The Rock-Eval Method

Book excerpt: This book presents the Rock-Eval® method, which was invented in France in the 1970s and is used by the oil industry worldwide to characterize source rocks and reservoir rocks as well as their petroleum potential. Rock Eval® has also spread to other fields of application, including soil science, paleoceanography, paleoclimatology, environmental science (i.e. monitoring pollution remediation), material chemistry (i.e. carbonates, microplastics) and many others. The Rock-Eval Method presents a collection of chapters reviewing this method and its fields of application, and examines its possible developments. The authors are from either the academic or applied sector and have all contributed to the development of the Rock Eval® apparatus and method. This instrument, which lies somewhere between a chromatographic, a thermal and an elemental analyzer, is now evolving to be an analytical platform, on which new fields of applications can be tested in the future.