AndreaBozzo/ceres-open-data-index huggingface dataset:
Determination of room and pillar dimensions for the oil-shale mine at Rifle, Colorado

The present known petroleum reserves are limited, and unless important new fields are discovered the Nation will be dependent, in the not too distant future, upon imports or upon synthetic liquid fuels to supplement domestic petroleum supplies. As a national defense measure, it would appear desirable to develop a substitute source of liquid fuels within the borders of the country if new discoveries of petroleum should prove disappointing.  Congress undoubtedly had this in mind when it passed the Synthetic Liquid Fuels Act (78yh Congress, approved April 3, 1944).  The act directed the Bureau of Mines to construct and operate demonstration plants for producing synthetic liquid fuels from coal and oil shale, and from forestry and agricultural products.  As part of this program, the Bureau of Mines has built a demonstration plant at Anvil Points, near Rifle, Colorado for retorting the oil shale, and has developed a mine to supply the plant with oil shale.

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Flow of air and natural gas through porous media

Within recent years, engineers and physicists engaged in studies of oil and gas production methods have increasing recognized the importance of the factors affecting the flow of fluids through porous media.  In dealing with problems of fluid flow through reservoir sands, the permeability of porous media is , perhaps, the most significant factor and the one that recently has received a great deal of study.  Qualitatively, permeability may be defined simply as fluid conductance or that property of the media that allows the flow of fluid through it.  Quantitatively, permeability  is not a simple property of a porous medium susceptible to direct physical measurement but a composite property that depends entirely on such physical properties of the medium as the volume of pore space (porosity), size and number of channels open to flow (grain size, arrangement and cementation), and characteristics of the walls of the flow channels (grain angularity, shape factors and roughness).  Other physical properties and perhaps certain chemical characteristics of the porous medium may and probably do influence the permeability to some extent.  With the exception of porosity however, none of the properties of a porous medium is susceptible to simple, direct measurement.  In fact, few properties of a porous medium can be measured directly unless the medium is altered by crushing to such an extent that the permeability itself is changed.  Crushing or breaking up a porous medium may permit measuring the grain size and amount of cementing material between the grains and may even enable an arbitrary measure of the angularity or shape of the grains to be established, but such methods are laborious and furnish no definite criteria either of the number an size of channels that might have been open to flow in the porous media in their original state or of the effect of different shapes of grains on flow of gases through the media/  Some of these properties of the media usually are dependent, also, upon the distribution of grains and cementing material, which obviously is changed when the medium is altered.

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Petroleum and natural gas fields in Wyoming

Petroleum and natural gas are the most important mineral resources of Wyoming.  Because of their value to the economy of the State, detailed information concerning their occurrence, development and properties particularly useful to State and Federal agencies.  A comprehensive report on the oil and gas fields in the State is likewise valuable to oil companies searching for new deposits of oil and gas.  Thousands of small investors and land owners also have a "stake" in Wyoming's petroleum industry.  This study contains individual reports on 271 oil and gas fields in Wyoming.  The location of each field is given; and where available, maps of the fields, are included in the report.  Brief comments are made on the geology of the fields, surface formations and elevations.  History of the discovery and development of each field is recorded and the amounts of oil and gas produced in each are tabulated by years.  The facilities by which the oil and gas are transported from the fields are mentioned.

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Make ammonia from coal

A comparison of the economics of producing ammonia from coal with that from natural gas, naphtha, and heavy fuel oil indicates that coal technology can be adapted to modern synthesis-gas-generating plants and can be competitive in this growing market. After determining that coal can provide the most years of supply at current consumption rates, the technology was shown as available in the current processes being developed for electric power generation from coal. The Texaco process can operate with air, enriched air, or oxygen. This process has been proven in installations using heavy fuel oil, crude oil, and vacuum resid to produce synthesis gas for ammonia, methanol, hydrogen, oxo-synthesis, etc. Residual soot content is <1 ppM. The Union Carbide process, demonstrated in the pilot plant only, was tested to achieve a higher thermal efficiency than the Texaco process; however, neither have been proved on an industrial scale. A comparison of these 2 processes with steam reforming of natural gas and naphtha and partial oxidation of heavy fuel oil indicates that an estimated 31 million Btu of natural gas would be required to provide 1 ton of ammonia in a 2000 ton/day plant. Cost estimations were based on a plant consuming 330,000 short tons/yr, operating 330 days/yr, and having feedstock costs of $5/ton for coal, 35 cents/million Btu for natural gas, $20/ton for naphtha, or $16/ton for heavy fuel oil.

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Oil-shale technology:  a review. [World deposits, properties, mining, and processes for retorting and refining]

"Oil shale, a potential source of products presently obtained from petroleum, is found in many countries. The most extensive known deposits from the standpoint of potential shale oil in place are those in Brazil and the United  States of America. Mining methods used for oil shale range from open-pit operations for shallow deposits to room-and-pillar and longwall techniques for deposits with thick overburdens. Oil shales from different sources vary greatly in the amounts and types of organic and inorganic constituents. By retorting, the organic material is converted to oil, gas, and coke. the largest percentages of oil are obtained from materials having the highest hydrogen content. Over 2,000 retorting systems have been patented, but only a few have been used industrially, and no single process seems best for all types of shales or economic conditions. Shale oils have different characteristics, depending on the source rock and method of retorting. They contain large quantities of olefinic hydrocarbons and more oxygen, nitrogen, and sulfur derivatives of hydrocarbons than most petroleums. Consequently, petroleum refining methods usually must be  modified for shale oil. This is particularly true in catalytic processing. Hydrogenation, even under mild conditions, improves shale-oil refinability. Several byproducts may be obtained from both the retorting and refining steps."

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Oil recovery and formation damage in permafrost, Umiat field, Alaska. [Effect of permafrost thawing by drilling mud; gas depletion drive]

Umiat field contains the largest accumulation of oil discovered so far in Naval Petroleum Reserve No. 4 in Arctic Alaska.  The Umiat anticline was tested with 11 wells; 6 produced oil in varying quantities.  Behavior of the wells during testing was unpredictable.  For example, one well was abandoned as a dry hole after all tests failed to recover any oil, yet an offset well, only 200 feet from the dry hole, produced 400 barrels of oil a day.  The main oil reservoirs are less than 1,000 feet deep and are in the permanently frozen zone (permafrost).  Reservoir pressures are low, and most primary production will be by expansion of gas-in solution in the oil.  Because of the unusual reservoir conditions and the difficulties encountered in drilling and completing the wells, the Department of the Navy asked the Federal Bureau of Mines to make laboratory studies of the reserves and to determine the cause of the well plugging and to provide laboratory information, to be used as an aid in estimating oil recovery form frozen reservoir rocks under solution-gas expansion from low-saturation pressure conditions.

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Effect of injected gas upon the characteristics of oil in the West Basal Sundance reservoir, Lance Creek oil field, Niobrara County, Wyo

"The initial subsurface sampling of oil in the West Basal Sundance reservoir, Lance Creek oil field, Wyo., was done by the Bureau of Mines in June 1937, about 2 years after  discovery of the reservoir. The field was sampled to obtain data concerning saturation pressure, solution gas oil ratio, and shrinkage of a reservoir oil in a reservoir from  which little oil had been produced. At this early date,  meager data of this type were available for petroleum reservoirs. Unitization of the West Basal Sundance reservoir became effective January 1, 1938. The pressure maintenance program of injecting gasoline-plant residue gas into the reservoir was initiated February 23, 1938. Additional subsurface oil samples were obtained from selected wells in 1941, 1947, and 1948, primarily in an attempt to observe what effect the injected plant -residue gas might have on reservoir oil characteristics  over a period of time. It was hoped that from the additional samples information might also be obtained regarding variation of reservoir-characteristics, as indicated by generally lower production gas-oil ratios of wells producing from structurally lower parts of the reservoir."

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Oil shale

Significant oil shale development activities are taking place in the Piceance basin in northwestern Colorado and the Uinta basin in northeastern Utah. About 377,000 bbl/d of oil production capacity is in the planning or construction phase in the Piceance basin and about 240,000 bbl/d capacity in the Uinta basin. Completion of these projects will depend upon the political, environmental, and technical feasibility. Additional oil shale development of about 80,000 bbl/d is being planned for Brazil and Morocco. 3 figures.

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Developments in oil shale in 1981

Significant oil shale development activities are taking place in the United States principally in the Piceance basin in Colorado and the Uinta basin in Utah. Enthusiasm for development has declined somewhat during the year due to a worsening economic and institutional climate. About 400,000 b/d capacity is in the planning stage for the Uinta basin. Completion of projects in both the Piceance and Uinta basins will depend on an attractive political, economic, and environmental climate. Additional worldwide shale oil production of over 250,000 b/d is in the planning or development stage.

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Scale-up and size justification of operations, systems and equipment for a commercial-scale Paraho oil shale module:  Task 3. For the period:  15 June 1980-30 September 1980

This report was prepared as an account of work sponsored by an agency of the United States Government. Neither the United States Government nor any agency thereof , nor any of their employees, make any warranty, expressed or implied, or assumes any legal liability or responsibility for any third party's use or the results of such use of any information, apparatus, product or process disclosed in this report or represents that its use by such third party would not infringe privately owned rights.

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Development and preliminary operation of the gas-combustion oil-shale pilot retort

"In its work under the Synthetic Liquid Fuels Program the Bureau of Mines has developed on a 6-ton-a-day-pilot-plant scale a continuous, gravity-feed retort for distilling oil from oil shale. The development work covered by this report was done from January 27, 1950, to January 26, 1952, at the Oil-Shale Experiment Station near Rifle, Colo. Over 300 pilot-plant tests were made during the investigation. The basic retort developed has been named the Gas-Combustion retort. In this process, part of the heat for retorting of the shale is generated by burning recycled product gas in a combustion zone within the descending shale bed in the retort. Additional heat is supplied by combustion of the carbonaceous residue  remaining in the spent shale after the oil has been distilled. Air for combustion is admitted through an air distributor in the center of the bed at about the midpoint  of the retort. Hot gas rising from the combustion zone heats countercurrently the descending raw shale and liberated shale oil by pyrolysis of the shale. After  passing through and exchanging heat with the incoming raw shale, the oil is condensed as a fog or mist in the gas, which is withdrawn at the top of the retort. The cool gas is then piped to an oil-recovery system where the oil is separated from the gas in centrifugal separators or other types of mechanical or electrostatic separators.  The hot, spent shale below the combustion zone is cooled by heat exchange with recycle gas, which is a portion of the effluent gas from the oil-recovery system."

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Processing characteristics of crude oils from the Williston Basin in Montana, North Dakota, and South Dakota. [151 crude oils from 123 oil fields]

"Results of the analyses of 151 crude oils from 123 oilfields in the Williston basin are presented. Production statistics are compiled by geographical areas within the basin, by geological age of the producing zones, by States, and by field for the nine fields with the greatest production. Characteristics of the oils are tabulated, and correlations  are included to show relationships between properties of the oils and some factors in the environment. Properties of the oils in some instances imply that there has been migration and mixing of the oils between productive  formations of different geological time periods."

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Retorting oil shale by fluidized solids technique

Among the potential sources of manufactured oil during World War II investigated by the governments and industries research groups, coal, natural gas, tar sands, wood waste and oil shales received considerable attention. A few of these were considered promising from the standpoint of early exploitation. In particular, the rich oil shales in eastern Australia offered immediate advantages in the strategic sense. Australia, being an important base for Allied military and naval operations served as an oil supply depot for Pacific operations to which oil was being shipped by tanker from the US.

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Relation of molecular structure to fragmentation of some sulfur compounds in the mass spectrometer. APIRP 48A report No. 61. [For identification of S compounds in petroleum]

Since its beginning in 1948, API Research Project 48, "Synthesis, Properties, and Identification of Sulfur Compounds in Petroleum," recognized the possibilities of mass spectrometry as an identification tool.  The interpretation of the spectra of thiophenes, benzothiophenes, sulfides, thiols, and disulfides which were developed are considered in this paper in terms of modern theories of mass spectrometry.

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Stratigraphic and geographic variation of shale-oil specific gravity from Colorado's Green River formation

"Variations in specific gravity of oil retorted from oil shales of the Eocene Green River Formation in northwestern Colorado were evaluated statistically, demonstrating that these variations are very strongly associated with  stratigraphic position and less strongly but still significantly associated with geographic location. Specific gravity of oil retorted from these oil shales apparently varies with the carboxyl group content of the oil shale's organic matter. Higher temperatures accompanying increasing depth of burial probably progressively decarboxylated oil shale's organic matter producing the decrease of oil specific gravity associated with deeper stratigraphic position.  The geographically associated oil-gravity variations were probably produced by regional variation in the original thickness of late Cenozoic extrusive rocks once overlying the Green River Formation."

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Occidental vertical modified in situ process for the recovery of oil from oil shale:  Phase II. Quarterly progress report, June 1, 1980-August 31, 1980

The major activities at 00SI's Logan Wash site during the quarter were: mining the voids at all levels for Retorts 7, 8 and 8x; completing Mini-Retort (MR) construction; continuing surface facility construction; tracer testing the MR's; conducting Retorts 7 and 8 related Rock Fragmentation tests; setting up and debugging the Sandia B-61 trailer; and preparing the Phase II instrumentation plan. In addition, the letter reports from the US Bureau of Mines for oil shale samples taken during Phase I which are included in one of the appendices.

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Laboratory evaluation of the effects of tar sand process water on aluminosilicate minerals

Laboratory experiments were conducted to determine the effects of tar sand process waters on the mineral components of a Utah sandstone (from a known tar sand deposit) and control samples of feldspars of varying compositions. Contact with the process water increased the porosity and permeability of the test samples, which was caused by dissolution of aluminosilicate and carbonate minerals; there was a corresponding precipitation of clay minerals. Once mobilized, ions from the dissolved mineral matter can be moved by a processing wave and later precipitated as clay minerals when geochemical conditions change. Clay minerals can occlude porosity, affecting processing design and efficiency; additionally, they cause disposal and water recycling problems. 23 refs., 69 figs., 5 tabs.

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Physical structure of Green River oil shale from Colorado. [Distribution of organic matter and minerals]

"Knowledge acquired from this research contributes to a better understanding of the physical structure of Green River oil shale and provides fundamental data and concepts that may serve to improve oil-shale technology.  This study by the Bureau of Mines indicates that oil shale is a highly consolidated organic-inorganic system with no significant micropore structure, pore volume, or internal surface. This system is a form of physical structure  that precludes rapid diffusion of either bases or liquids. The mineral matter consists essentially of nonspherical particles that tend to follow a lognormal size distribution. An excess of 99 weight-percent of these particles  have equivalent spherical diameters of less than 44 microns- ., 75 weight-percent are from 2 to 20 microns, and 15 weight-percent are less than 2 microns. The  surface area (3 to 5 square meters per gram) of these mineral constituents is mainly external surface. The mineral constituents contain some micropore structure--pore radii ranging from 10 to 100 Angstrom--with the pore sizes randomly distributed. Distribution of the organic matter within the inorganic matrix is essentially interparticle and not intraparticle. The organic matter within the micropores of the mineral constituents is less than 4 percent of the total. Estimates made from surface area data suggest that perhaps only a small amount of the organic matter is bonded either physically or chemically  to the mineral constituents."

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Soluble salt processes for in-situ recovery of hydrocarbons from oil shale

In the central portion of the Piceance Creek in Colorado, certain soluble salts occur in intimate association with the oil shale. The shale oil resource in this area of the Piceance Creek Basin is very large, some 50 to 100 billion barrels in place, on a Fischer Assay basis. This paper describes a class on in-situ shale oil recovery processes in which permeability and porsity are developed by dissolution of these soluble salts. These processes consist of two steps which may be conducted simultaneously or sequentially: leaching of soluble salts, and conversion of kerogen.

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Oil shale mining and material handling technology assessment: Volume 2, Appendixes

This second volume of the Oil Shale Mining and Material Handling (M and MH) Technology Assessment is composed of four appendixes to Volume 1. Appendix A provides a description of the types of oil shales found in the United States. Appendix B offers details about the economics discussed in Sections 3 and 6 of Volume 1. Appendix C provides additional information on the prioritization results discussed in Section 7 of Volume 1. Appendix D is a bibliography compiled during the literature searches that were conducted by the authors of the assessments; this bibliography has been transferred to microfiche and attached to the back cover of this volume. 50 refs., 28 figs., 39 tabs.

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Economic comparison of five process concepts for using eastern oil shale

We have completed process designs and economic analyses for five processes that recover energy from eastern oil shale. The HYTORT and Paraho combination-heated processes were designed specifically to recover oil from eastern shale. The TOSCO 2 and Paraho directed-heated processes were designed to recover oil from western shale's, but were applied to eastern shale's for this study. The fifth process used an electric power plant combustion process that produced electricity by burning eastern oil shale.

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Modeling rock fracturing in bench-blasting problems

A computational model of rock blasting is being developed to examine the blasting problems associated with in situ oil shale processing. This model,  however, will also be useful as a design tool for the traditional problems in rock blasting. The model includes fundamental treatment of both shock-wave propagation and the accumulation of brittle fracture in the rock. As a result, the model accurately predicts the degree and extent of fracturing as functions of design parameters. The model has proven useful for making parametric studies and for evaluation of alternate blast designs. This paper demonstrates the use of the numerical model to simulate the fracturing induced by the detonation of a vertical explosive column near a bench. The fracturing induced by three different explosives indicate that (in the chosen geometry) the most efficient breakage is done by a column of ammonium nitrate and fuel oil mixture (ANFO) used with a toe charge of aluminized ANFO. There was too much unfractured rock left when ANFO was used alone; aluminized ANFO used for the entire explosive column caused excessive fracturing. A final case involves ANFO used alone to fracture a different rock type. This case points out that in a different rock type, the ANFO will not leave excessive unfractured rock.

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A free radical equilibrium in the fluidized bed retort

The solid-recycle fluidized bed retort has been used to study gas phase local equilibria in an oil shale pyrolyzer. In the LLNL pilot scale retort, light gases, methane, ethane, ethylene, and propylene, form in a ratio that is inconsistent with equilibration, and they are not equilibrated when recycled. However, in a variety of fluidized bed retorting experiments, the free radical precursors of these gases come to a steady state that requires a transient free radical equilibrium. The steady state is established very rapidly, without need for gas recycle. The 1- and 2-butyl free radicals have been investigated as representative intermediates. The steady state mechanism extends to the entire homologous series of free radicals, and offers a means to achieve improved liquid product yield. 12 refs., 4 figs., 2 tabs.

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