Hydrocarbon generation reaction kinetics study on supercritical water conversion of centimeter sized medium and low maturity organic-rich shale

Accurate prediction of the composition of pyrolysis products is the prerequisite for achieving directional regulation of organic-rich shale pyrolysis and conversion products. In this paper, the classical segmented pyrolysis kinetics model and a new refined pyrolysis kinetics model were used to forecast the composition distribution of hydrocarbon generation products co-heated by supercritical water and medium and low maturity organic-rich shale. The prediction accuracy of the two reaction kinetics models for the composition of pyrolysis products of organic-rich shale was compared. The reaction path of hydrocarbon generation in centimeter sized organic-rich shale under the action of supercritical water was identified. The results show that the prediction accuracy of the classical segmented pyrolysis kinetics model was poor at the initial stage of the reaction, and gradually increased with increasing time. The prediction error can reach less than 25% when the reaction time was 12 h. The new refined model of reaction kinetics established is better than the classical reaction kinetics model in predicting the product distribution of pyrolysis oil and gas, and its prediction error is less than 14% in this paper. The reaction paths of hydrocarbon generation in centimeter sized organic-rich shale under supercritical water conversion mainly include organic-rich shale directly generates asphaltene and saturated hydrocarbon, asphaltene pyrolysis generates saturated hydrocarbon, aromatic hydrocarbon and resin, saturated hydrocarbon, aromatic hydrocarbon and resin polymerization generates asphaltene, and saturated hydrocarbon, resin and asphaltene generates gas. The reason for the difference of centimeter sized and millimeter sized medium and low maturity organic-rich shales hydrocarbon generation in supercritical water is that the increase of shale size promotes the reaction path of polymerization of saturated hydrocarbon and aromatic hydrocarbon to asphaltene.