Mineral oils: processes and products – Products and compositions – Lubricating oils
Patent
1983-03-10
1985-10-08
Gantz, D. E.
Mineral oils: processes and products
Products and compositions
Lubricating oils
44 15R, C10G 100
Patent
active
045458910
DESCRIPTION:
BRIEF SUMMARY
TECHNICAL FIELD
This invention relates generally to the treatment of oil shale or coal to extract the available kerogen from the oil shale or to upgrade coal. More particularly it relates to the use of fused alkali metal caustics as the treating agent for releasing kerogen from oil shale and the upgrading of high sulfur, high ash coal; the latter calling for the additional treatment with a mineral acid.
BACKGROUND ART
(A) Extraction of the Kerogen from Oil Shale
A wide range of processes involving different kinds of treatments and processing steps for extracting the kerogen trapped in oil shale have been disclosed in the patent and the technical literature. The search for ways of releasing the trapped kerogen has been extensive because there has been a long felt need to economically extract the shale oil from this plentiful source of fuel. There are basically two ways of extracting the shale oil in order to treat it. It can be done by applying the treatment while the oil shale is underground, i.e. in situ type of treatment or it can be mined and brought to a treating site.
Typically the prior art which is directed to the in situ type of treatment involves the injection of hot fluids, usually 200.degree. C., into the oil shale beds to extract the kerogen. The hot fluids disclosed are variously steam, hot water, organic solvents, organic acids or inorganic acids.
In the case where the oil shale is mined, the usual treatment has been to retort the material distilling the volatile hydrocarbons and collecting the distillate. Such a process is described in U.S. Pat. No. 2,694,035 by Lloyd B. Smith et al. The process calls for soaking the oil shale in hydrogen containing gas at 343.degree. C. to 399.degree. C., the addition of small amounts (4.4-22 kgs. per 4400 kgs. of shale) of inorganic polar compounds such as water, sodium hydroxide, calcium chloride to increase the yield and/or the quality of the oil and then subjecting the mixture to the retorting step.
These known techniques suffer from a number of deficiencies such as the inability to recover at least 80 to 85% of the available kerogen bound up in the oil shale. The retort technique has been successful but the amount of shale oil that can be recovered from the available oil shale is in the range of 70% to 80% due to the conversion to gases and unusable coke that results from pyrolysis of oil bearing shale. Another significant deficiency is that the heretofore known retorting technique is uneconomical when processing oil shale that has less than 25 gallons per ton ("GPT") of shale oil. It is uneconomical in terms of heat requirement in that a large amount of heat input is necessary to bring the mineral matrix plus kerogen up to the proper temperature in order to pyrolyze the kerogen. Accordingly, retorting oil shale that has less than 25% kerogen becomes rather costly in terms of the amount of shale oil retrieved versus the heat input. Further, the retort equipment must be quite large in order to accommodate sufficient tonnage of oil shale to produce several hundred gallons of shale oil per retort cycle. Still, the vast majority of oil shale deposits are well below the 25 GPT level.
Thus, what is needed is a technique to extract kerogen which is essentially shale free, from the oil shale rock. This would have a number of advantages. The size of the retort required to pyrolyze shale free kerogen would be decreased anywhere from 50% to 90% and losses due to the need for heating vast amounts of inert and even endothermically reactive shale would be eliminated. Another advantage would be the opportunity to flash pyrolyze the kerogen. Because of the absence of the high heat capacity rock pyrolysis could be accomplished in 1-5 minutes compared to the 30 minutes to 1 hour required by current retorting techniques. It can be expected that there will be an advantage in terms of increasing the yield of oil per unit weight kerogen in the oil shale from 70-80% of conventional retorting of unbeneficiated oil shale to 90% because secondary cracking reactions will not
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Hart Walter D.
Meyers Robert A.
DeWitt Benjamin
Gantz D. E.
Pak Chung K.
Sheldon Jeffrey G.
TRW Inc.
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