Modeling oil plugging and flow nonuniformities in oil shale retorts

Technical Report · Mon Sep 18 04:00:00 EDT 1978

OSTI ID:6826672

Lyczkowski, R W; Chin, R C.Y.

Technical approaches are discussed concerning the modeling of two factors that appear to control the recovery of oil in retorts from oil shales having an extremely wide range of particle sizes: oil plugging, i.e., oil mist filtration and clogging of unretorted oil shale and the general aspects of flow nonuniformities. Research is reported devoted to gaining an understanding of the effects of fluid mechanics on the oil shale retorting process and developing sub-models for oil plugging flow nonuniformities and dispersion. The sub-model for oil plugging is used to generate a supplementary set of differential equations and incorporate them into the overall retort model. These equations account for the holdup of liquid oil and its possible coking with subsequent loss in yield. The flow non-uniformity and dispersion sub-models are used to interpret laboratory and field tracer studies to indicate possible flow nonuniformities. It is proposed that these procedures will produce tools which should be useful in interpreting laboratory and field tracer studies. These tools can also be used to perform sensitivity studies. (JRD)

• Research Organization: California Univ., Livermore (USA). Lawrence Livermore Lab.
• DOE Contract Number: W-7405-ENG-48
• OSTI ID: 6826672
• Report Number(s): UCID-17934
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

04 OIL SHALES AND TAR SANDS
040402* -- Oil Shales & Tar Sands-- Surface Methods
BENCH-SCALE EXPERIMENTS
BITUMINOUS MATERIALS
CARBONACEOUS MATERIALS
CHEMICAL REACTIONS
DECOMPOSITION
DIFFERENTIAL EQUATIONS
DISPERSIONS
ENERGY SOURCES
EQUATIONS
FLOW MODELS
FLUID MECHANICS
FOSSIL FUELS
FUELS
ISOTOPE APPLICATIONS
KEROGEN
MATHEMATICAL MODELS
MECHANICS
OIL SHALES
OIL YIELDS
PARTICLE SIZE
PLUGGING
PYROLYSIS
RETORTING
SIZE
THERMOCHEMICAL PROCESSES
TRACER TECHNIQUES
YIELDS