Date posted: 08/09/2006*

According to the latest studies, the United States has an oil reserve of at least three times that of Saudi Arabia locked in a 16,000-acre formation of oil shale deposits beneath federal land in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming. The majority of the land was set aside in 1910 by the government as a potential source of fuel for the U.S. Navy.

If successfully harvested, shale could provide a long-term source of reliable, affordable and secure oil. In fact, federal officials estimate that this resource could yield enough oil to meet U.S. demand at current levels for more than 250 years.

Oil shale, also known as organic marlstone, contains kerogen — a waxy hydrocarbon that turns into oil or natural gas if enough heat or pressure is applied.

Nearly 100 years after the U.S. government set the land aside, the shale reserves remain 1,000 feet underground. During this time, various companies have tried to retrieve oil from the shale but have met with limited success due to the environmental and economical ramifications of standard extraction methods.

The question remains: How can fossil fuel be extracted from the shale in a cost-efficient manner without wreaking havoc on the environment?

Potential Solution to Century-Old Roadblock
The solution developed by Raytheon involves the combined use of radio frequency (RF) technology, more commonly used for radars and guidance systems, in conjunction with “critical fluids” — compounds that rapidly penetrate substrates and safely dissolve a wide range of chemicals. Massachusetts-based CF Technologies, a leading developer of critical fluid processes, is providing Raytheon with its critical fluids expertise.

Under this extraction scenario, oil well holes are drilled into the shale strata using standard oil-industry equipment. RF antennae, or transmitters, are lowered into the shale. The antennae then transmit RF energy to heat the buried shale. Super-critical carbon-dioxide fluid is pumped into the shale formations to separate the petroleum from the rock and direct the freed fuel to another well, where it is extracted. Next, the carbon-dioxide fluid is separated from the oil and gas, which is sent to a refinery and further processed into gasoline, heating oil and other products.

It is projected that the same process may also be used to retrieve oil from Canadian tar sands and to reprocess spent wells.

More Cost-Efficient Than Alternate In-Ground Heating Methods
The combination of RF energy heating the shale and critical fluids flushing and moving the resulting products enables the fuel to be pumped from the ground more efficiently, using far less power than other proposed technologies. It is estimated that this technology would retrieve four to five barrels of oil for every one barrel invested.

“Oil companies are under pressure to be more efficient in how they extract energy sources from the ground,” said John Cogliandro, IDS chief engineer for the project. “Using our RF-CF technique provides a viable response to these pressures.”

In addition, Raytheon’s use of RF technology would enable the fuel to be extracted from the earth in only one to two months. In-ground heating methods that do not employ radio waves, by contrast, require three to four years to replicate the natural conversion process.

“We are now talking with energy companies to license our unique, patent-pending technological approach,” said Lee Silvestre, director of Mission Innovation at Raytheon Integrated Defense Systems.

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