Abstract
The Shengli River–Changshe Mountain oil shale zone represents a potentially large marine oil shale resource in China. With the aim of better understanding the geochemistry of trace elements in marine oil shale and its combustion residues, 40 raw samples, 27 oil shale combustion residues and 29 selected minerals from Changliang Mountain oil shale are studied for geochemical analyses. The contents of Se, Cd, Mo, As, Cs, Pb, Sr and U in the oil shale samples are enriched from 1.47 to 33.91 times as compared with the Clarke values, whereas the concentrations of other elements are slightly higher/lower than the respective worldwide means. The most enriched elements in oil shale combustion residues are Se, Cd, Mo, As and U with enrichment values from 4.78 to 50.92. Trace elements with high volatile behaviour such as As, Co, Ni, Sc, Sn and V occur predominantly in organic matter and/or sulphides. Other non-volatile or slightly volatile trace elements (e.g., Be, Bi, Cs, Cu, Ga, Hf, Li, Nb, Rb, Ta, Th, W, Zr and REEs) may occur mainly in original and relatively refractory minerals in raw oil shale. The potentially hazardous trace elements in Changliang Mountain oil shale include As, Cd, Mo and Se. Arsenic and Se are controlled mainly by Fe-bearing minerals (probably pyrite) in Changliang Mountain oil shale. Cadmium is present mainly in dolomite, while Mo occurs mainly in organic matter.
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Acknowledgments
This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 41172098, 40972087, 40702020), the Sichuan Youth Science & Technology Foundation (No. 09ZQ026-006), and the National Oil and Gas Special Project (No.XQ-2009-01).
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Supplementary Table 1: Concentrations of trace elements in raw samples from Changliang Mountain oil shale (unit in μg/g). Supplementary Table 2: Concentrations of trace elements in oil shale combustion residues (unit in μg/g). Supplementary Table 3: Concentrations of trace elements in isolated minerals studied (unit in μg/g). (DOC 666 kb)
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Fu, X., Wang, J., Zeng, Y. et al. Trace elements and their behaviour during the combustion of marine oil shale from Changliang Mountain, northern Tibet, China. Environ Earth Sci 70, 1125–1134 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12665-012-2199-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12665-012-2199-5