Procedure Title: KINETICS
Instrumentation: Rock-Eval 6 (RE-6)
Theory of Operation:
- Kinetics refers to the cracking or breakdown of kerogen molecules by overcoming the barrier of the Activation Energy (Ea). Each kerogen type has its own activation energy range, depending on how many different types of organic matter are contributing to the kerogen composition and according to its generated hydrocarbons, which is related to its maturity.
- Kinetics is measured through thermal pyrolysis by heating the sample in an inert atmosphere at a specific heating rate where the kerogen decomposes by bond cleavage and releases hydrocarbons that are detected in bulk by Flame Ionization Detector (FID).
- This method measures activation energy distribution versus the relative abundance of each activation energy.
- There are two ways for measuring kinetics :
A) Personalized Kinetics:
- Analyzed at 1 heating rate.
- Fixed (A) Factor, according to Waples (2000), values of Arrhenius factor (A) are constrained by thermodynamics to be about 1014 sec-1- B) Conventional Kinetics: - Analyzed at 3 or more heating rates. - Free (A) Factor.
Analytical Procedure:
The pre-extracted rock, cleaned of obvious contaminants, is pulverized.
Weigh the sample in a Rock-Eval crucible and place it on the RE-6 carousel.
Select the method and the heating rate. Record the sample weight by inputting it in the RE-6 software.
Once the analysis is completed, the sample is processed using kinetics software (Kinetics 05 or ORFA).