Pyrolysis-gas chromatography of asphaltenes and kerogens from source rocks and coals—A comparative structural study

Retardation of oil cracking to gas and pressure induced combination reactions to account for viscous oil in deep petroleum basins: Evidence from oil and n-hexadecane pyrolysis at water pressures up to 900 bar

“…The asphaltene content of the bitumen is significantly higher than the 900 bar oil, and the unresolved complex mixture more pronounced. Solli and Leplat (1986), Jones et al (1988), andSofer (1988) all reported that alkanes were generated by asphaltene hydrous pyrolysis by cracking, which is in contrast to the asphaltene formation by high pressure pyrolysis observed in this study. We believe that combination reactions which increased the asphaltene content and higher molecular weight n-alkanes of the 500 and 900 bar oils and the formation of C 18 -C 31 straight and branched alkanes for n-hexadecane pyrolysis at 500 and 900 bar is also responsible for the high asphaltene content of the GOM bitumen.…”

Flash pyrolysis of kerogens from algal rich oil shales from the Eocene Huadian Formation, NE China

“…Intact kerogens and asphaltenes, are intractable to many analytical methods, but can be degraded by chemical or thermal methods (Horsfield and Douglas, 1980;Largeau et al, 1986;Grice et al, 2003). Analytical pyrolysis followed by GC-MS analysis has been widely applied to characterize the hydrocarbon composition of kerogens and asphaltenes and the thermally generated molecules are often correlated with their corresponding free hydrocarbon or bitumen fractions isolated by solvent extractions (e.g., Larter et al, 1979;Solli and Leplat, 1986;Derenne et al, 1988Derenne et al, , 1997Greenwood et al, 1998Greenwood et al, , 2000Liao et al, 2012;Tulipani et al, 2013;Zhang et al, 2014). Flash pyrolysis, in which very high amounts of thermal energy are applied to induce extensive fragmentation of macromolecular organic matter, has proven to be a rapid and simple method for structural characterization of kerogens often yielding high abundances of products amenable to GC-MS detection that are structurally representative of the whole fraction (Larter and Horsfield, 1993).…”

Identification and geochemical significance of polarized macromolecular compounds in lacustrine and marine oils

“…Saturated and aromatic hydrocarbon fractions were analyzed by GC-MS, but the nonhydrocarbons and asphaltenes could not be analyzed for strong polarity and high molecular weights. Thermal cracking of asphaltenes are often considered to further dig out the underlying geochemical information (Solli and Leplat, 1986;Ganz and Kalkreuth, 1987;Trejo et al, 2007).…”