Over the past decade interest in shale properties has increased due to the commercial success of gas shale plays. Despite their commercial importance, porosity measurement from gas shale samples is still challenging due to their extremely low permeability and complex pore structure. This leads to...
We measured Mercury Injection Capillary Pressure (MICP) profiles on tight shale samples with a variety of sample sizes. The goal was to optimize the rock preparation and data reduction workflow for determining the storage properties of the rock, particularly porosity, from MICP measurements. The rock material...
Dean-Stark water saturation data can provide an indication of the appropriate Archie parameters to use in early log analysis prior to obtaining centrifuge or porous plate primary drainage capillary pressure and electrical property data. But this is only true if the core water saturation is...
The nature of component layers of mixed-layer illite-smectite and their possible evolution in the course of illitization have been debated since the 1960s. The present study is a new attempt to solve these problems, using samples collected from diverse geological formations around the world. ...
Layer charge (LC) is a fundamental property of smectite but its measurement remains challenging and tedious to apply on a high-throughput basis. The present study demonstrates that the position of a sharp, high-energy O-D stretching band of adsorbed D2O (vO-D, at ~2686-2700 cm-1 ), determined...
Surface characteristics of sedimentary opal-A and -CT were investigated for a large collection of samples from the Monterey Formation, California, based on the bulk rock mineral and chemical analysis, cation exchange capacity (CEC), and water content. Two approaches were used: (1) modeling bulk CEC and...
Cation exchange capacity (CEC) is among most important properties of sedimentary rocks, broadly applied in various means of geosciences research and industry. The organic matter (OM) in ancient black shales is thought to be a negligible source of cation exchange capacity (CEC), due to the...
The increasing exploration and exploitation of hydrocarbon resources hosted by oil and gas shales demands the correct measurement of certain properties of sedimentary rocks rich in organic matter (OM). Two essential properties of OM-rich shales, the total specific surface area (TSSA) and cation exchange capacity...
The illitization reaction in a thick K-bentonite bed located in upper Cretaceous marine shale in the Montana disturbed belt was studied by X-ray diffraction, chemical analysis, and thermal gravimetric analysis. Modeling of the experimental XRD patterns from oriented clay specimens in air-dried and glycolated states...
Samples from different depths in the Oligocene Frio formation (offshore Gulf of Mexico) were studied by X-ray diffraction (XRD), thermal analyses, and scanning electron microscopy. The experimental XRD patterns recorded from oriented and ethylene glycol (EG) solvated clay fractions of the samples were similar to...