The refining of shale oil (also known as tight oil) extracted through fracturing from fields such as Eagle Ford, Utica and Bakken has become prevalent in many areas of the US. Although these oils are appealing as refinery feedstocks due to their availability and low cost, processing can be more difficult.
The quality of the shale oils is highly variable.
These oils can be high in solids with high melting point waxes. The light paraffinic nature of shale oils can lead to asphaltene destabilization when blended with heavier crudes. These compositional factors have resulted in cold preheat train fouling, desalter upsets, and fouling of hot preheat exchangers and furnaces. Problems in transportation and storage, finished-product quality, as well as refinery corrosion, have also been reported. Operational issues have led to cases of reduced throughput and crude unit shutdowns. The problems encountered with shale oil processing and possible prediction and control strategies will be presented. read the full article here
Interesting background on Shale oil.
I am currently working up a paper on how modeling can be used with Shale oil. Any opinions on the modeling of shale oil?
Wednesday, 3 July 2013
From HydrocarbonProcessing.com: Innovative solutions for processing shale oils
Posted on 04:26 by Unknown
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