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OIL SHALE
A December 1994 stock analyst's report by Stires
and Company points out that, at current stock
prices, the combined SPP and CPM companies
are capitalized at just under US$100 million. Con
sidering the
companies'
other assets, this means
that their Queensland oil shale reserves are being
valued by the market at a mere $0,005 per barrel.
####
LLNL CONVERTS OIL SHALE RETORT FOR
WASTE TREATMENT STUDIES
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL)
developed the LLNL Hot-Recycied-Soiid (HRS)
retorting process, a rapid retorting
system that
uses hot recycled oil shale as the solid heat car
rier (see Figure 1). LLNL is now adapting the
HRS process to address pressing problems in
the field of waste treatment.
During the course of the oil-shale work, LLNL real
ized that the HRS process, if modified and ex
tended, can be applied to several important
problems in the field of waste treatment and en
vironmental cleanup. For example, a preliminary
laboratory study showed that the HRS process
might be suitable for removing organic com
pounds and for decomposing sodium nitrate
(NaN03). Organic compounds and sodium
nitrate are major constituents of the mixed waste
stored in underground tanks at the Hanford,
Washington facility. (Mixed waste is both radioac
tive and chemically hazardous.)
In 1993 LLNL began to modify the pilot plant that
was built for processing oil shale. They have
now adapted this pilot plant and are collaborat
ing
with researchers elsewhere to demonstrate
the feasibility of pretreating Hanford tank wastes
using a circulating bed of hot ceramic spheres.
This work was described in a recent issue of
Energy and Technology Review. At the same
time. LLNL is pursuing
several other applications
of an HRS retort process for treating a variety of
substances of environmental concern. They are
demonstrating that the HRS process has poten
tial applications for decomposing or treating
2-2
FIGURE 1
LLNL
HOT-RECYCLED-SOLID
SOURCE: LLML
PROCESS
L-valve
Combustor
exit
Product
oil and gas
THE SYNTHETIC FUELS REPORT, JANUARY 1995
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