Can We Make Oil In A Lab

Have you ever considered can we make oil in a lab? A scene recently seen by a reporter from Science and Technology Daily in the stratigraphic paleontology laboratory of Sinopec Shengli Oilfield Exploration and Development Research Institute. Wang Weiqing is the head of the laboratory. He was operating a 100,000x electron microscope lens on a few tens of square microns of rock sample, and its internal structure was clearly visible. Wang Weiqing said, "The white one is carbonate rock and the black one is mudstone, interspersed with many pores and cracks, as thin as hair, in which the oil that geologists have been thinking about day and night is contained." 

Scientists study can we make oil in a lab. On November 2, 2021, a heavy news from Sinopec's Shengli Oilfield made the nation excited - the field made a strategic breakthrough in shale oil exploration and development, and the first batch of forecasted geological reserves of 458 million tons of oil were reported, and the conditions for full exploration and development were available.

The reporter learned that behind the above strategic breakthroughs, researchers are credited with breakthroughs in basic research and strategic equipment.

　　The diameter of a hair is generally around 0.03mm. The shale oil in Shengli Oilfield is hidden in the hair-thin pores, which means that researchers need to find the "snail's nest" of shale oil from such pores.

　　This is an extremely challenging task. The lab's SEM staff, Jiejie Yu, told reporters that selecting a part of the sample to observe is like pinpointing a ping-pong ball in a soccer field. To find this "ping pong ball", the first step is to produce a qualified sample.

Some experiments have argued can we make oil in a lab. Scanning electron microscopy is very demanding for rock samples, and shale cores are very difficult, with many thin and fragile layers, so the manual processing of samples requires extra strength and skill. First, they have to make the shale into small 1 cm square pieces by hand, and then repeatedly polish it with sandpaper until the cut surface is smooth under the ordinary microscope, and then continue polishing with an argon ion polisher. The above process is often repeated dozens of times, until the mirror effect is achieved, in order to use the scanning electron microscope for observation. This self-developed electron microscope is unusual, and can be focused to the nanometer level to visually reflect the reservoir space, composition characteristics, and mineral architecture of shale oil.

Obtaining a typically meaningful picture usually requires selecting from hundreds or even thousands of images. This requires researchers to target quickly.

The reporter learned that the researchers in the above laboratory have mastered the method of unconventional sample electron microscopy analysis through key technology research, optimized the test parameters process, innovated the workflow, focused on improving the quality of electron microscopy analysis, broke through the technical difficulties of low vacuum observation of oil-bearing samples, high-precision imaging of argon ion polishing, fine identification of backscattered sample composition, and mastered the method of unconventional sample electron microscopy analysis, provided key information for the evaluation of unconventional reservoirs in oil fields, and boosted the oil fields The breakthrough of shale oil and tight oil exploration.

　　The nano-scale electron microscope image has become the "golden key" to unlock the microcosm of unconventional reservoirs. With the excellent analysis technology and quality, Shengli Oilfield E&P Research Institute has set the industry standard for shale oil electron microscopy analysis and become the industry benchmark. So, can we make oil in a lab? In addition to shale oil, SEM analysis technology also plays a role in identifying good reservoirs in dense sandstone, avoiding oil and gas formation damage and transforming low-producing reservoirs.

　　It is understood that the Shengli Oilfield E&P Research Institute is developing a more accurate focused ion beam scanning electron microscope analysis technology to simulate and find the flow and path of shale oil. By then, the glass marbles on the soccer field will no longer be hard to find, and there will be new answers to the difficult questions of how crude oil flows out of the formation in unconventional reservoirs.