Ron Stites of SALLC to Support Dragon Shale Effort
Ron Stites, Founder of Stites & Associates (SALLC) and co-Founder of Dragon Shale, LLC, will be spending most of his time in Vernal, Utah, supporting the USTAR TAP contract. The contract focuses on validating the oil shale technologies co-developed by SALLC. Called the Dragon Shale Process, the technologies use a unique retorting method directly coupled to separation processes to create high-value petrochemicals from oil shale. This is a big departure from the traditional (and so far, completely unsuccessful) processes to try to make commodity fuels from oil shale.
The benefits of the new technologies include:
- Dramatic reduction in CO2 footprint by creating chemicals and building materials rather than fuels,
- A closed system allowing capture of all environmentally troublesome compounds,
- Creating product values in excess of crude oil prices instead of being at below typical crude oil prices,
- Allowing small plants and mines to be economically viable rather than huge strip-mining operations,
- Eliminates the need for huge amounts of water to make the hydrogen needed to turn the kerogen oil into a useful crude oil for making fuels and
- Allows small plants to be sited on only the best, most available oil shale resources.
The contract calls for three phases of work including:
- Developing and testing a prototype to prove the Dragon Shale Process (co-developed by SALLC),
- Scaling up the prototype to a semi-continuous demonstration of the Dragon Shale Process and
- Testing the separated kerogen oil products for commercial value to prove the commercial potential of the Dragon Shale Process.
Ron will be moving much of the R&D Laboratory equipment to Vernal, UT, while the contract is active (through early 2019). He will be spending between ½ and full-time in Vernal, designing and building test equipment and testing product cuts for economic value.
Ron can be reached at his usual email, [email protected] or at his Dragon Shale email, [email protected] .
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