Abstract
Type I kerogen was isolated from Green River Shale and characterized using SEM, TGA, DSC, and nitrogen adsorption. The swelling behavior of this kerogen with decane was analyzed using traditional test-tube swelling experiment and Dynamic Light Scattering. The TGA and DSC were used to analyze the thermodynamic behavior of decane that was sorbed in the kerogen and show that kerogen suppresses the boiling point of decane due to the effect of confinement. However, the suppression is larger when oil (a multicomponent mixture) was used, possibly due to the combined effect of differential uptake of components by kerogen (kerogen prefers and sorbs polars and aromatics more than saturates, leading to splitting of oil into a sorbed and a free phase) and confinement in nano pores. Test-tube swelling, TGA, and DSC experiments were also performed on pyridine(polar-aromatic)-swelled kerogen. The combined and individual contributions from the two effects (the effect of confinement and differential uptake of hydrocarbon components) on properties of liquid in contact with kerogen, are studied in this work. Molecular Dynamics (MD) simulations revealed the variation in the swelling of type II kerogen in the presence of same amount of different liquids (differential swelling of kerogen).
Highlights
Figure 1. van Krevelen diagram showing the four types of kerogen and how their elemental compositions change as they mature
The H/C and O/C ratios of kerogen sample used in experiments are 1.46 and 0.07, respectively based on the elemental composition of kerogen isolated from Mahogany zone, Green River Formation in a previous work[24]
The dynamic light scattering (DLS) experiments performed in this study showed a considerable swelling in kerogen
Summary
Figure 1. van Krevelen diagram showing the four types of kerogen and how their elemental compositions change as they mature. The effect of swelling of kerogen is modeled for Eagle Ford shale and oil in a recently published article[12] by the authors, the current work goes a step beyond to experimentally prove this effect This effect is different from the previously well-studied[13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20,21,22] effect of confinement of fluids residing in the nano pores of the kerogen, on their PVT properties. The fluid thermodynamic properties of both, confined free oil in nano pore and sorbed oil in shales are different than the bulk oil due to the effect of confinement and swelling of kerogen, respectively It is, important to calculate in-situ PVT properties of oil in shales taking into account the two effects in order to predict correct volumes and rates of recovery. Dynamic Light Scattering (DLS) experiments performed on kerogen samples before and after swelling with decane provided a separate independent measurement of the swelling ratio
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