Characterising
Gas
Shales by Laboraotry Adsorption and Field Desorption Analyses
Bustin, R. Marc
University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC
Gas
shales as typically defined, include significant reservoir
gas
in the sorbed state. Additionally almost all shales have intergranular and to A lesser extent fracture porosity commonly in the range of 1-10% that is available to free (non-sorbed). In order to better understand the
gas
storage capacity of shales and try to resolve some of the discrepancies in early published data, a field, laboratory and numerical study was undertaken of selected
gas
shales and potential
gas
shales.
In
gas
shales, mass flow of the free
gas
occurs at similar rates to diffusion because of the low permeability (micro-darcy range) and high tortusity. Thus assessing
gas
-in-place of
gas
shales using typical canister desorption techniques results in erroneous data due to co-mingling of free and sorbed
gas
. Additionally, escape of free
gas
from the
shale
retards diffusion of the sorbed
gas
. Typical in place analytical procedures treat all the
gas
captured during canister testing as sorbed
gas
and hence the sorbed
gas
component is markedly over estimated. Adding the free
gas
capacity calculated from porosity and water saturation measurements to the erroneous sorbed
gas
measurements for volumetric
gas
in place calculations results in over estimation of
gas
-in-place.
An additional problem replete in the early published data is the use of finely milled
gas
shale
samples for adsorption capacity analyses by the adsorption isotherm technique. Our experimental results show that milling
shale
to micrometre sized particles prior to analyses results in an artificially high sorption capacities as measured by adsorption isotherms. Such results are readily attributable to the exponential increase in surface area with particle size reduction. This problem is not as evident with coal because of the higher internal surface area of coal. Our data show that most deeply buried
gas
shales hold more
gas
in the free
gas
state than sorbed state.