The effect of temperature heating on the microstructure of the Domanik oil shale porous space

Abstract

© Published under licence by IOP Publishing Ltd. As the global supply of traditional oil shrinks, the energy industry invests heavily in the unconventional energy resources, such as oil shale. One of big potential resources of oil shale that locates on the territory of Volga-Ural Basin in the East of Russian plate is Domanik. Its increasing significance led to the necessity for deeper understanding of Domanik porous space structure. The main idea of this work is to establish the changing of pore structure during the heating. As result, increasing the porosity to 3 times as a result of heating of the oil shale was established. The distribution of heated to 350° C sample demonstrated decreasing the ratio of pores with sizes 1.5-5 μm and significant increasing the ratio of pores with sizes 5-10 μm. It means that main changing of pore structure during the heating happened with organic matter pores. The increasing of the volumes of pores with sizes 10-25 μ that could be connected with generation of elongated cracks along the shale lamination. The results opens new opportunities for evaluation of maturity of organic matter based on pore structure analysis.