What is tar sand, or oil sand, and how is it extracted and converted to heavy oi
ID: 1079 • Letter: W
Question
What is tar sand, or oil sand, and how is it extracted and converted to heavy oil? What are some environmental problems related to the use of this energy resource? What is shale oil and how is it produced? What are the major advantages and disadvantages of using heavy oils produced from tar sand and shale oil as energy resources?What is tar sand, or oil sand, and how is it extracted and converted to heavy oil? What are some environmental problems related to the use of this energy resource? What is shale oil and how is it produced? What are the major advantages and disadvantages of using heavy oils produced from tar sand and shale oil as energy resources?
What is tar sand, or oil sand, and how is it extracted and converted to heavy oil? What are some environmental problems related to the use of this energy resource? What is shale oil and how is it produced? What are the major advantages and disadvantages of using heavy oils produced from tar sand and shale oil as energy resources?
Explanation / Answer
Oil sand:
Oil sand or tar sand is a consolidated sand stone that includes a mixture of sand, clay, and water. This mixture is a dense and viscous form of petroleum. So, it is termed as “bitumen.”
It is extracted from the ground by drilling the oil wells into the petroleum reservoirs. In this the oil is allowed to fall into the reservoir under the natural pressures of the reservoir. Few other techniques such as horizontal drilling, water flooding, and gas injection along with the artificial lift are required to maintain this process.
The oil sand is converted into heavy oils by removing the sand filters from the heavy oil wells and producing the sand to its maximum with the oils.
The environmental issues with this are air pollution, land usage (which clears large number of trees), usage of huge amount of water, and the greenhouse gas emission.
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Shale oil:
It is the oil (liquid hydrocarbons) produced from the oil shale also termed as kerogen shale. The kerogen shale is a rich organic fine grained sedimentary rock that contains kerogen which is solid in nature with the mixture of the organic chemical compounds.
The methods that involve in the extraction of the shale oil are open pit mining and strip mining which are surface mining’s.
The advantage of oil sand method is a better production rates and its disadvantage is that disposing of the produced sand.
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The advantage of the shale oil is the production and the disadvantage is the waste from this enters the ground water and surface water which causes erosion and the emission of the sulphur gas causes the air pollution.
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