Sulphur, Organic Carbon, Organic Nitrogen, Iron Relationships and Diagenesis of Black Shales in Tenom and Ranau Regions , West Sabah, Malaysia.
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.37375/sjfssu.v5i1.3039Keywords:
anoxic environment, carbonaceous sediments, Kerogen, pyrite framboids, Sulfur,Abstract
The sediments investigated in this paper constitute part of the Temburong and Trusmadi formations outcropping in the Tenom and Ranau area located in the Western part of Sabah state, Malaysia. The aims of this paper were to analyzed and determine the various forms of (organic and inorganic sulphur), organic carbon, organic nitrogen, iron, total sulphur, and pyrite sulphur which was determined in two organic fractions (bitumen and kerogen) as well as in the total rock of these carbonaceous sediments, and also to assess the relationships between C, S, and N content in the early stage of microbial diagenesis of the studied black shales. The bulk geochemistry concentration, especially the C-S relationships, showed the important role of reactive iron in controlling the extent of pyrite formation. The high values of the degree of pyritization (DOP) which ranges from 0.99 to 1.0 suggested that iron has been exhausted by pyrite formation (i.e. iron- limited conditions) in all the study samples. The reduced sulphur in these study samples increases with burial depth and time. This pattern suggested the continuous diagenetic addition of reduced sulphur under conditions where the time and depth of burial are related. Kerogen appears to be uniform in N and S content, but both components vary in bitumen. N contents in bitumen show no covariance with any other parameters, but bitumen always has a much higher C/N ratio than kerogen. The presence of pyrite framboids is an additional evidence for poorly oxygenated (anoxic) bottom waters depositional environment.
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