Tech Talk: Producing oil shale by burning it in place
Posted by Heading Out on March 14, 2010 - 10:00am
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This is part of the continuing series that I have been writing about oil shale. And, while I just digressed in talking about using nuclear devices to break the rock and heat it, the key problems that those posts highlighted remain. The first was that the oil is not really oil and won’t flow to the well, and the second is that there are no easy paths for the oil to flow though, even if it could. And this creates a problem when it comes to getting the kerogen (or oil for simplicity) separated from the rock around it. As I said in the first post on this topic, the oil can be separated in a retort, after being mined. The retorting can be self-energized and, by heating the oil it can be transformed into a form of bitumen that can then be further refined into a commercial grade. And if you think it is easy, there is this quote I found at Econbrowser, that might give you some perspective. He quotes Bubba, of Belly of the Beast:
If you heat this shale to 700 degrees F you will turn this organic carbon (kerogen) into the nastiest, stinkiest, gooiest, pile of oil-like crap that you can imagine. Then if you send it through the gnarliest oil refinery on the planet you can make this s*** into transportation fuel. In the mean time you have created all kinds of nasty byproducts, have polluted the air and groundwater of wherever you have extracted it.
There's more… (1917 words)
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