Retorting oil shale including agglomerated fines
A system is disclosed for recovering oil from oil-bearing shale rock in which the rock is screened to separate fines from larger particles having a dimension of at least about /sup 1///sub 4/ inch. The system includes a retorting zone in which heated gases, reducing or neutral, are passed through the larger particles and agglomerates of the fines to heat these particles and agglomerates to oil educting temperature and after which the gases, then containing educted oil, are passed through a zone in which particles and agglomerates are preheated and the gases cooled to condense the oil to small droplets and vapor in the gases. The oil is separated from the gases and into various fractions. The heaviest fractions of the oil, representing from about 5 to 50 percent of the total oil educted, are recirculated through the system by using such oil as binder to agglomerate the fines into agglomerates of at least /sup 1///sub 4/ inch. These agglomerates may be advantageously utilized by charging them to a traveling grate apparatus with the larger particles to form a bed, with the agglomerates forming an intermediate layer between upper and lower layers of the larger particles. The larger particles will, in a preheating-condensing zone, trap and prevent escape from the bed, dust and drops of heavy binder oil (which may escape from agglomerates). With either an upflow or downflow of gas in this preheating-condensing zone, heavy binder oil attempting to escape the bed will adhere to and coat particles in the upper or lower layers and dust attempting to escape the bed will adhere to the larger particles coated by the heavy binder oil. Thus, both the heavy binder oil and dust attempting to escape in this preheating-condensing zone will be trapped in the bed. In the retorting zone such heavy fraction binder oil retained in the bed will pyrolyze to produce further useful lighter oil, which will leave the bed as vapor, and residual coke which will remain in the bed.
- Assignee:
- Allis-Chalmers Manufacturing Co.
- Patent Number(s):
- US 3560369
- OSTI ID:
- 7322653
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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Related Subjects
040402* -- Oil Shales & Tar Sands-- Surface Methods
BITUMINOUS MATERIALS
CARBONACEOUS MATERIALS
DEGASSING
ENERGY SOURCES
FOSSIL FUELS
FUELS
MINERAL OILS
OIL SHALES
OILS
ORGANIC COMPOUNDS
OTHER ORGANIC COMPOUNDS
PARTICLES
RETORTING
SCREENS
SEPARATION PROCESSES
SHALE OIL
SORTING
SYNTHETIC FUELS
SYNTHETIC PETROLEUM