Structure of fossil-fuel source rocks is finally decoded
The fossil fuels that provide much of the world’s energy orginate in a type of rock known as kerogen, and the potential for recovering these fuels depends crucially on the size and connectedness of the rocks’ internal pore spaces. Now, for the first time, a team of researchers at MIT and elsewhere has captured three-dimensional images of kerogen’s internal structure, with a level of detail more than 50 times greater than has been previously achieved. These images should allow more accurate predictions of how much oil or gas can be recovered from any given formation. This wouldn’t change the capability for recovering these fuels, but it could, for example, lead to better estimates of the recoverable reserves of natural gas, which is seen as an important transition fuel as the world tries to curb the use of coal and oil. The findings are reported this week in the Proceedings of the National...