Shale oil value enhancement research - Quarterly report: June 1 - August 31, 1993

All tasks are on schedule, or ahead of schedule. Particular progress has been made in identifying industrial entities, commodities and specialty products of target interest for shale oil-derived products. There is clearly a major emphasis worldwide on new chemicals and shale oil-derived structures are similar to many of these chemicals of interest. Details of the mathematical modeling, programming and algorithm development have progressed with excellent results. Considerable effort will be required to interface these with the output of the gc/ms but we are receiving excellent support from Hewlett Packard in this regard. The ability to concentrate particularly valuable compounds with reasonable projected cost processes continues to show promise. In one system, a single-stage extraction recovered 87% of the total nitrogen in an extract representing only 33% of the fraction. Special attention is being paid to both nitrogen types and oxygen types. The raffinates from the polar solvent extractions will be evaluated for their oil and wax contents. All of the start-up infrastructure is now in place. Subcontracts have been initiated and equipment and supplies have been procured. We are now planning a major push to reach some general findings by early in 1994. From these findings, we will be prepared to focus on experimental verification of process design needed for the second program phase.