Written by Thai Phi
Thursday, January 11th – Day 6
It has been raining all day. The street was not as lively as it should have been. Right after we finished our lunch at the cafeteria, we hurried back to the university complex to begin our lab session. Unlike the others day, our instructor was not Dr. Teodoriu, but Dr. Diana Luciana Cursaru. Dr. Teodoriu mentioned to us with pride that Dr. Cursaru is the youngest “Prodecan” of this prolific university, which is the equivalent to a vice-dean in the United States; however, for her, the title is merely just a formality.
The topic of the lecture is about refining crude oil. First, Dr. Cursaru gave us a short lecture about the process of refining crude oil. It proved to be very helpful since we had a field trip to visit the oil refinery in Romania, later on. After that, our group, along with the Romanian students observed Dr. Cursaru and her lab assistant, Mr. Razvan, as they performed a series of lab procedures to find the characteristics of gasoline and diesel. The first procedure was to find the lubricity of diesel fuel as shown below.
As you can see here, in the second procedure they found the viscosity of the diesel fuel.
The third procedure found gasoline characteristic by running the sample through Irox machines.
In the fourth procedure they found the flashing point of the diesel fuel.
The final procedure found the freezing point of the diesel fuel.
After the lab concluded, my friend and I rushed down to Ploiesti Shopping City in order to try out the food at the mall. Based on what Cameron said, KFC in Romania is way better than KFC in Norman.