Source of nutrient substrates for microbes in deep biosphere and characteristics of biogenic gas source rock

Abstract

To understand the biogas formation in geological basins, the present work investigated the reactive organic matter in sediments of the Sanhu depression of Qaidam Basin, a prolific region of biogenic gases with a proved reserve of 300 bil steres. The ROC (reactive organic carbon) was obtained by ultrasonic extraction from sediment samples in the solution of 6 mol/L HCl and 5% K2SO4. To investigate the effect of early diagenesis, parts of the samples were heated at 80°C before extraction. The results showed that the ROC content at a constant temperature decreased with increasing burial depths, which should be attributed to the microbial consumption. For the same sample, the ROC content heated at 80°C was dramatically higher than the unheated. The increment of the ROC content for some samples was as high as 200% in the experiment. The dramatically increasing ROC by thermal action should be the major nutrient substrate for the deep biospheres in most geological basins. There is a positive correlation between the reactive organic carbon (ROC) and the traditional insoluble organic carbon (TOC), not only for its absolute content of the ROC, but also for the ‘ROC’ produced in thermal action, all of these are clearly related with TOC. These data showed that higher abundance of organic matter can contribute more to the reactive organic matter, and is more favorable to the formation of biogenic gases. In the Sanhu depression of Qaidam Basin, more than 85% of the biogenic gas reserves occur in the lower layers (K5-K13) with a relatively high abundance of organic matter. The exploration has provided further evidence that deposits with higher abundance of organic matter are effective biogas source rocks.