Thermal simulation experiment on the hydrocarbon regeneration of marine carbonate source rock

Abstract

Hydrocarbon regeneration of marine carbonate source rock was simulated with thermal experiments in a laboratory. The results reveal that hydrocarbon regeneration does not simply continue the primary hydrocarbon generation process, and that, for marine carbonate source rock, discontinuous hydrocarbon generation differs greatly from the continuous generation. Several different features of hydrocarbon regeneration were observed in the experiments. First, the liquid hydrocarbon generation peak was always observed no matter what the initial maturity of the sample was. Moreover, the maturity and the liquid hydrocarbon yield corresponding to the peak varied with the sample’s initial maturity. Second, the hydrocarbon regeneration started earlier than the continuous one. In the experiments, the hydrocarbon could be re-generated when the sample maturity did not rise to any great extent. Third, the accumulative hydrocarbon-generating quantity during discontinuous generation was always more than that during continuous generation. And the hydrocarbon-generating quantity varied with the discontinuous generation history. Chemical kinetic analysis suggests that discontinuous hydrocarbon generation should not only be explained by the parallel reaction mechanism but also by the consecutive reaction mechanism which has been ignored in the traditional chemical kinetic model for continuous hydrocarbon generation.