| Title | Correcting Tmax suppression: a numerical model for removing adsorbed heavy oil and bitumen from Upper Ordovician source rocks, Arctic Canada |
| |
| Author | Chen, Z ; Dewing,
K; Synnott, D P; Liu, X |
| Source | Energy & Fuels vol. 33, issue 7, 2019 p. 6234-6246, https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.energyfuels.9b01065 |
| Image |  |
| Year | 2019 |
| Alt Series | Natural Resources Canada, Contribution Series 20190107 |
| Publisher | American Chemical Society (ACS) |
| Document | serial |
| Lang. | English |
| Media | paper; digital; on-line |
| File format | pdf; html |
| Province | Nunavut |
| NTS | 58G/02; 58G/03; 58G/04; 58G/05; 58G/06; 58G/07; 58G/11; 58G/12; 58G/13; 58G/14; 68H/01; 68H/08; 68H/09; 68H/16 |
| Area | Cornwallis Island |
| Lat/Long WENS | -97.5000 -93.0000 76.0000 75.0000 |
| Subjects | fossil fuels; geochemistry; Science and Technology; Nature and Environment; Economics and Industry; petroleum industry; petroleum resources; hydrocarbons; heavy oil; bitumen; petroleum generation;
models; source rocks; arctic geology; temperature; kerogen; thermal maturation; Cape Phillips Formation; Phanerozoic; Paleozoic; Ordovician |
| Illustrations | location maps; tables; plots; bar graphs |
| Program | Geoscience for New Energy Supply (GNES) Shale-hosted petroleum resource assessment |
| Released | 2019 06 11 |
| Abstract | A Rock-Eval 6 dataset of 66 samples from the Cape Phillips Formation in the Canadian Arctic region was studied to investigate source rock characteristics and petroleum generation potential. Bulk
geochemical characteristics and thermal decomposition behavior of the samples indicate an initial generation potential close to 700 mg HC/g TOC and show an unusually low onset Tmax temperature for petroleum generation. This led to an examination of
possible Tmax suppression due to a large amount of high-molecular-weight heavy oil and bitumen derived from the early breakdown of kerogen in the samples. Application of a numerical method based on kerogen decomposition kinetics allows for the
numerical removal of thermal evaporative products of oil and bitumen adsorbed in the sample without requiring additional pyrolysis experiments or solvent extraction treatments of sample replicates. The removal of the adsorbed hydrocarbon from samples
increases the Tmax value up to 17 °C. The estimated petroleum in the sorption phase varies from 1 to about 9 mg HC/g rock, depending on the total organic content (TOC) and maturity, and is the main form of the total oil yield in this area. The
corrected Tmax-HI cross-plot suggests an onset of petroleum generation around 435 °C of Tmax, consistent with the general consensus for a normal marine source rock in this region. The constructed kinetic model shows a maximum of 75% transformation
ratio (TR), and most samples show TR ranging from 10 to 50% in the early oil generation window on Cornwallis Island. This reconstructed source rock thermal decomposition model in a geological time scale indicates the onset of massive petroleum
generation at a temperature of 120 °C, and the maximum transformation ratio of 75% corresponds to a temperature of 140 °C over geological time. |
| Summary | (Plain Language Summary, not published)
This paper describes a different way to view the hydrocarbon screening data produced by RockEval pyrolysis. The RockEval machine produces data that
shows the amount of hydrocarbon that is produced at different temperatures. This paper takes the temperature data and changes it to activation energy, which is a proxy for the bond strengths in the hydrocarbon. When the data is presented as
activation energies, then very low activation energy oils can be identified |
| GEOSCAN ID | 314767 |
|
|