SEDIMENTARY ROCKS

Presented to: DR. Shohdy

OCTOBER 1, 2017
AHMED AMER MOHAMED RASHAD
Section: 1
 Rock cycle
A continuous process by which rocks are created, changed from one form to another,
destroyed, and then formed again.

Rock cycle

Under certain conditions, rocks of the upper mantle and lower crust melt, forming a hot
liquid called magma. An igneous rock forms when magma solidifies.
Rocks of all kinds decompose, or weather, at the Earths surface. Weathering breaks
rocks into smaller fragments such as gravel, sand, and clay. At the same time, rainwater
may dissolve some of the rock. Streams, wind, glaciers, and gravity then erode the
weathered particles, carry them downhill, and deposit them at lower elevations. All such
particles, formed by weathering and then eroded, transported, and deposited in layers, are
called sediment. The sand on a beach and mud on a mud flat are examples of sediment
that accumulated by these processes.
A sedimentary rock forms when sediment becomes cemented or compacted into solid rock.
When the beach sand is cemented, it becomes sandstone; the mud becomes shale.
A metamorphic rock forms when any pre-existing rock is altered by heating, increased
pressure, or tectonic deformation.
 Sedimentary Rocks
Types of sedimentary rocks:
Sedimentary rocks are broadly divided into four categories:
I. Clastic sedimentary rocks are composed of fragments of weathered rocks, called
clasts, that have been transported, deposited, and cemented together. Clastic
rocks make up more than 85 percent of all sedimentary rocks. This category
includes conglomerate, breccia, sandstone, claystone, shale, mudstone and
siltstone.

II. Organic sedimentary rocks consist of the remains of plants or animals. Coal is an
organic sedimentary rock made up of decomposed and compacted plant remains.

III. Chemical sedimentary rocks form by direct precipitation of minerals from solution.
Rock salt, for example, forms when salt precipitates from evaporating seawater or
saline lake water.

IV. Bioclastic sedimentary rocks. Most limestone is composed of broken shell

fragments. The fragments are clastic, but they form from organic material. As a
result, limestone formed in this way is called a bioclastic rock.

I. Clastic sedimentary rocks:

Clastic sediment consists of grains and particles that were eroded from weathered
rocks and then were transported and deposited in loose, unconsolidated layers at
the Earths surface.
Clastic sediment is named according to particle size (Table 1). Gravel includes all
rounded particles larger than 2 millimetres in diameter. Sand ranges from 1/16 to 2
millimetres in diameter. Sand feels gritty when rubbed between your fingers, and you
can see the grains with your naked eye. Silt varies from 1/256 to 1/16 millimetre.
Individual silt grains feel smooth when rubbed between the fingers but gritty when
rubbed between your teeth. Clay is less than 1/256 millimetre in diameter. It is so fine
that it feels smooth even when rubbed between your teeth. Geologists often rub a
small amount of sediment or rock between their front teeth to distinguish between silt
and clay. Mud is wet silt and clay.
.

Table 1: SIZES AND NAMES OFSEDIMENTARY PARTICLES AND CLASTIC ROCKS

Types of clastic rocks
1- Conglomerate:
Composed of all different sizes of sediments compacted and cemented
together. Pebble, cobbles, and/or boulders embedded in sand, silt, and/or clay.
Sediments are rounded.

2- Breccia:
Breccia and conglomerate are very similar rocks. They are both clastic
sedimentary rocks composed of particles larger than two millimetres in
diameter. The difference is in the shape of the large particles. In breccia the
large particles are angular in shape, but in conglomerate the particles are
rounded. This reveals a difference in how far the particles were transported.
Near the outcrop where the fragments were produced by mechanical
weathering, the shape is angular. However, during transport by water away
from the outcrop, the sharp points and edges of those angular fragments are
rounded. The rounded particles would form a conglomerate.

Breccia
Conglomerate

3- Sandstone:
The word sandstone refers to any clastic sedimentary
rock comprising primarily sand-sized grains.

4- Claystone, Shale, Mudstone, and Siltstone: Sandstone

Claystone, shale, mudstone, and siltstone are all fine-grained

clastic rocks.

Claystone is composed predominantly of clay minerals and small amounts

of quartz and other minerals of clay size.

Mudstone is a nonfissile rock composed of clay and silt.

Siltstone is lithified silt. The main component of most siltstones is quartz,

although clays are also commonly present. Siltstones often show layering
but lack the fine fissility of shales because of their lower clay content.
 Shale:
Shale is the most abundant sedimentary rock
and is in sedimentary basins worldwide. Shale
is composed of the same material as
claystone but has a finely layered structure
called fissility.
Shale occurs in a wide range of colors
that include red, brown, green, gray, and
Conventional oil and natural gas black
Black organic shales are the source rock for many of the world's most
important oil and natural gas deposits. These shales obtain their black color
from tiny particles of organic matter that were deposited with the mud from
which the shale formed. As the mud was buried and warmed within the earth,
some of the organic material was transformed into oil and natural gas.
The oil and gas migrated out of the shale due
to their low density. The oil and gas were often
trapped within the pore spaces of an overlying
rock unit such as a sandstone (see illustration).
These types of oil and gas deposits are known
as "conventional reservoirs" because the fluids
can easily flow through the pores of the rock
and into the extraction well.
Unconventional oil and natural gas
In the late 1990s, natural gas drilling companies developed new methods for
liberating oil and natural gas that is trapped within the tiny pore spaces of
shale.

The pore spaces in shale are so tiny that the gas has difficulty moving through
the shale and into the well. Drillers discovered that they could increase the
permeability of the shale by pumping water down the well under pressure that
was high enough to fracture the shale. These fractures liberated some of the
gas from the pore spaces and allowed that gas to flow to the well. This
technique is known as "hydraulic fracturing".

Drillers also learned how to drill down to the level of the shale and turn the
well 90 degrees to drill horizontally through the shale rock unit. This produced
a well with a very long "pay zone" through the reservoir rock (see illustration).
This method is known as "horizontal drilling."
II. Organic sedimentary rocks:

Organic sedimentary rocks, such as chert and coal, form by lithification of the remains
of plants and animals.
Chert:
Chert is made up of the remains of tiny marine organisms that make their skeletons
of silica rather than calcium carbonate. When these organisms die, their silica
skeletons fall to the bottom, dissolve, recrystallize, and might become part of a
chert nodule or chert layer.
In contrast, some nodular chert appears to form by precipitation from silica rich
ground water, most often in limestone. Chert formed in this way could be
considered a chemical sedimentary rock.

Red nodules of chert in light-

Chert colored limestone.

Coal:
When plants die, their remains usually decompose by reaction with oxygen.
However, in warm swamps and in other environments where plant growth is
rapid, dead plants accumulate so rapidly that the oxygen is used up long before
the decay process is complete (the rate of plant debris accumulation must be
greater than the rate of decay). The undecayed or partially decayed plant remains
form peat. As peat is buried and compacted by overlying sediments, it converts
to coal, a hard, black, combustible rock.

Coal is a combustible rock and, along with oil and natural gas, it is one of the
three most important fossil fuels. Coal has a wide range of uses; the most
important use is for the generation of electricity.

coal
III. Chemical sedimentary rocks:
Chemical sedimentary rocks are formed when conditions favor a chemical reaction or
process that causes chemicals dissolved in water to precipitate, creating a layer of
sediment.
When water in a salty sea or lake evaporates, for example, it may leave behind salt
(rock salt) and gypsum deposits.
Seawater is so nearly saturated in calcium carbonate that calcium carbonate minerals
can precipitate under the proper conditions. As waves and currents roll tiny shell
fragments back and forth on the sea bottom, calcium carbonate precipitates in concentric
layers on the fragments. This process produces nearly perfect spheres called oliths. In
turn, oliths may become cemented together to form olitic limestone. Limestone of this
type is a chemical sedimentary rock. However, most limestone is bioclastic

An evaporating lake precipitated thick salt Oolitic limestone

deposits
IV. Bioclastic sedimentary rocks:
Sedimentary rocks that are formed from lithification of small fragments (broken) of
shells (Bioclastic sediment).
Limestone:
Limestone is a sedimentary rock composed primarily of calcium carbonate
(CaCO3) in the form of the mineral calcite.
Coquina is a bioclastic limestone consisting wholly of coarse shell fragments
cemented together. Chalk is a very fine-grained, soft, white bioclastic limestone
made of the shells and skeletons of microorganisms that float near the surface of
the oceans.

Chalk Coquina
Dolomite:
Dolomite, also known as "dolostone" and "dolomite
rock," is a sedimentary rock composed primarily of the
mineral dolomite, CaMg(CO3)2. Dolomite is found in
sedimentary basins worldwide. It is thought to form by
the post depositional alteration limestone by
magnesium-rich groundwater. Dolomite

References:
1- Introduction to Physical Geology - Thompson and Turk.
2- www.geology.com.