Integrated use of fluidized bed technology for oil production from oil shale

Abstract

The plant unit which consists of a fluidized bed retort and CFB furnace for burning the by-products of retorting (semicoke and semicoke gas) is presented in this paper. The oil shale retort consists of a fast fluidized bed shaft, coarse semicoke bit, semicoke separation chamber and cyclone for the separation of fine semicoke particles. The crashed oil shale and hot ash from the CFB ash separator are fed concurrently into the fast fluidized bed shaft. For fluidizing the mixture of oil shale and hot ash particles, the recycle semicoke gas is used. The pyrolysis of oil shale begins in fluidized bed and is completed in the semicoke separation chamber. The coarse semicoke particles are separated from fluidized bed directly while the medium size particles are separated from the gases in the semicoke separation chamber and the finest semicoke particles in the cyclone. All the fractions of semicoke from the fluidized bed retort and semicoke gas from the oil fractionator are burnt in the CFB furnace. The semicoke ash is separated from flue gases in the CFB ash separator. A part of separated hot ash is fed into the fluidized bed retort as a solid heat carrier material and the rest into the furnace through the ash cooler or separated from the process. The retention of sulphur dioxide formed during the semicoke and semicoke gas combustion, is guaranteed for about 99 % due to the high CaO content in the semicoke ash and convenient temperature (about 850 °C) in the CFB furnace. The described plant unit is useful for retorting oil shale and other solid hydrocarbon-containing fuels. The advantages of the present retorting process and system are: improved oil yield, greater throughput, lower retorting time, avoidance of moving parts in the retorting zones, reduced downtime, etc. A new plant unit for oil shale oil production has been elaborated and defended by the Estonian Utility Model EE 2007 00671 U1.