The average life of oxygen vacancies in quartz from sediments were estimated using ESR signal intensity of E’ centers by thermal activitation technique. The experimental results showed that the second order kinetics equation was more suitable to estimate the average life than the first order kinetic equation. The average life of oxygen vacancies in quartz of sediments form 4895m to 4908m in Tarim basin was about 10 18 years at 27℃
and it was three orders of magnitude bigger than the average life in granitic quartz at the same temperature.