Extraction of Oil from Jordanian Carbonate Rock
Document Type : Original Article
Authors
Department of Chemical Engineering, Al-Huson University College/Albalqa' Applied University, P.O.Box 50, Al-Huson 21510, Jordan
Abstract
The search for unconventional oil resources during the last decade has increased due to an increase in the demand. Therefore, extracting and producing of oil from bitumen, oil shell, sand oil and carbonate rock were investigated by many countries around the word. The present study highlights characterization of the Jordanian carbonate rock (CR) using elemental analysis and infrared spectroscopy (IR) as analytical techniques. Carbonate rock can be defined as grained sedimentary rocks containing organic matter that produces oil on distillation. The study also focuses on characterization of the oil produced by the solvent extraction method. Effects of the amount and type of solvent in addition to the time of extraction on the percentage yield of oil produced have been investigated. The amount of oil content extracted from the CR was found to be about 10.5 wt%. The gas chromatography analysis indicated that the composition of the oil is hydrocarbons ranging from C14 to C20. The results indicated that the yield of oil increased as the volume of solvent increased, and the best result is obtained when the extraction solvent used was methanol. The percent yield was found to increase with increasing the extraction time up to seven hours beyond which became insignificant.
Keywords
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