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Structural characterization of marine nano-quartz in chalk and flint from North Sea Tertiary chalk reservoirs for oil and gas

  • Victor A. Drits EMAIL logo , J⊘rgen Skibsted , Olga V. Dorzhieva , Anthony E. Fallick and Holger Lindgreen
Published/Copyright: July 19, 2017
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American Mineralogist
From the journal American Mineralogist Volume 102 Issue 7

Abstract

A new type of quartz, a nano-quartz consisting of spherical particles, is assumed to have formed by crystallization in the sea during sedimentation of the chalk in the North Sea and to have remained largely intact during burial diagenesis. The presence and nature of this nano-quartz have not been identified until recently, despite the fact that this quartz is the type present in the Upper Cretaceous-Danian chalk reservoir for oil and gas in the North Sea, both in the flint and as dispersed particles.In the present work detailed structural analysis of the nano-quartz has been carried out by X-ray diffraction, solid-state 29Si and 27Al MAS NMR, thermal analysis including water release, IR-absorption spectroscopy, and elemental analysis supplemented with analysis of oxygen isotope composition. It is found that IVAl substitutes for Si and that VIAl probably is bonded to hydroxyls on the particle surface of the nano-quartz structures. The charge compensation of tetrahedral Al3+, in addition to its conventional way of compensation by formation of the local structural arrangement [AlO4/M+]° defects (M+ = H+, Na, K, Li), can occur at the expense of the OH- group coordinating one of the four tetrahedral Si4+ nearest to the Al3+ tetrahedron. The most significant feature of the North Sea nano-quartz deduced in the present investigation is the presence of [4H]Si defects, also known as hydrogarnet defects. This defect is present in up to 5% of the tetrahedral sites, whereas Al3+ occupies less than 1% of the tetrahedral sites. Two types of distribution of the [4H]Si defects were determined. In one of them the [4H] Si defects aggregates parallel to the (0001) plane to form platelets as cracks with hydroxylated surfaces on both sides. The second type of [4H]Si defect occurs in the form of isolated tetrahedral vacant sites.The formation of the aggregated [4H]Si platelets lying in the (0001) plane mostly increases the c parameters of the structure, whereas the isolated [4H]Si defects and K+Na impurities contribute to increasing the a parameters.

The remarkable correlation of the positional distribution of the samples revealed from the relationships between a and c parameters and between amount of OH- groups responsible for formation of [4H]Si defects and a and c parameters can be considered as evidence for the validity of the structural formulas and, in general, of the main structural features of the studied samples. The unusually high content of [4H]Si defects in the nano-quartz samples may be related to their formation by precipitation in waters of the Danish North Sea.

Keywords: Nano-quartz structure; nano-quartz formation; hydrogarnet defects; X-ray diffraction; 27Al and 29Si MAS NMR; IR spectroscopy, thermal water release; δ18O isotope chemistry; elemental analysis

Special collection papers can be found online at http://www.minsocam.org/MSA/AmMin/special-collections.html.

Acknowledgments

We are grateful to E.V. Pokrovskaya for her help in the manuscript preparation. J. Skibsted acknowledges the Carlsberg Foundation for an equipment grant. SUERC is supported by a Consortium of Scottish Universities. V.A. Drits and O. Dorzhieva acknowledge the support of budget project no. 0135-2016-0010.

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Received: 2016-10-21
Accepted: 2017-3-23
Published Online: 2017-7-19
Published in Print: 2017-7-26

© 2017 by Walter de Gruyter Berlin/Boston

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https://doi.org/10.2138/am-2017-5992
Keywords for this article
Nano-quartz structure; nano-quartz formation; hydrogarnet defects; X-ray diffraction; 27Al and 29Si MAS NMR; IR spectroscopy, thermal water release; δ18O isotope chemistry; elemental analysis

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  1. Editorial
  2. A new high JIF for American Mineralogist (by all early indications), why you shouldn’t care, and a note on values
  3. Highlights and Breakthroughs
  4. Sapphire, a not so simple gemstone
  6. Radon emanation coefficients of several minerals: How they vary with physical and mineralogical properties
  7. Actinides in geology, energy, and the environment
  8. Cabvinite, Th2F7(OH)⋅3H2O, the first natural actinide halide
  9. Special collection: apatite: a common mineral, uncommonly versatile
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  13. Special collection: Geology and geobiology of lassen volcanic national park
  14. Secondary minerals associated with Lassen fumaroles and hot springs: Implications for martian hydrothermal deposits
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