Retort member

The Retort Member is thickest in southwestern Montana The Retort closely resembles the Meade Peak except that its thickness is about one-half that of the Meade Peak and its shorelines and apparent depocenter are displaced northward The Retort, like the Meade Peak, is believed to have been deposited along a belt that extended southward into eastern Idaho from the apparent depocenter in southwestern Montana However, the Upper Permian sequence has been eroded in most of eastern Idaho prior to deposition of Triassic strata (22) and has left the original extent of the Retort unknown ... 

Figure 10. Plot comparing organic carbon and bitumen (left), and phosphorus to organic carbon, bitumen, and hydrocarbons (right) in samples from Meade Peak and Retort Members of the Phosphoria Formation. Values in percent for organic carbon and phosphorus are from Maughan (11) bitumen and...

Western ethics may also involve an attenuation of the ego, but in general as means rather than as an end, and it never pursues this to the limit. The renunciating of one s attachments is a value in the West, but it exists as a means to help or serve others or God better (one distributes one s worldly goods to the poor ) not, as is the case in Buddhism, as a direct means to achieve the absence of suffering. The individual may also be devalued in comparison with the social class of which he is a member, but the Buddhist will retort that in fact such an individual does not exist, that he is merely an illusion. Humility, as when one says that the self is small when compared with God, is largely a way of increasing God s stature by relying upon a very resilient self for support. In fact, a Buddhist will reply, none of that exists, neither God nor self (or, more precisely, there is undoubtedly no God for the theravada Buddhist and there is definitely no self for all Buddhists). 

In many samples reflecting hypersaline palaeoenvironments a series of extended hopanes and/or hop-17(21)-enes dominated by C35 members have been observed (7,8,31,33). It should be noted, however, that similar distribution patterns are also encountered in samples originating from normal marine salinity sediments such as those from the Brazilian marginal basins (31), the Serpiano shale (44), the Phosphoria Retort shale (45) and the Jurf ed Darawish Oil Shale (23, 46). 

The Permian Phosphoria Formation in the northwestern Interior United States contains two phosphatic and organic-ncarbon-rich shale members, the Meade Peak Phosphatic Shale Member and the Retort Phosphatic Shale Member. Ihese rocks were formed at the periphery of a foreland basin between the Paleozoic continental margin and the North American cratonic shelf. The concentration, distribution, and coincidence of phosphorite, organic carbon, and many trace elements within these shale members probably were coincident with areas of optimum trophism and biologic productivity related to areas of upwelling. In the Phosphoria sea upwelling is indicated to have occurred by sapropel that was deposited adjacent to shoals near the east flank of the depositional basin. 

Figure 4. Isopach map of Meade Peak (left) and Retort (right) Members of the Phosphoria Formation contour interval is 10 m. Principal overthrust faults of the Sevier thrust belt indicated by barbed line isopachs and faults are dashed where uncertain.

Two Colorado oil shale samples one from the Parachute Creek Member and the other from the C-a tract, were retorted, de-charred and then subjected to temperatures between 800 K and 1100 K in order to study the mineral reactions which take place. Comparisions between these two samples include the reversible nature of ankeritic dolomite and free calcite as well as the temperatures at which significant silication takes place. Results for the C-a tract samples indicated silication appears to take place in stages and that ankeritic dolomite decomposition can be prevented by relatively low CO2 concentrations. Ankeritic dolomite and calcite decomposition rates were similar for the two samples and there was strong evidence that calcite recarbonation takes place via non-activated chemisorption of C(>2 ... 

Equipment. All of the gasification experiments were conducted with the same apparatus employed in the earlier oxidation work and has been described in detail elsewhere ). The technique involved simultaneous measurements of mass loss (T6A) and exit gas compositions (gas chromatograph) in a vessel which behaved as an ideal back-mix reactor. All experiments were run under isothermal conditions. As before, powdered shale samples (200 mesh) of previously retorted oil shale from the Parachute Creek member in Colorado were suspended from an electrobalance and placed in a furnace. In this way continuous gravimetric readings were available to monitor the consumption of the char. The off-gases were analyzed on a Carle gas chromatograph equipped with a Carbosieve B column. 

General geology. The Phosphoria Formation lies above the Permian Park City Formation, formed largely of limestone, and is overlain by the Triassic Dinwoody Formation (Fig. 8). The Phosphoria Formation contains two primarily phosphatic shale members, the Retort and the Meade Peak. The Meade Peak Member is the larger of the two main phosphorite bodies, and is the source of samples considered in our current work discussed here. The Meade Peak Phosphatic Shale Member is comprised of phosphorites, phosphatic shales, dolostones, siltstones, and mudstones (Fig. 9). 

Of course, there is no evidence that Crosse, Tillyard, or any of their colleagues were concerned with Aristotle s concept of substance or with van Helmont s ideas on fermentation, but they do remind us that Boyle, Willis, and their academic colleagues were not the only men in Oxford who knew a retort from a bolthead. It would also have meant that a chemically literate community was routinely present in the city, whose members could not only supply necessary materials to the scientists, but also offer practical advice, and even recommend likely boys or men to act as laboratory assistants. One would, for instance, like to know the name and background of the anonymous pumper whom Boyle employed to assist him and Hooke in their groundbreaking air-pump experiments at Deep Hall in 1659. One presumes that he would have been the technician who operated the airpump, thereby leaving Boyle and Hooke free to observe what was happening to the experiment set up in the glass receiver. 

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