There is plenty of evidence implicit in the published geochemical work that prolonged solvent extraction (especially aiming to remove oil based mud contaminants) leads to reduced pseudo maturity (e.g., vitrinite reflectance, pyrolysis Tmax).
A remedy for this may be simply conducting thermovaporization of the powdered source rock sample; instead of solvent extraction.
Dear Mr. Mamaqani. I definitely agree that solvent extraction for removal of drilling contaminations will certainly affect pyrolysis parameters like S1 (free hydrocarbons) and S2 (pyrolyzable hydrocarbons. NO doubt.
Therefore in my question and quest I specifically mentioned vitrinite reflectance and pyrolysis Tmax. So we are investigating the possibility of solvent extraction on maturity determination.
In fact what I started to think about effect of solvent on kerogen is somehow similar to coal swelling when exposed to particular solvents. Prolonged solvent extraction may lead to sorption of the solvent by the macromolecular network of the kerogen which is a entangled structure. If the solvent is sorbed into this structure then it cannot be removed by simple oven-heating of the solven-extracted powder. It follows then that this phenomenon will lead to serious effects on maturity determinations by geochemical or optical means.
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