Oil production from wells reduces with time and the well becomes uneconomic unless enhanced oil recovery (EOR) methods are applied. There are a number of methods currently available and each has specific advantages and disadvantages depending on conditions. Currently there is a big demand for new or improved technologies in this field, the hope is that these might also be applicable to wells which have already been the subject of EOR. The sonochemical method of EOR is one of the most promising methods and is important in that it can also be applied for the treatment of horizontal wells. The present article reports the theoretical background of the developed sonochemical technology for EOR in horizontal wells; describes the requirements to the equipment needed to embody the technology. The results of the first field tests of the technology are reported.

Although water contamination with drug residues is a threat to public health, there are currently barely any effective methods of purifying water from pharmaceutical substances. In this study, continuous-flow sonoplasma treatment was used for the complete degradation of tetracycline and ciprofloxacin in polluted municipal water. The addition of CeO₂ nanoparticles as catalysts significantly increased the degradation rate of the antibiotics, and a degradation degree of 70% was achieved. The presence of reactive oxygen species in the CeO₂-nanoparticle-containing sonoplasma-treated system was experimentally proven for the first time using the chemiluminescence technique.

Various types of chemical and physical protocols are used, thermal treatment in particular, to increase the quality of bulk food products (for example, dates or some sort of nuts) and extend shelf life, and combinations of methods are frequently used to achieve the best results. However, the use of these processing methods is not always the best option to preserve the initial taste and appearance of food products. For instance, a product may lose its initial natural appearance and acquire different flavors due to chemical transformations that occur at certain temperatures or when the products are treated with chemicals. Non-thermal treatment methods are called “cold” pasteurization. This is a set of advanced techniques that are based on physical and chemical effects that do not result in the structural food-product transformations caused by heating. We have developed and tested a new technique for efficient food-product processing and cold pasteurization in an ultrasonic field under pressure in an atmosphere of supercritical or subcritical carbon dioxide. A laboratory-scale unit that was designed and built for this purpose has experimentally proven the feasibility of this process and demonstrated high efficiency in suppressing pathogenic flora.

The wastewater problem is becoming an increasingly significant environmental issue affecting various aspects of human activities. The generation of reactive oxygen species (ROS) in water through certain physicochemical processes, which can oxidise or degrade various organic and chemical compounds, offers an effective purification method. The main advantage of these methods is the elimination of chemical reagents. The aim of this work is to investigate the possibility of regulating the ROS content in water by altering the characteristics of the plasma discharge that occurs under hydrodynamic cavitation in the water flow. The ROS concentration was determined using the permanganate oxidation titration technique. It was found that the content of various reactive oxygen species in water after treatment can be controlled by varying the power of the electrical pulses applied. Additionally, this study obtained the dependence of the ROS concentration in treated water samples on storage time, with results indicating that sonoplasma treatment has a prolonged effect on the antibacterial properties of water. The analysis of water samples using a biological test culture of Salmonella typhimurium revealed the bacteriostatic properties of the water for at least 48 h after sonoplasma discharge treatment.