The kinetic characteristics of crude oil pyrolysis experiments form the basis for quantitative analysis of shale oil content in Rock-Eval pyrolysis experiments. To study the thermal evaporation kinetics of crude oil in shale, pyrolysis experiments of whole source rock sample and post-extracted sample were carried out on Rock-Eval 6 with the heating rates of 5, 15 and 25°C min−1, respectively. The thermal evaporation of crude oil can be described using a parallel first-order reaction model. A simple method for calculating the kinetic characteristics of the thermal evaporation of extracted crude oil is proposed.

The temperature of maximum pyrolysis yield (known as Tmax) can be used to determine the level of thermal alteration in sedimentary organic matter; higher Tmax values represent higher thermal alteration. Tmax is commonly measured on petroleum source rocks or similar sediments with high organic carbon contents. It would be desirable to measure the Tmax of volcanic sediments because they can have complex patterns of thermal alteration. However, volcanic sediments often have low total organic carbon contents and consequently are susceptible to analytical interferences. Despite this, it can be shown that meaningful Tmax measurements can still be made in sediment with organic carbon contents as low as 0.2% and that interference caused by bitumen or ionizable salts can be mitigated by solvent extraction and rinsing with water. Thus, it is reasonable to use temperature programmed pyrolysis to assess levels of thermal alteration in even low total organic carbon volcanoclastic sediments.