Oil shale ash-layer thickness and char combustion kinetics.

摘要

A Hot-Recycled-Solids (HRS) oil shale retort is being studied at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. In the HRS process, raw shale is heated by mixing it with burnt retorted shale. Retorted shale is oil shale which has been heated in an oxygen deficient atmosphere to pyrolyze organic carbon, as kerogen into oil, gas, and a nonvolatile carbon rich residue, char. In the HRS retort process, the char in the spent shale is subsequently exposed to an oxygen environment. Some of the char, starting on the outer surface of the shale particle, is burned, liberating heat. In the HRS retort, the endothermic pyrolysis step is supported by heat from the exothermic char combustion step. The rate of char combustion is controlled by three resistances; the resistance of oxygen mass transfer through the gas film surrounding the solid particle, resistance to mass transfer through a ash layer which forms on the outside of the solid particles as the char is oxidized and the resistance due to the intrinsic chemical reaction rate of char and oxygen. In order to estimate the rate of combustion of the char in a typical oil shale particle, each of these resistances must be accurately estimated. We begin by modeling the influence of ash layer thickness on the over all combustion rate of oil shale char. We then present our experimental measurements of the ash layer thickness of oil shale which has been processed in the HRS retort.