Research paperNanoscale pore structure and fractal characteristics of a marine-continental transitional shale: A case study from the lower Permian Shanxi Shale in the southeastern Ordos Basin, China

- Shanxi Shale possesses low pore volume, surface area and exhibit unimodal pore-size distribution.
- Clay-hosted pores dominate the pore system of Shanxi Shale and the organic pores are poorly developed.
- I/S together with illite jointly contribute mostly to the surface area and pore volume of Shanxi Shale.
- Shanxi Shale has low values of pore surface and pore structure fractal dimensions compared with the marine shales.

Shale samples collected from seven wells in the southeastern Ordos Basin were tested to investigate quantitatively the pore structure and fractal characteristics of the Lower Permian Shanxi Shale, which was deposited in a marine-continental transitional (hereinafter referred to as the transitional) environment. Low-pressure nitrogen adsorption data show that the Shanxi Shale exhibits considerably much lower surface area (SA) and pore volume (PV) in the range of 0.6-1.3 m2/g and 0.25-0.9 ml/100 g, respectively. Type III kerogen abundant in the transitional Shanxi Shale were observed to be poorly developed in the organic pores in spite of being highly mature, which resulted in a small contribution of organic matter (OM) to the SA and PV. Instead, I/S (illite-smectite mixed clay) together with illite jointly contributed mostly to the SA and PV as a result of the large amount of inter-layer pores associated with them, which were evident in broad-ion-beam (BIB) imaging and statistical analysis. Additionally, the Shanxi Shale has fractal geometries of both pore surface and pore structure, with the pore surface fractal dimension (D1) ranging from 2.16 to 2.42 and the pore structure fractal dimension (D2) ranging from 2.49 to 2.68, respectively. The D1 values denote a pore surface irregularity increase with an increase in I/S and illite content attributed to their more irregular pore surface compared with other mineralogical compositions and OM. The fractal dimension D2 characterizing the pore structure complexity is closely related to the pore arrangement and connectivity, and I/S and illite decrease the D2 when their contents increase due to the incremental ordering degree and connectivity of I/S- or illite-hosted pores. Meanwhile, other shale constituents (including kaolinite, chlorite, and OM) that possess few pores can significantly increase the pore structure complexity by way of pore-blocking.