(172a) Kinetics of Oil Shale Pyrolysis and Oil Composition

The oil shale industry is going through a revolution of sorts. After the oil crisis in the 1970s, a great deal of effort was spent on research and development and on pilot technologies. The oil price collapse in the early and mid eighties led to the total discontinuation of the oil shale research and development programs. Extensive research was conducted both in on-surface and in-situ production methods. Even though some large pilot underground retorting operations were performed, the on-surface (mining and processing) methods were closest to full-scale (~10,000 barrels/day) commercial implementation. The in-situ production technologies have seen a significant revival since some recent advances. The slow thermal pyrolysis of the organic matter in shale leads to a light oil product, that would not require additional thermal upgrading. In this paper we present isothermal and non-isothermal kinetics of the pyrolysis of the Greenriver shale using thermogravimetric analyses. Detailed compositions of the shale oil obtained under various conditions are also presented.