Experimental and Numerical Simulation of Oil Recovery from Oil Shales by Electrical Heating

The recovery characteristics of four different oil shale samples were tested experimentally using the retort technique. To accomplish efficient temperature distribution, the thermal conductivity of the oil shale samples was increased by the addition of three different iron powders. The doses of iron powders were optimized for each oil shale sample based on the highest oil production value experimentally. The experiments were then modeled using the electrical heating option of a commercial reservoir simulator. The viscosity-temperature relationship was obtained by matching the experimentally obtained temperature distribution in the cores and production data to the numerical ones. After the other parameters needed for the numerical model were collected and compiled, field-scale simulations were performed and a parametric analysis was performed for different oil shale cases. The experimental and numerical results show that field-scale oil recovery from oil shales by electrical heating could be technically and economically viable.