Predictive heat model for Australian oil shale drying and retorting

The exploitation of Australia's oil shale reserves has been the subject of much research over several decades. The extraction of oil from shale is usually a thermal process and therefore oil shale processing is dominated by heat-transfer and thermal reactions. To fully develop any oil shale processing technology, knowledge of an oil shale's thermodynamic properties is desirable. This paper presents a novel approach for the determination of an oil shale's thermodynamic properties and subsequent development of a predictive heat model. This approach involves experimental determination of the thermodynamic properties of an oil shale's individual components, in particular, the unique kerogen and clay minerals in Australian oil shale. The experimental data was then used to develop a predictive heat model for Australian oil shale based upon its kerogen and mineral, composition, and concentrations. The predictive heat model allows investigation of heat capacity, enthalpy, and total enthalpy for Australian oil shale during the process temperatures of drying and retorting.