User talk:Akburnham

Oil shale
Hi Alan. The article on oil shale has developed quite well, but still some more expert assistance is needed. I hope you would pleased helping to improve it. I put some questions and issues to the talk page. Thank you in advance. Beagel 17:47, 31 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Hi Alan. You are definitely the most prominent oil shale expert who has contributed to the oil shale article. I wondered if you might like to review this article and check once more the information accuracy. There is also discussion how to split this article. If you have time perhaps you would like to take a look? regards. Beagel 21:36, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

Dear Beagel, This article has grown considerably since I looked at it last. In general, it is very good. I noticed a few things that need to be fixed, and I would hope to do that this weekend. Since it has grown so large, perhaps it would be better split into two articles. The environmental section is still weak by comparison. The in-situ technologies are not completely covered--MIS is missing--and the EGL process description is not correct. Alan
 * Dear Alan,
 * Thank you very much. I absolutely agree with your comment. The split is already decided (more details on the talk page of oil shale and I saw that user:Philbentley has already started this process. Thank you in advance for your assistance.
 * PS: I hope you are not against if I will copy your answer to the article talk page.Beagel 16:38, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

Beagel, You may move my comment to the discussion page. In addition, here is a draft of changes I propose. I don't have all the references yet. I also have a figure for the EGL process, but it didn't seem to get pasted into the words below. If there is some offline draft to get these into while polishing, please do so.

I propose adding the following words below. The OTIS site was down today, so I could not retrieve appropriate references from home. In addition, the “Properties of some oil shales (sic) deposits” table should specify how the oil yield is determined. I presume it is Fischer assay, but it is important to say specifically, because different processes will attain from 50% to 300% of Fischer assay. Finally, the “2” in CO2 in the Chevron process description should be a subscript rather than a superscript. Alan Burnham

Reactive fluids technologies are IGT Hytort (high-pressure H2), and Donor Solvent processes.[13] These technologies are more appropriate hydrogen-poor shales, such as the Eastern US Devonian shales, for which only a third of the organic carbon is typically converted to oil during conventional aboveground retorting. The hydrogen or hydrogen donor react with coke precursors and roughly double the yield of oil, depending on the details of the shale and process [R. Rex, J Janks, T. Knowlton, Cold Flow Model Testing of the Hytort Process Retort Design, 17th Oil Shale Symposium. Colo. Sch. Mines Press. pp. 17-36. A better, later reference may exist.]

In-situ

The in-situ technologies are usually classified as true in-situ processes (TIS) and modified in-situ processes (MIS). While true in-situ processes do not involve mining the shale, the modified in-situ involves prior to heating mining beneath the target oil shale deposit, and drilling and fracturing the target deposit above the mined area to create void space of 20 to 40 percent to improve the flow of gases and liquid fluids through the rock formation, and by that increasing the volumes and quality of the oil produced.[16] The in-situ technologies could be also classified similarly to the ex-situ classification by the method of heating.

In-situ operations could potentially extract more oil from a given area of land than conventional oil shale mining and retorting, as the wells can reach much deeper than surface strip-mines can. With in-situ processing, the shale is fractured and heated underground to release gases and oils. Several companies have patented methods for in-situ retorting. However, most of these methods are still experimental.

Early In-Situ Methods

A variety of true in-situ processes were tried prior to the oil shale crash in the 1980s. Most notable are the Equity Oil process, which injected superheated steam in the permeable leached zone of Colorado’s Piceance Basin [P. M. Dougan, L. Dockter, “BX In Situ Oil Shale Project,” 14th Oil shale Symposium Proceedings, Colo. Sch. Mines Press, 1981, pp. 118-127], and the Geokinetics Process, which is a horizontal combustion retort in which permeability is formed by explosive uplift and rubblization. [C. E. Tyner, R. L. Parrish, B. H. Major, J. M. Lekas, “Sandia/Geokinetics Retort 23: A Horizontal In Situ Retorting Experiment, 15th Oil shale Symposium Proceedings, Colo. Sch. Mines Press, 1982, pp.370-384.] Little yield information is available from the Equity process, but the Geokinetics process generally recovered 40-50% of the Fischer assay oil.

Variations of the modified in-situ process have been investigated by the US Bureau of Mines, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Occidental Petroleum, Rio Blanco Corporation, and Multi-Mineral Corporation. An early concept in the 1960s was to create a rubble chimney using a nuclear explosive. This approach was abandoned for a variety of technical reasons. Subsequently, a variety of conventional mining and rubblization approaches were explored.

The first in-situ oil shale experiment was conducted by Occidental Petroleum in 1972 at Logan Wash.[16] Oil yield was adversely affected by inefficient sweep of the rubblized zone due to nonuniform permeability. [ A subsequent series of field experiments tried to improve permeability uniformity by different mining and blasting approaches. Occidental achieved 50-60 %FA oil yield in Retorts 7 and 8, depending on how it is calculated. [T. C. Bickel, “Data Acquisition and Analysis of Occidental Vertical Modified In Situ Retorts 7 and 8, Sandia Report SAND83-2649, 1984] Rio Blanco Corporation used a different mining and blasting approach that created a bed with close to 40% porosity. This enabled them to retort the chimney at a substantially faster rate and achieved higher oil yields—about 70% of Fischer assay. [K. L. Berry, R. L. Hutson, J. S. Sterrett and J. C. Knepper, “Modified In-Situ Retorting Results of Two Field Retorts, 15th Oil shale Symposium Proceedings, Colo. Sch. Mines Press, 1982, pp. 385-396] Multi-Mineral Corporation proposed a more complicated MIS process for Saline Zone oil shale that included recovery of nahcolite and Dawsonite minerals.

EGL Resources (replacement section)

EGL Resources proposes a method that combines horizontal wells, through which steam is passed, and vertical wells, which provide both vertical heat transfer through refluxing of generated oil and a means to collect and produce the oil. In contrast to the Equity process, the steam circulates through a closed loop, and no fluids are injected into the formation. Horizontal heat transfer from the vertical wells is similar to that in the Shell ICP, and a similar oil quality is expected. They are currently leasing a 160-acre tract in the Piceance Basin from the US Bureau of land management for their tests.[54]

7/23/07 I added references to my proposed changes and gave more precise yield info on the in-situ process based on rereading the papers.

Oil shale article's peer review
I listed Oil shale for the new peer review and related spin-off articles (Oil shale extraction, Oil shale geology, Oil shale industry, History of the oil shale industry, Oil shale reserves, Oil shale economics, and Environmental effects of oil shale industry) for the peer review. Your comments and edits will be most welcome.Beagel 17:12, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

Oil shale again
Dear Mr Burnham. After all improvements and copyediting, the Oil shale article seems to be ready for the featured article nomination, which marks the best level articles of Wikipedia. However, before nominating this article, I would like to ask you to review this article to be sure that all information in it is correct and no important aspects are missing. Thank you in advance.Beagel (talk) 17:27, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

Oil shale extraction
Hi, Alan. I nominated the Oil shale extraction for FAC. Beagel (talk) 20:30, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

Updated Figures
It is probably time to update two of the figures in this article. Schlumberger Oilfield Review has published an updated figure of oil shale production, current to 2010, that could replace the figure in the history section. This magazine has a Schlumberger copyright, however, and I am working to get a noncopyright protected version of the figure. It certainly can be used with permission, if that is acceptable. The important point is that oil shale mining has increased substantially, particularly in China, and it was 32 million metric tons in 2010. It gives a qualitatively different impression, i.e., oil shale is not a mineral whose use is on a tragectory to zero. In the economics section, there are another 1 1/2 years of crude oil prices that would take us to the current price plateau. Such information is readily available from the US DOE EIA and elsewhere. I could do it, except I have made contributions so rarely that I'm not sure I would get the formatting right. Alan Burnham, March 20, 2011

Your submission at AfC Pyrobitumen was accepted
 Pyrobitumen, which you submitted to Articles for creation, has been created. The article has been assessed as C-Class, which is recorded on the article's talk page. You may like to take a look at the grading scheme to see how you can improve the article. You are more than welcome to continue making quality contributions to Wikipedia. . Thank you for helping improve Wikipedia! &mdash;Anne Delong (talk) 18:39, 23 January 2014 (UTC)
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 * Alan, please let me to congratulate for this successful admission. This is an useful article, good work! I also would like to ask you, if you have a time, to give your opinion concerning the proposal here. It seems that the term bituminous shale has been quite often used as a synonym for oil shale but it is not clear if it should be merged to this article or not. Best regards, Beagel (talk) 06:36, 24 January 2014 (UTC)

Happy New Year!


Happy New Year! Alan, I wish you a Happy New Year, and thank you for the good cooperation in the past as also in the future. Beagel (talk) 12:25, 3 January 2015 (UTC)