed. From the result, it was observed that the reservoir was a sedimentary dome possibly resulting from an underlying shale diaper. The volumetric reserve estimate for the D-3 reservoir shows that it contains 15.8 million barrels of oil and 32 billion cubic feet of gas. If the field is produced at the rate of 10,000 barrels per day, it would yield production for approximately 4 years before subsequent secondary and tertiary recovery measures would be employed.

A combined Survey involving the very low frequency electromagnetic (VLF – EM) and Electrical resistivity surveys were carried out in order to appraise the groundwater potential, and locate appropriate positions for sighting boreholes in Erunmu Community, Egbeda local government area, Oyo State, Nigeria. VLF data were obtained along five traverses as the first step in order to locate suitable vertical electrical sounding (VES) stations. Vertical Electrical Soundings using Schlumberger array were thereafter carried out at twenty 20) locations. The integrated interpretation of both data confirms the presence of aquifers, which includes, weathered zone and basement transition/fractures beneath the area, which prior to this investigation have a history of failed boreholes and wells. The resistivity curve types obtained includes H and A which revealed the presence of 3 to 4 subsurface layers consisting of topsoil, the clay, the sandy clay, fractured zone and the highly resistive bedrock. The resulting geo-electric section from the interpretation revealed the Reflection coefficient which ranges from 0.45 – 0.98. The dominated curve type in the area investigated is the H which is typical of basement complex while the A-type is about 20% of the total curves. Hydrogeological, the topsoil is not important because the degree of water saturation in this layer is very low and cannot be utilized for groundwater. The fractured basement layer (which is present in less than 15% of the study area is very relevant in groundwater prospecting; when it is thick enough the layer could support borehole drilling. Areas identified as geological interfaces in the VLF anomaly charts were also confirmed by the interpreted VES data as poor and intermediate zones for groundwater potential in the study area. The significance of this study is such that it will serve as a useful reference for future research efforts in the aspect of basement complex groundwater studies.

In order to access the cause(s) of road failure and proffer preventive measures for the future reconstruction of the Awotan-Akufo road, southwestern Nigeria, the geotechnical engineering properties of the subgrade soil, asphalt pavement thicknesses, drainage and traffic load were evaluated. Soil samples were collected from test pits 1 m deep and at an interval of 50 m and subjected to geotechnical analyses in accordance to AASTHO specification. The grain size distribution revealed that 70% of the entire samples from Awotan-Lifeforte and Adaba failed sections along Akufo road contain amount of fines more than 35% passing through sieve No. 200. The Natural Moisture Content range from 5.73 - 20.21% (Awotan-Lifeforte section) and the entire samples from Adaba failed sections have high natural moisture content ranging from 16.20 - 23.20%. From Atterberg limit test, the Liquid limit of 12 - 56% (Awotan-Lifeforte section) and 26.00 - 40.00% (Adaba Section) were obtained. The Plastic Limit and Plasticity Index of the soils ranges from 8.43 to 49.10% and 1.01 to 7.0% (Awotan-Lifeforte section), and 23.10 - 35.50% and 1.50 - 7.10% (Adaba Section) respectively. Linear shrinkage varies from 0.80 to 9.60% and from 3.10 to 8.80% for Awotan-Lifeforte and Adaba sections, respectively. The Maximum Dry Density of the soils ranged from 1.625 - 1.835 mg/m³ at Optimum Moisture Content of 13.4 - 17.3% (Lifeforte-Awotan section), and MDD of 1.752 - 1.975mg/m³ at Optimum Moisture Content of 13.4-17.3% (Adaba section). The unsoaked California Bearing Ratio are 30.08, 70.14, 39.08%, and the soaked California Bearing Ratio values are 26.17, 11.41, 33.41% (Lifeforte-Awotan section) respectively. At Adaba section of the road, the unsoaked California Bearing Ratio is 3.46, 87.70, 70.14%, and soaked California Bearing Ratio values are 3.42, 32.56, 39.83%. The average asphalt pavement thicknesses around Awotan-Lifeforte section range from 0.60 - 1.10 inches, and that of Adaba section range from 0.57 to 1.46 inches. The study concluded that the road pavement subgrade is silty clay and the geotechnical properties rated below the specifications of the Federal Ministry of Works and Housing at some failed portions. Asphalt pavement thicknesses are grossly inadequate and far below NAPA 2007 recommendation. As such the road cannot withstand the heavily loaded trucks that ply it on regular basis. All aforementioned contributed to the untimely failure of the road.

This research was based on the comparative study between microbial, enzymatic and photocatalytic phenol degradation. Different experiments were carried out under three distinct methodologies that seeked to examine which method is more feasible between them through various aspects. For the microbial study, E. coli was used for phenol degradation at an optimum condition of E. coli. In the enzymatic study, peroxidase was extracted from soybean seed hulls, and it was purified. The purified peroxidase enzyme was applied in phenolic solution at neutral pH. The H₂O₂/UV/TiO₂ scheme was adopted in the photocatalytic treatment of phenol. Maximum phenol degradation was observed in photo catalysis. From this comparative study, a microbial method was found to be more time consuming and an enzymatic method require more steps to perform the experiment while photo catalysis took less time with a more feasible results.