Treatment of bituminous schists

Claim 1

In a process for the treatment of bituminous schists in order to extract their volatile constituents and including the steps of: (a) crushing the bituminous schist, (b) pyrolyzing the crushed bituminous schist by, (1) feeding said schist to the top of a retort, said retort having a combustion zone in the lower portion thereof, a pyrolysis zone above said combustion zone and a drying zone above said pyrolysis zone. (2) moving said schist downwardly in said retort (3) introducing air into said combustion zone to generate said volatile constituents in said pyrolysis zone. (c) conducting said volatile constituents from the upper end of said retort (d) and removing spent bituminous schist material from the bottom of said retort, the improvement which comprises maintaining said combustion zone at a predetermined level in said retort by feeding the schist to said retort in a gradual and even manner by cascading crushed bituminous schist along a single downwardly inclined pathway defined by a chute rotatable about a vertical axis to deposit in an arcuate track onto the top of the schist present in said retort a portion of the total of the crushed schist to be added, and adjusting the angle of inclination of said pathway and rotating said pathway while cascading crushed bituminous schist therealong to deposit a further portion of the total crushed schist to be added along a different arcuate track, said schist being deposited in concentric rings of uniform height and wherein the width of the rings is changed at an even rate at each incremented radius of chute rotation toward or away from the periphery of the retort whereby the area occupied by each ring is the same.