Elemental quantitation and evaluation of hydrocarbon in shale using fiber-optic laser induced breakdown spectroscopy

To meet the demands of in situ analysis, a fiber-optic laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (FO-LIBS) system was established to predict the elemental concentrations and pyrolytic parameters. The key parameters, including pulse energy, gate delay, type of surrounding gas, and flow rate of gas, were optimized to improve the signal-to-noise ratio of the spectral lines, and the evolution characteristics of the plasma morphology in different gas atmospheres were investigated. Under the optimized experimental conditions, C, H, Si, Ca, Fe, and Mg were calibrated using pellet samples based on partial least squares regression, and the average relative prediction error of the natural samples was lower than 10%. In addition, the support vector regression method was utilized to predict pyrolytic parameters such as TOC, Pg, and T_max with the R² of all calibration curves being higher than 0.97. The abundance and generation potential of hydrocarbons were evaluated using the predicted TOC and Pg, and T_max could contribute to the thermal maturity of the kerogen.