Abstract
The author has performed isothermal pyrolyses of kerogen at low temperature (_??_300°C) which are accompanied with the generation of bitumen. Kerogen samples were isolated by acid treatment from the mudstones which are accepted as the most excellent source rocks of the Tertiary in Japan. The thermal products were measured by the method of conventional organic analysis of source rocks.
The author made reaction models for the generation of the products. Kinetic parameters in the models were calculated by the use of multiple regression analysis of the pyrolysis data.
The results are as follows: (1) Thermal decomposition of kerogen consists of two types of process. One is that which takes part in the formation of petroleum-like components, and the other is that which does not have relation to the generation of petroleum. (2) Generations of petroleum-like components are not simple 1st order reaction, but are well simulated with the models which consist of several 1st order reactions, parallel and independent. (3) Concerning the 1st order reaction plots, that of heavy hydrocarbons (HC) shows more linear pattern in comparison with those of total organic extract (TOE) and O-N-S compounds+HC (ONS'). These factsshow that the process of the generation of HC is simpler than those of TOE and ONS'. (4) The energy levels which correspond to modes of the distributions of product forming potentials for HC, ONS'and TOE become higher in the order named. (5) It seems that quantities of gaseous and liquid products have relation to the petroleum forming potential. (6) The ratio of the quantity of sample [represented by the quantity of organic carbon (Corg)] to the volume of reaction container (VRc) have an affect to some extent upon the generation of thermal decomposed products both in qualitative and in quantive terms. (To be continued)
