Probabilistic Heat Transfer in Variably Random Oil Shale Kerogen Deposit

• Main Author: Hoe, Wong Leh
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS 2014
• Subjects: TJ Mechanical engineering and machinery
• Online Access: http://utpedia.utp.edu.my/14264/1/13883_WongLehHoe_FYP_Dissertation%20report.pdf; http://utpedia.utp.edu.my/14264/

Oil shale is one of most potential unconventional oil sources to replace the conventional crude oil in future. It is a fine sedimentary rock which rich in organic substances called kerogen. Kerogen is insoluble in normal organic solvent and when it is heated under elevated temperature and pressure, it will undergo pyrolysis. Through pyrolysis process, the kerogen will break down and yield combustible liquid which is known as shale oil. In situ retorting method is one of the methods that is usually used to extract oil shale. However, due to its random deposition, it is necessary to quantify the heat injection behavior in oil shale. Therefore the purpose of this research is to develop the correlation of the variability of oil shale kerogen’s heat conduction and the heat transfer. To achieve the objective, simulation of oil shale field distribution is generated. The correlation of the variability of the oil shale and the heat input is observed and studied so the yield of the oil shale can be calculated and quantified. Previous researches show that high temperature will lead to high yield of oil shale. During high temperature, the thermal conductivity of oil shale will decrease. Various sampling techniques and up scaling methods are implement and analyzed to conclude the effect of element sizes on the heat transfer. Based on the result, there will be less than 4% error in pyrolysis temperature. This implies that there will be 96% accuracy in estimation of oil yield due to its randomness. At the end of this research paper, heat injection should be carried out at the depth of 281m to 560m to obtain the high yield of oil shale.