Development of an Oil Shale Retorting Process Integrated with Chemical Looping for Hydrogen Production

The increasing demand of crude oil is in conflict with the shortage of supply, forcing many countries to seek for alternative energy resources. Oil shale is welcomed by many countries that are short of conventional fossil fuels. China mainly uses retorting technology for shale oil production. Fushun-type oil shale retorting technology takes the largest share in the oil shale industry. However, this technology is always criticized by its unsatisfactory economic performance. It is caused by many reasons. One of the most important problems is the inefficient utilization of retorting gas. The idea of our research is to utilize the retorting gas to produce higher valued chemicals. For this, chemical looping technology is integrated into the retorting process for hydrogen production. This proposed process is modeled and simulated to build its mass and energy balance. Techno-economic analysis is conducted and compared to the analysis of the Fushun-type oil shale retorting process. The results show that the exergy destruction of the proposed process is 235.62 MW, much lower than that of the conventional process, 274.76 MW. In addition, the proposed process is less dependent on shale oil price. Two shale oil price scenarios have been investigated, showing that the proposed process can still be of benefit, 10.62% ROI, at low shale oil price, while the ROI of the conventional process is −2.07%.