Characteristics of oil and gas production of oil shale pyrolysis by water vapor injection

Abstract

An appropriate pyrolysis temperature is required to achieve the best-quality oil and gas products via kerogen pyrolysis for the application of the in situ shale exploitation technology. In this study, the oil and gas products obtained at different pyrolysis temperatures via the oil shale pyrolysis process were analyzed using gas chromatography (GC). The results show that as the pyrolysis temperature increases, the content of hydrocarbon gases first increases and then decreases. Meanwhile, the H2 content in nonhydrocarbon gases gradually increases and reaches 64.07% at 550 °C. In addition, when the pyrolysis temperature is > 400 °C, the content of light components in shale oil rapidly increases. Further, when the pyrolysis temperature exceeds 500 °C, the content of light components in shale oil exceeds 42%. Finally, the H2 content obtained from oil shale pyrolysis by injecting water vapor is approximately eight times higher than that obtained from direct dry distillation. Additionally, the shale oil quality under water vapor action is better than that under direct dry distillation. The kerogen pyrolysis is performed in the H2-rich environment and shale oil is prone to hydrogenation reaction.

Keywords

• oil shale pyrolysis
• water vapor
• oil and gas products
• h2
• light components.