Particle Characterization and Imbibition within Industrial Oil Shale

In today's high demand energy industry, oil shale is becoming an increasingly sought-after fossil fuel source, deviating from the more conventional fuel sources. Investigating imbibition, which is the uptake of liquids into porous material, provides potential solutions to common industry issues that occur during hydraulic fracturing of shale rock. Particle characterization tests were performed on industrial shale samples cleaned with methanol only, chloroform only, and a mixture of methanol and chloroform. The purposes of these chemicals were for salt extraction, hydrocarbon extraction, and the extraction of both impurities respectively. These characterization tests included bulk and tap density tests, Malvern Mor- phologi G3SE tests for circle equivalent diameter (particle size distribution), high sensitivity circularity, and elongation, Freeman Technology FT4 Powder Rheometer tests for bulk flowability and compressibil- ity, and sessile drop experiments using deionized water, hexane, and silicone oil for hydrophobicity and contact angle measurements. Results show that the methanol cleaned sample had the largest particle size distribution and largest number of symmetrical particles while the chloroform and methanol/chloroform cleaned samples showed similar results with a smaller particle size distribution and more elliptically shaped particles. Based on this, the methanol cleaned sample had the highest compressibility due to the large number of void fractions between the large particles and the smaller particles fitting within these voids. All three samples were highly hydrophobic and showed similar behaviors in the sessile drop tests.