University of Richmond chemistry professor receives $90,280 Department of Energy grant to study oil sand and shale
September 23, 2009
One way to reduce the United States’ dependence on foreign oil is to extract oil embedded in domestic sand and rock, or shale. However, oil prospectors and scientists need to know more about the energy potential of that type of oil, which differs from the more accessible oil reserves that are pumped out as light sweet crude.
Carol Parish, professor of chemistry at the University of Richmond, hopes to add to that body of knowledge by conducting theoretical studies of the structure and reactivity of molecules in sand and shale oil. She has received a $90,280 Department of Energy grant to begin her work. The award comes from the Projects in Computational and Theoretical Chemistry, Division of Chemical Sciences, Geosciences and Biosciences Division, Office of Basic Energy Sciences. It will fund Parish’s summer research and a full-time post-doctoral associate.
The grant is for the first year of what is expected to be a total grant of $273,000 over three and a half years.
The university will support her research with funding for undergraduate student summer research stipends, travel funds and purchase of a computer cluster to sustain the study’s intensive calculations.
“Our primary goal is to establish a solid theoretical understanding of the gas phase structures, energies and mechanisms of combustion and pyrolysis for the molecular constituents of asphaltenes contained in oil sand and oil shale,” said Parish.
Her team will use high level quantum mechanical methods to determine the potential energy surfaces and corresponding rates of reaction. “This will yield insight into the structures, energetic content and reactivities of these important molecular species,” Parish said.