The liquefaction, gasification, and other chemical modifications of oil sha
le art: challenging goals of chemistry and chemical engineering. The use of
new solvent systems, such as supercritical fluids and ionic liquids, repre
sents new avenues in the search of environmentally benign technologies. Sup
ercritical fluid extraction (SFE) with carbon dioxide is particularly effec
tive for the isolation of substances of medium molecular weight and relativ
ely low polarity. At elevated temperatures it is possible to unite the brea
king chemical bonds in the kerogen organic matter and convert the former in
to oil with extraction using supercritical fluids. Quantitative and qualita
tive information obtained at different temperatures during SFE is providing
some insight into the speciation of hydrocarbons in geological samples. Io
nic liquids were studied as potential solvents for kerogen extraction. Howe
ver, these chemical processes are favored at elevated temperatures up to th
e thermal degradation temperature of kerogen, approximate to 400 degreesC.
There were observed significant differences in the chemical composition of
extracted oil and from the oil from the classical semicoking process of oil
shale. An additional application would be a combination of the two methods
-the use of supercritical carbon dioxide to recover nonvolatile organic com
pounds from room-temperature: ionic liquid without using organic solvents.