Oil Shale Program. Technology status report

Technical Report · Mon Oct 01 04:00:00 EDT 1984

OSTI ID:5292265

Oil shale research activities at the Anvil Points Facility, located near Rifle, Colorado, began in the mid-1940's, and government-sponsored research has been intermittent there since that time. The Bureau of Mines' gas combustion retorting technology was developed at the facility. In the mid-1960's the Bureau of Mines (which later became the Energy Research and Development Administration and the Department of Energy built two small (10- and 150-ton) batch-type retorts near Laramie, Wyoming. These facilities were used to research in situ processing variables of oil shale. Variables such as active void volume, shale assay and size, and processing parameters have been studied. In the late 1970's, the US government sponsored four large in situ demonstration projects in Western Oil Shale: Occidental, Geokinetics, Inc., Equity, and Talley-Frac. At the present, approximately 24 major companies are at some level of effort in developing an oil shale industry. Major private companies, as well as government-sponsored projects, are developing western and eastern shales. Some 22 major efforts are involved with western shales, and 7 are involved with eastern shales. In FY 1984, the Oil Shale Program was restructured to understand the oil shale conversion phenomena so that advanced concepts for the production of liquids from shale could be developed. The restructuring is a refocusing from process development to a more fundamental approach to research. The principal participants in the new program are: Laramie Project Office, Morgantown Energy Technology Center, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Pacific Northwest Laboratory, Sandia National Laboratory, Western Research Institute, and selected universities and private industry. Program accomplishments are presented for these participants.

• Research Organization: USDOE Laramie Project Office, WY. Extraction Projects Management Div.
• OSTI ID: 5292265
• Report Number(s): DOE/METC-85/0222; ON: DE85008557
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

04 OIL SHALES AND TAR SANDS
040300 -- Oil Shales & Tar Sands-- Drilling
Fracturing & Mining
040400* -- Oil Shales & Tar Sands-- Oil Production
Recovery
& Refining
040500 -- Oil Shales & Tar Sands-- Properties & Composition
040900 -- Oil Shales & Tar Sands-- Waste management
BETA DECAY RADIOISOTOPES
BETA-MINUS DECAY RADIOISOTOPES
BITUMINOUS MATERIALS
CARBON 13
CARBON 14
CARBON ISOTOPES
CARBONACEOUS MATERIALS
CHEMICAL ANALYSIS
CHEMICAL REACTIONS
CHEMICAL REACTORS
CHROMATOGRAPHY
COMMINUTION
COORDINATED RESEARCH PROGRAMS
DECOMPOSITION
DISTILLATION EQUIPMENT
ENERGY SOURCES
EQUIPMENT
EVEN-EVEN NUCLEI
EVEN-ODD NUCLEI
EXPLOSIVE FRACTURING
FOSSIL FUELS
FOURIER TRANSFORMATION
FRACTURING
FRAGMENTATION
FUELS
GRAVIMETRIC ANALYSIS
HYDROGEN COMPOUNDS
IN-SITU PROCESSING
IN-SITU RETORTING
INFRARED SPECTRA
INTEGRAL TRANSFORMATIONS
ISOTOPES
LIGHT NUCLEI
LIQUID COLUMN CHROMATOGRAPHY
LIQUID WASTES
MATERIALS
NMR SPECTRA
NUCLEI
OIL SHALES
OXYGEN COMPOUNDS
PROCESSING
QUANTITATIVE CHEMICAL ANALYSIS
RADIOISOTOPES
RESEARCH PROGRAMS
RETORTING
RETORTS
SEPARATION PROCESSES
SPECTRA
STABLE ISOTOPES
THERMAL ANALYSIS
THERMAL GRAVIMETRIC ANALYSIS
TRANSFORMATIONS
WASTE WATER
WASTES
WATER
YEARS LIVING RADIOISOTOPES