Huizhou Movement and its significance in Pearl River Mouth Basin, China

The Huizhou Movement refers to the Middle Eocene tectonic transition from the early to the late Wenchang Rifting stage(about 43 Ma ago) in the Pearl River Mouth Basin. Based on seismic reflection, drilling, logging and geological data, fault characteristic analysis, denudation thickness recovery, magmatism statistics, regional tectonic dynamics comparison and other methods are used to reveal the characteristics, properties and dynamic mechanism of the Huizhou Movement. The Huizhou Movement mainly shows the North-South transition of rifting and the migration along the faults, basement uplift, magmatic diapir and stratigraphic denudation. It is believed that the Huizhou Movement is a comprehensive reflection of plate interaction and lithospheric thinning process in the Pearl River Mouth Basin, which is closely related to the transition of lithosphere from initial rifting to rapid thinning, the India-Eurasia hard collision and the change of subduction direction of the Pacific plate. The Huizhou Movement has significant influence and control on the Paleogene hydrocarbon-generating sags and the development of hydrocarbon source rocks, sedimentary system and deep high-quality reservoir, hydrocarbon migration and accumulation in the Pearl River Mouth Basin.

A novel purification technique for noble gas isotope analyses of authigenic minerals

Noble and active gases are released from geological samples during gas extraction for noble gas isotope analyses. The active gases should be removed before inletting to mass spectrometers for the analyses. The normal noble gas preparation systems can clean up most geological samples. However, authigenic minerals from sedimentary rocks in oil/gas fields contain organic matter, which cannot be cleaned up by the normal preparation systems and thus influence the noble gas analyses. We introduce a novel gas purification system （PRC patent No. ZL201320117751.2）, which includes several reversible purification pumps with different absorbing and degassing temperatures. It can well clean up water steam, carbon dioxide and organic gas- es. Mica minerals are often used for 40Ar/39Ar dating. A muscovite sample （2082MS） which could not be cleaned up by the normal preparation system with two SAES NP10 getters, becomes the test sample for a comparative experiment in this study. The experiment is assigned into 4 sections with the organic gas removal system （OGRS） ＂Closed/Opened＂ in turn. When the OGRS is closed only with two NP10 getters for purification, the 40At intensities increase in curves with inlet time because of impurities, the 40Ar/39Ar dating results yield age errors about ＋2%-±1% （20-）. When the OGRS is opened for purification, in contrast, the 40Ar intensities decrease linearly with inlet time. This indicates that the gases have been cleaned up effectively, and the 40Ar/39Ar results yield ages with errors in ±0.4%. The OGRS is very helpful to obtain high-quality analysis data.