Conceptual Design of an Oil Shale Retorting Process Integrated with Chemical Looping for Hydrogen production

Abstract

Abstract Finite world oil supplies are one of the major drivers of increasing attention to the exploitation of alternative, non-traditional energy sources. One such alternative, oil shale is found worldwide and is regarded as a most promising alternative to crude oil. Exploitation of oil shale resources is an important issue for many industrialized countries. Fushun-type oil shale retorting (FsOSR) technology is mainly used for the production of shale oil in China. However, this technology is always criticized by its unsatisfactory economic performance. It is caused by many reasons. One of the most important problems is inefficient utilization of retorting gas. To improve economic performance of the FsOSR process, a more efficient oil shale retorting process integrated with chemical looping for hydrogen production is proposed in this paper. The retorting gas produced by the FsOSR process is used in the chemical looping hydrogen generation process to produce hydrogen. The output gases of reactors can be used for generating electricity and steam to further improve economic benefit. The proposed process is modeled and simulated to build its mass and energy balance. Techno-economic analysis is conducted and compared to the analysis of the FsOSR process. The results show that the exergy destruction of the proposed process is 235.62 MW, much lower than that of the conventional process, 274.76 MW. In addition, the return on investment of the proposed process is 19. 54 %. It is notably higher than the conventional one, 11.46%.