Thesis (M.S.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1982. / Typescript. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 96-99).

No description available.

Thesis (doctoral)--University of Tartu, 2006. / Thesis based on four papers.

The Oxidative Hydrothermal Dissolution (OHD) process was developed at Southern Illinois University to convert solid organic material to low-molecular-weight, water-soluble products using small amounts of dissolved oxygen in liquid water at high temperature and pressure. The process is environmentally friendly; it does not involve the use of solvents or catalysts, and there is little emission of CO2 and no emission of NOx or SOx. Previous studies of the effects of OHD on organic matter have focused on coal, coal waste, and biomass. This study explores the application of OHD to organic-rich shales, providing a baseline investigation into how highly aliphatic materials react under OHD conditions, what types of products are created during the process, whether the products are economically valuable, and whether they provide novel structural and biomarker information that complements typical bulk organic matter characterization methods. Furthermore, typical oil shale utilization methods are plagued by environmental concerns akin, in some respects, to the environmental concerns associated with the coal industry. The successful application of OHD to these materials would provide a cleaner, more efficient way to process oil shale, resulting in an aqueous product that can be transported through pipelines and refined using conventional processing technology. To examine how OHD affects oil shale kerogen, a series of partial conversion experiments were conducted on an Alpha Torbanite sample at varied temperatures, reaction times, and oxidant inputs. Using a fixed-bed type reactor, over 90% carbon conversion was achieved in just 10-12 minutes under relatively mild reaction conditions (300°C) with little gas production, approximately twice as fast as OHD coal conversion. GC-MS analyses of the product distributions for these experiments demonstrate that they do not change significantly under varying reaction conditions, which can be adjusted for maximum carbon conversion. A sample of each type of oil shale (torbanite: Alpha Torbanite, lamosite: Green River Formation, marinite: New Albany Shale, tasmanite: Tasmanian tasmanite, kuckersite: Decorah Formation, cannel: Cannel King) was reacted and analyzed for product distributions. All of the oil shales produced a complex mixture of aliphatic carboxylic acids, dicarboxylic acids, keto-acids, aromatic acids, and poly-acids, some of which include phenolic structures. These products include materials that are useful as chemical feedstocks for the manufacture of plasticizers, nylons, polymers, lubricants, nylons, paints, and a variety of other materials, most of which are currently produced from petroleum derived precursors. Results of OHD biomarker analysis were not comparable to conventional solvent extraction results. With the exception of the Green River sample which did produce favorable results, analyzed steranes and hopanes were not present in measurable/identifiable amounts in the OHD products. It is unclear whether the biomarker peaks are buried under unresolved products or if the biomarkers are oxidizing/degrading under OHD conditions. However, a comparison of OHD product distributions to pyrolysate product distributions demonstrates that this method provides novel information regarding the original macromolecular structure of the kerogen. Since OHD converts a larger fraction of the original carbon, this approach may provide a more complete/correct representation of the initial structure than conventional methods.

This study provides a critique of regional base method for population and employment impacts. It uses a new approach to calculate the regional employment multiplier. The new approach tries to preserve the advantages of the regional base method and at the same time avoid some of the problems associated with it. This study estimates the changes in local service employment by industry and population in Uintah County, Utah, resulting from an oil shale development project with a 100,000 barrel-per-day capacity and an operating labor force of 2500. It also estimates the changes in total local service employment and population on a yearly basis for a period of 20 years.

The aim of this study is to estimate the future school enrollment in the Uintah School District that results from oil shale development . Future need for classrooms and teachers is also projected, and costs to the school district for providing this need are estimated. Yearly revenue from the oil shale plant and from new residential buildings due to the pl ant is also estimated. The annual costs and revenues are compared and it is observed that the costs exceed the revenue· during the first five years . The deficit can be reduced, however , if stagger sessions are used to provide needed classrooms and teachers . Also , temporary rather than permanent structures could go a long way towards reducing the cost to the school district. It is observed that a premature withdrawal of the oil shale company from the county would produce insolvency for the school district . The financial ability of the district in terms of assessed valuation is very closely related to the success of the shale industry . The time needed for industry maturity and eventual withdrawal is a very crucial factor in determining the needed finances of the school district. Caution must be exercised before any "big" capital expense is undertaken. Stagger sessions in combination with temporary structures may be the most prudent and economical way to provide the needed facilities . Stagger sessions eliminate capital expense, and the temporary structures could be sold or turned to other uses when not needed for classroom use. If stagger sessions are used, there may be no financial adjustments required of the school district in the event of industry withdrawal. This study should help education planners in the district involved to plan and execute a prudent school program despite the pressures from fast population increases . It should also help the planners to look ahead in securing funds to run the district. Armed with such statistics as are found in this study , the school district , the state government, and the oil shale companies could hopefully work out a method of filling in the gap during the revenue-short period until the industry fully matures .

Oil shale is a valuable natural resource of oil. The United States has only 5% of the known world reserves of recoverable crude oil and about 73% of the known world reserves of recoverable oil shale. Before there can be full-scale commercial development of oil shale, the problems associated with the large amounts of wastes generated by the processing of the shale must be solved. The wastes have a complex chemical matrix. It is felt that the spent shale can be used as a sorbent to either treat or pretreat the contaminated process waters or could be codisposed with the process waters, Quite extensive work has been done in exploring this alternative with respect to inorganic constituents, but that with organic constituents has been mainly restricted to the measurement of total organic carbon. This study was done to base the analysis of the suitability of the spent shale as a sorbent upon individual compounds so that a more fundamental understanding could be obtained as to how families of compounds behave. / Ph. D.

Natural gas flaring from oil production is a pervasive yet understudied environmental issue. Recently available satellite imagery of gas flares has increased public awareness and concern over the severity and ubiquity of the problem. In the US, the relatively recent combination of hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling sparked the shale boom, leading to hundreds of thousands of wells being drilled within a decade, often in close proximity to residential populations. A major oil state that has emerged from the shale boom is North Dakota. In 2014, state regulators introduced a policy to limit the percentage of produced gas that oil-extracting companies are allowed to flare. Like many other places where flaring takes place, flared volumes are reported by oil companies themselves. What was the effect of North Dakota’s regulation on gas flaring according to self-reported and satellite data? What was the effect of the regulation on self-reporting behavior? In such a tight oil setting, how well does the prevailing satellite product used to monitor gas flares perform? This dissertation uses new data and methodologies from several disciplines to study these important questions around gas flaring. The results find that the predominant satellite product does not perform well in the on-shore oil production context. While regulation has reduced flaring in a major oil state, the reduction is smaller than thought because of underreporting by oil well operators. Further, the underreporting is associated with political economy and corporate culture factors.

This work had the objective of determining both the kinetic parameters for the pyrolysis of oil shale and kerogen as well as using analytical techniques coupled with pyrolysis to shed light on the structure of a specific Green River oil shale. Because of the problems with linearized methods and disagreement among literature values and methods, a new method was developed tofit kinetic parameters to non linearized data. The method was demonstrated to determine the "correct" answer for mathematically generated data within a few percent error and was shown to have a lower sum squared error than the linearized methods. The curve-fitting methodology was then applied to pyrolysis kinetic data for kerogen and oil shale. Crushed samples were pyrolyzed at heating rates from 1 to 10 K/min and at pressures of 1 and 40 bar. The transient pyrolysis data were fit with a first-order model and a progressive Distributed Activation Energy Model (DAEM). An F-test was used to determine confidence regions and compare the kinetic parameters among the samples. The activation energies determined ranged from 173 to 226 kJ/mol, with most values around 200-220 kJ/mol. The kinetic coefficients determined for oil shale and the demineralized samples were statistically the same. Only small differences in kinetic coefficients were seen in the size-graded samples. The first-order and DAEM were shown to be statistically different, but a visual inspection of a graph of the model predictions and the data revealed that both models performed well. The largest effect on the kinetic parameters was between samples collected from different geographic allocations. The pyrolysis products (and the parent kerogen sample) were analyzed by several chemical techniques to determine chemical structure information about the parent sample. TheGC/MS data for the tars collected showed a distribution of alkenes/alkanes with 11 to 12 carbonsin length being the most frequent. XPS analysis demonstrated that any chemical model must have pyridinic and pyrrolic nitrogens as well as carbonyls and carboxyl groups. Therefore a chemical structure model of kerogen should have heteroatoms of nitrogen in the aromatic region(i.e., the portions of the kerogen that are stable at moderate temperatures).

The Stuart Oil Shale Deposit is a major oil shale resource located near Gladstone on the central Queensland coast. It contains an estimated 3.0 billion barrels of oil in place in 5.6 billion tonnes of shale. Commissioning of a plant capable of producing 4,500 barrels per day has recently commenced. The shale is preserved in Tertiary age sediments of The Narrows Beds in the southern part of The Narrows Graben. The oil shale sequence consists of repetitive cycles composed of oil shale, claystone and lesser carbonaceous oil shale in the 400 metre thick Rundle Formation. The formation is the main oil-shale bearing unit in the preserved half-graben sequence up to 1,000 metres thick. Previous studies on the lacustrine sedimentology of the Rundle Oil Shale Deposit in the northern part of The Narrows Graben have recognised eight facies that exhibit unique and recognisable cycles. The cycles and sequence for the Kerosene Creek Member of the Rundle Formation is correlatable between the Rundle and Stuart deposits. The nature of these facies and the cycles is reviewed in some detail. In conjunction with the principles of sequence stratigraphy, the ideal oil shale cycle is described as the equivalent of a parasequence within a lacustrine system. The lacustrine parasequence is bounded by lacustrine flooding surfaces. The organic material in the oil shale consists of both Type I (algal dominated) and Type III (higher plant matter dominated) kerogen. Where Type I kerogen dominate, oil yields greater than about 100 litres per tonne are common. In contrast where Type III kerogens are dominant, yields above 100 litres per tonne are rare. The variation in oil yield is described for the Stuart lacustrine system. The variation is consequent on the balance between production, preservation and degradation of the kerogen in the parasequences within systems tracts. A system for the recognition of oil shale deposition in terms of lacustrine systems tracts is established based on oil yield assay parameters and the assay oil specific gravity. The oil yield and oil specific gravity variation within the Rundle Formation is modelled by member and the nature and distribution of oil yield quality parameters in terms of the contribution of organic and inorganic source material are described. The presence of significant oil yield (greater than 50 litres per tonne) is dependent on the dominance of lacustrine transitional systems tracts and to a lesser extent, lacustrine highstand systems tracts within the parasequence sets deposited in a balanced lake system in a generally warm wet climate during the middle to late Tertiary.