Clean and secure energy from domestic oil shale and oil sands resources: Quarterly progress report - July 2014-September 2014

The Clean and Secure Energy from Domestic Oil Shale and Oil Sands Resources program, part of the research agenda of the Institute for Clean and Secure Energy (ICSE) at the University of Utah, is focused on engineering, scientific, and legal research surrounding the development of these resources in Utah. Outreach efforts in Task 2 have continued to focus on disseminating results from the various subtasks and on fielding interview requests. Two papers from this program have been submitted for presentation at the 34th Oil Shale Symposium in Golden, CO, in October 2014. Task 3 focuses on utilization of oil shale and oil sands resources with CO2 management. The Subtask 3.3 and 3.4 teams improved their basin-scale conventional & unconventional fuel development model by performing a water balance for conventional oil and gas development, improving the conventional oil and gas drilling schedule model, and revising overall model into a centralized framework. Task 4 projects are related to liquid fuel production by in-situ thermal processing of oil shale. The Subtask 4.3 project, reservoir simulation of reactive transport processes, was completed in this quarter; a topical report will be submitted in November 2014. Subtask 4.1 researchers incorporated a realistically-sized computational domain representing ex-situ retorting of a rubblized oil shale bed. However, excessively large computational efforts would be required to simulate oil shale retorting on a realistic time scale, so researchers will continue to improve our solution strategy. The Subtask 4.3 team continued work on a mechanistic model of oil shale kerogen pyrolysis based on the Chemical Percolation Devolatilization model. The elemental analysis of the chars showed that the carbon content does not change significantly at increased temperatures. A carbon balance and an aromatic carbon balance seem to suggest that the char should not be as aromatic as measured, unless significant ring addition reactions occur. Task 5 and 6 projects relate to environmental, legal, economic, and policy analysis. A final topical report on policy and economic issues associated with using simulation to assess environmental impacts (Subtask 5.3) was submitted in early November 2014. All Task 5 and 6 projects are now complete. Task 7 researchers are completing research on processes at a more commercially-relevant scale. The Subtask 7.3 team extended their in-situ simulation domain and ran three test cases to capture two years of heating in horizontal heater wells. They then compared the energy requirements of heating with the energy out in the form of oil produced. At the end of two years, the energy out to energy in ratio was not favorable for any of the three cases. They will continue to run simulations to capture longer retorting periods.