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How do hot-recycled-solids methods recover energy from spent oil shale?
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oil shale
Kuskerite (oil shale) outcrop that dates to the Ordovician Period, northern Estonia.
Hot-recycled-solids methods recover energy from spent oil shale by using burned shale or an inert material as a heat carrier to facilitate the pyrolysis process. These methods are applied exclusively aboveground.1
After oil and gas have been extracted, the remaining spent shale contains carbon-rich char on the mineral ash. Some hot-recycled-solids technologies burn this residual carbon to generate the necessary heat for the process, which improves the overall utilization of the resource. Examples of these processes include the Estonian Galoter and Enefit 280 processes, as well as the Canadian Alberta Taciuk Process.1