Processing and Characterization of Shale Oil New Methods for Characterization of the Effluent from Thermal Cracking of Oil Scale and the Products from Microactivity Testing of Its Atmospheric Residue

摘要

Most of the crude oils used for fuel production consist predominantly of hydrocarbons and contain only relatively small amounts of sulphur, oxygen, and nitrogen. Shale oils, in contrast, can contain large amounts of organic sulphur and/or oxygen compounds. Therefore, dining processing of shale oils, in addition to making fuels, there may be opportunities to extract valuable chemicals. Knowledge of the physical and chemical properties of these shale oils is very important for the development of technologies necessary to fully utilize them. In this chapter we discuss detailed chemical characterization of the material derived from severe thermal treatment of oil shale. We also examine the potential for increasing its utilization through application of the fluid catalytic cracking (FCC) process to its atmospheric residue fraction boiling between 320 and 750 °C.