Vahur Oja

Oil Shale Processing, Chemistry and Technology

The work summarizes the various process emissions that occur during petroleum refining. There are also general descriptions of the various pollution, health, and environmental problems especially specific to the petroleum industry and places in perspective the government regulations as well as industry efforts to adhere to these regulations. The objective is to indicate the types of emissions and the laws that regulate these emissions.

Distribution of Hydroxyl Groups in Kukersite Shale Oil: Quantitative Determination Using Fourier Transform Infrared (FT-IR) Spectroscopy.

This article describes the use of Fourier transform infrared (FT-IR) spectroscopy to quantitatively measure the hydroxyl concentrations among narrow boiling shale oil cuts. Shale oil samples were from an industrial solid heat carrier retort. Reference values were measured by titration and were used to create a partial least squares regression model from FT-IR data. The model had a root mean squared error (RMSE) of 0.44 wt% OH. This method was then used to study the distribution of hydroxyl groups among more than 100 shale oil cuts, which showed that hydroxyl content increased with the average boiling point of the cut up to about 350 °C and then leveled off and decreased.