Kinetics of oil shale pyrolysis

The potential energy supply that could be provided by-tapping the energy reserve found in the Green River Formation of Utah, Colorado, and Wyoming has presented a tantalizing proposition to entrepreneurs and scientists for more than a century. This energy reserve consists of organic matter embedded in rock. The organic material is usually referred to as kerogen. Though at present the extraction of this energy reserve is economically unprofitable, there "will come a time when the world's petroleum reserves will dwindle to the point that this natural resource will become a major source of liquid fuel and organic building blocks to augment the present petroleum and petrochemical industries. It has been recently estimated that there is as much as 1.8 trillion barrels of potential oil product to be found in the Green River Formation. ?ª*?Çó Large-scale production of oil from the pyrolysis of oil shale can be undertaken only after achieving a fair understanding of the kinetics involved. This is