COMPARATIVE STUDY BETWEEN THE KINETICS OF RETORTING OF OHIO ANO COLORADO SHALE

Abstract
A comparative study between the kinetics of oil generation from Ohio and Colorado shales has been done. To facilitate comparison and to eliminate systematic errors, the same retorting system was used to study the kinetics of both Ohio and Colorado shales. Temperatures ranging to 923° K and nitrogen and carbon dioxide as sweep gases were used for this study. Both the isothermal and non-isothermal retorting techniques were employed for the kinetic measurement and the results obtained compared favorably with each other. The pyrolysis of Ohio shale was also found to comply with first order kinetics within the limits of experimental error. The study gave an apparent activation energy of 149.1 ± 2.8 KJ/mol for Ohio shale (25 cm3/kg) and 182.5 ± 3.5 KJ/mol for Colorado shale (110 cm3/kg).