Oil Shale and Oil (Tar) Sands Processing EnvironmentalFactors

The summary for the Oil Shale and Oil (Tar) Sands Processing EnvironmentalFactors grant is detailed below. This summary states who is eligible for the grant, how much grant money will be awarded, current and past deadlines, Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance (CFDA) numbers, and a sampling of similar government grants. Verify the accuracy of the data FederalGrants.com provides by visiting the webpage noted in the Link to Full Announcement section or by contacting the appropriate person listed as the Grant Announcement Contact. If any section is incomplete, please visit the website for the Headquarters, which is the U.S. government agency offering this grant.

Oil Shale and Oil (Tar) Sands Processing EnvironmentalFactors: SUBTOPIC 4 a - Oil Shale and Oil (Tar) SandsProcessing EnvironmentalFactors (DE-PS26-05NT42317-04a)Domestic synthetic crude oil from either oil sands or kerogens from oilshalehave not been developed. Many steps and massive investment are requiredalongthe path from resource to refined product compatible with (fungible) withliquid transportation fuels refined conventional oil crudes. Bothresourcescould increase domestic oil supply.Kerogen from shale (the Green River Formation in Colorado, Utah and Wyomingbeing the World?s largest deposit) had extensive RD D prior to 1988 withonlyscattered development since. Volumes of studies exist but few researchersarecurrently pursuing this immense resource. In March 2004, U.S. DOEpublished?Strategic Significance of America?s Oil Shale Resource, Vol. I, AssessmentofStrategic Issues, and Vol. II, Oil Shale Resource, Technologies andEconomics?. Extraction, processing, tailings disposal and upgrading to afungible liquid fuel are immense challenges.U.S. oil shale contains an estimated approximate hundred times as muchresources as U.S. oil sands. It is estimated that approximately 2/3 of theoilshale in the world is in the domestic United States and approximately ? oftheoil shale in the world is available in the states of Colorado, Utah, andWyoming.Bitumen from oil sands and kerogen from shale, as well as most medium andheavyconventional crude oil requires upgrading of the heavy ends to make liquidtransportation fuels. References to the chemistry of heavy oil propertiesandupgrading include paper 1998.202 ?Composition and Properties of HeavyCrudes?by M.M. Boduszynski, C.E. Rechsteiner, A.S.G. Shafizadeh, and R.M.K.Carlson,presented at 7th UNITAR Conference on Heavy Oil and Tar Sands (seewww.oildrop.org/library).The primary interest is oil shale and it is the higher priority since shalecontains more of the resources, but applications for oil sands will beaccepted. Studies or research methods aimed at considering environmentallimitations on the development of the 40 to 76 billion barrels (three timesthedomestic conventional proven reserves) US oil sands resource are requested.Areas of interest include:? Develop a process to remove chlorides and/or nitrogen from the bitumen,kerogen, or the refined syncrude and provide a validation of the processforperforming the validation with resources.? Evaluate use of coke byproduct from bitumen upgrading as a source forhydrogen or clean liquid hydrocarbon fuels via syngas processing with aneconomic validation process of the resources.? A potential area of environmental interest is to make a quantitativedetermination of the environmental constraints that impede the productionofoil shale and oil (tar) sands within the U.S. This analysis should includeallenvironmental constraint factors (with rationale and/or description of anyestimates of processes, cost, or time that are not documented in theliterature). Where literature is used in this study, appropriatereferencesmust be included. The emphasis is to develop a method that will performmaximum pre-processing at the resource location that returns a maximumamountof material back into the location from which the resource was extractedandallows a significantly upgraded product to be shipped to a site for furtherprocessing. Evaluation of the problems associated with potentially highertoxic tailings should be considered and minimal environmental impact shouldbea criteria.References:?http://www.worldenergy.org/wec-geis/publications/reports/ser/shale/shale.asp? http://www.fe.doe.gov/nposr/? http://hubbert.mines.edu/news/v98n4/Youngquist.html? http://www.ems.psu.edu/~radovic/Chapter10.pdf? http://www.nfcrc.uci.edu/EnergyTutorial/oilshale.htmlALL QUESTIONS MUST BE SUBMITTED THROUGH THE ?SUBMIT QUESTION? FEATURE INIIPS.ALL QUESTIONS MUST BE SUBMITTED TO THE MASTER FUNDING OPPORTUNITYANNOUNCEMENT.Please read the Master Funding Opportunity Announcement for completedetails onevaluation criteria and how to prepare your application:https://e-center.doe.gov/iips/faopor.nsf/UNID/1471DB687FC9E52685256F4300568FD7?OpenDocument