4.4.3. Kerogen Type

Simulations of kerogen maturation can only be as good as the kinetic parameters used in the model. The parameters are derived from laboratory experiments, and are assumed to be applicable to geological processes although the scales are different by orders of magnitude. Thus the uncertainty in the calculated maturity can be significant.

As mentioned above, the maturation modeling in our study assumes kerogen type II, which is considered to be the most abundant among marine shales [39]. Kerogen degradation is temperature dependent following the Arrhenius law (e.g., [39,63]). Due to kerogen types having different activation energies, reaction rates of other kerogen types in the models presented here, could result in different maturity effects in the modeled scenarios.
