Chemical kinetics study of hydrocarbon regeneration from organic matter in carbonate source rocks and its significance

Abstract

In the comparison research of hydrocarbon regeneration, a low maturity carbonate source rock is heated to different temperatures in a gold tube to obtain a series of samples with different maturities. Then, the heated samples, before and after extraction, are subjected to Rock-Eval pyrolysis through a thermal simulation of hydrocarbon regeneration in order to inspect pyrolysis characteristics and probe into the characteristics of the chemical kinetics of each sample. The results indicate that, whether hydrocarbon regeneration peak is delayed or advanced, the potential of hydrocarbon regeneration is closely related to the expulsion amount and breakdown maturity of primary hydrocarbon generation. After extraction, the average activation energy of artificially maturated samples increases with the increasing maturity, but the chemical kinetic properties of un-extracted samples decrease. The calibrated chemical kinetic models that describe extracted and un-extracted samples are applied to the Bohai Bay and the Songliao Basin, and the results indicate that the combination of the two models can explain some contradictory conclusions previously reported. These results also facilitate the quantitative evaluation of the amount of hydrocarbon regeneration by the chemical kinetic method.