Abstract

Two samples of oil shales from the Sultani and Jurf-Edarawish deposits in the south of Jordan were pyrolysed in a fixed bed reactor under nitrogen and nitrogen/steam atmosphere. A heating rate of 5, l0, 20 and 40 °C min-l to a final temperature of 950 °C was investigated in a fixed bed reactor and TGA. It was found that increasing heating rate shifted the reaction to a higher temperature and a decrease in the activation energy. The chemical composition and elemental analysis, of the oil shales were obtained. The condensed pyrolytic oils were fractionated into chemical classes using mini-column liquid chromatography. The molecular weight (MW) range of the derived oils was measured using size exclusion chromatography and the number average MW of the benzene, ethyl acetate and methanol fractions of the derived oil were obtained.