An in-situ pyrolysis technology was proposed for shallow oil shale: drilling horizontal wells to the oil shale formation, connecting the horizontal well sections through hydraulic fracturing, injecting nitrogen from the surface to bottomhole, heating up the nitrogen to a high temperature at the bottom, and directly using the high-temperature nitrogen for oil shale pyrolysis. Then, a mathematical model was established for the heat transfer within the oil shale, and a simplified physical model was created for in-situ pyrolysis of oil shale, and used to simulate the heat transfer process. The simulation results show that, with the extension of heating time, the area of effectively pyrolyzed oil shale formation took up an increasingly large proportion of the total cross-sectional area of the formation; however, the increase of the pyrolysis area ratio was rather slow, and the temperature was unevenly distributed in the formation after a long duration of heating. Therefore, the 300d in-situ heating was split into two stages: 250d of heating in the heating well and 50d of heating in the production well. The two-stage heating maximized the heating area of oil shale, and heated 57% of the cross-sectional area up to 400℃, ensuring the effectiveness of pyrolysis. Moreover, this heating scheme ensured an even distribution of temperature in oil shale formation, a high energy utilization, and a desirable heating effect.
In situ upgrading of oil shale by Steamfrac in multistage transverse fractured horizontal well system
