Study on the kinetic-guided pyrolysis of oil shale kerogen catalyzed by needle-like NiFe-LDH

An in-depth understanding of the thermo-physicochemical behavior of kerogen catalytic pyrolysis is helpful to realize the efficient utilization of oil shale. In this work, the pyrolysis behavior of Barkol Kerogen and its product distribution were investigated by dry distilled experiment with needle-like NiFe-LDH as Catalyst, which was designed based on the kinetic experiments. As a result, NiFe-LDH has low-temperature and high-efficiency pyrolysis catalytic activity in the oil shale recovery and product selectivity. The initial pyrolysis catalytic temperature of kerogen was advanced to 250 °C, and the optimum pyrolysis temperature was decreased by 42.02 °C. The catalytic pyrolysis temperature was selected as 400 °C because of the maximum temperature weight loss in thermal analysis. NiFe-LDH not only increased the oil yield of kerogen by 5.18% and alkane selectivity by 2.62% but also reduced the content of heteroatomic hydrocarbon by 6.46%. Simultaneously, according to the change of activation energy during thermal analysis and the results of pyrolysis experiment, the catalytic pyrolysis process was speculatively divided into three possible stages. This resolution is helpful to understand the catalytic effect of NiFe-LDH on kerogen. Thus, NiFe-LDH plays a distinct role in the catalytic pyrolysis of kerogen and its kinetic regulation.