Effects of scale-up on oil and gas yields in a solid-recycle fluidized bed oil-shale retorting process

Abstract

significantly increase oil yield in laboratory-scale reactors compared to the Fischer assay by many workers.(1,2,3,4) The enhancement in oil yield by this relatively simple and efficient thermal technique has led to the development of several oil shale retorting processes based on fluidized bed and related technologies over the past fifteen years.(5,6,7,8) Since 1986, the Center for Applied Energy Research (CAER) has been developing one such process, KENTORT 11, which is mainly tailored for the Devonian oil shales that occur in the eastern U.S.(9) The process contains three main fluidized bed zones to pyrolyze, gasify, and combust the oil shale. A fourth fluidized bed mne serves to cool the spent shale prior to exiting the system. The autothermal process utilizes processed shale recirculation to transfer heat from the combustion to the gasification and pyrolysis zones. The CAER is currently testing the KENTORT 11 process in a 22.7-kglhr process-development unit (PDU).