Because of commodity pricing, the production from organic rich shales such as Barnett, Woodford, Eagle Ford and Marcellus has shifted significantly away from the dry natural gas window into the more profitable condensate and liquid hydrocarbon (oil) windows. The current production practices, however, are based mainly on field experience of the operators and far from being a methodological approach for an optimized production. This is mainly due to the fact that our understanding of condensation, capillarity and multi-phase flow dynamics in shale reservoirs is at an infancy stage. It is currently not known, for example, if and where the condensation takes place in the reservoir, and what is the impact of the shale matrix on the this phenomenon. In this paper we argue that answering these questions using conventional laboratory measurement techniques is a difficult task because the fluid properties and the phase behavior of the hydrocarbons could be influenced by the nanoporous nature of these rocks. Monte Carlo simulations are conducted to investigate pure hydrocarbon vapor-liquid coexistence and critical properties under confinement. The results show a pore size dependence of these thermo-physical properties. Phase diagrams generated using ternary (C1, C4, and C8) mixtures under reservoir conditions show a two-phase envelop shift due to pore size dependence. We show the importance of the results performing a shale gas in-place calculation using Ambrose's equation where the equation of state parameters, z-factor, gas formation volume factor, and adsorbed-phase density values are all adjusted for a range of effective pore size. The corrections on the free and the sorbed gas in-place estimates are significant. Furthermore, we predicted reserves from wet gas, condensate, and volatile oil reservoirs using compositional flow simulation. It is shown that the liquid production from nanoporous rocks is enhanced due to a significant decrease in the bubble point and dew point pressures.

Li–air batteries are a promising alternative to Li-ion batteries as they theoretically provide the highest possible specific energy density. Mainly, Li2O2 (lithium peroxide) and to a lesser extent, Li2O (lithium oxide) are assumed to be the discharge products of these batteries formed with the soluble LiO2 (lithium superoxide) considered to be an intermediate product. Bulk Li2O2 is an electronic insulator, and the precipitation of this compound on the cathode is thought to be the main limiting factor in achieving high capacities in lithium–oxygen cells. For the most promising electrolytes including solvents with high donor numbers, microscopy observations frequently reveal crystallite morphologies of Li2O2 compounds, rather than uniform layers covering the electrode surface. The precise morphologies of Li2O and Li2O2 particles, and their effect and their extent of contact with the electrode, which may all affect the capacity and rechargeability, however, remain largely undetermined. Here, we address the stability of various Li2O and Li2O2 surfaces and consequently, their crystallite morphologies using density functional theory calculations and ab initio thermodynamics. In contrast to previous studies, we also consider high-index surface terminations, which exhibit surprisingly low surface energies. We carefully analyze the reasons for the stability of these high-index surfaces, which also prominently influence the equilibrium shape of the particles, at least for Li2O2, and discuss the consequences for the observed morphology of the reaction products.

Because of commodity pricing, the production from organic rich shales such as Barnett, Woodford, Eagle Ford and Marcellus has shifted significantly away from the dry natural gas window into the more profitable condensate and liquid hydrocarbon (oil) windows. The current production practices, however, are based mainly on field experience of the operators and far from being a methodological approach for an optimized production. This is mainly due to the fact that our understanding of condensation, capillarity and multi-phase flow dynamics in shale reservoirs is at an infancy stage. It is currently not known, for example, if and where the condensation takes place in the reservoir, and what is the impact of the shale matrix on the this phenomenon. In this paper we argue that answering these questions using conventional laboratory measurement techniques is a difficult task because the fluid properties and the phase behavior of the hydrocarbons could be influenced by the nanoporous nature of these rocks.Monte Carlo simulations are conducted to investigate pure hydrocarbon vapor-liquid coexistence and critical properties under confinement. The results show a pore size dependence of these thermo-physical properties. Phase diagrams generated using ternary (C 1 , C 4 , and C 8 ) mixtures under reservoir conditions show a two-phase envelop shift due to pore size dependence. We show the importance of the results performing a shale gas inplace calculation using Ambrose's equation where the equation of state parameters, z-factor, gas formation volume factor, and adsorbed-phase density values are all adjusted for a range of effective pore size. The corrections on the free and the sorbed gas in-place estimates are significant. Furthermore, we predicted reserves from wet gas, condensate, and volatile oil reservoirs using compositional flow simulation. It is shown that the liquid production from nanoporous rocks is enhanced due to a significant decrease in the bubble point and dew point pressures.

Repeated thermal cycling by using an organic precursor is shown to be a successful technique for growing graphene on metal substrates.