Comparison study for extraction of oil from oil shale

Oil shales are an important source of energy as the world’s energy demand is increasing exponentially. In this study, use of mechanical agitation and ultra-sonication was investigated for the extraction of Quseir’s oil shales by using different solvents such as tetrahydrofuran (THF), toluene, methylene dichloride, methanol and hexane and their yields were determined. Quseir's oil shales were characterized by elemental analysis, infrared spectroscopy, gas chromatography (GC), thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) and surface imaging techniques such as scanning electron microscope. GC and TGA analyses showed that the oil recovered from oil shale had higher percentages of hydrocarbons in comparison with other oil shale resources. THF, toluene and mixture of methylene dichloride with hexane resulted in better oil yields in comparison with hexane and methanol. In addition, 4 h of agitation time, 0.8 mm particle size of oil shale and 2:1 ratio of oil at refluxing conditions to solvent resulted in better yields in the mechanical agitation method. On the other hand, ultra-sonication yields results were superior up to 73% using THF in 15 min at ambient temperature. This showed that low frequency ultrasonication is superior to the traditional mechanical stirring methods. © 2020, Cairo University. All rights reserved.