  r-Process nucleosynthesis in material ejected during neutron star mergers may
lead to radioactively powered transients called kilonovae. The timescale and
peak luminosity of these transients depend on the composition of the ejecta,
which determines the local heating rate from nuclear decays and the opacity.
Kasen et al. (2013, ApJ, 774, 25) and Tanaka & Hotokezaka (2013, ApJ, 775, 113)
pointed out that lanthanides can drastically increase the opacity in these
outflows. We use the new general-purpose nuclear reaction network SkyNet to
carry out a parameter study of r-process nucleosynthesis for a range of initial
electron fractions $Y_e$, initial specific entropies $s$, and expansion
timescales $\tau$. We find that the ejecta is lanthanide-free for $Y_e \gtrsim
0.22 - 0.30$, depending on $s$ and $\tau$. The heating rate is insensitive to
$s$ and $\tau$, but certain, larger values of $Y_e$ lead to reduced heating
rates, due to individual nuclides dominating the heating. We calculate
approximate light curves with a simplified gray radiative transport scheme. The
light curves peak at about a day (week) in the lanthanide-free (-rich) cases.
The heating rate does not change much as the ejecta becomes lanthanide-free
with increasing $Y_e$, but the light curve peak becomes about an order of
magnitude brighter because it peaks much earlier when the heating rate is
larger. We also provide parametric fits for the heating rates between 0.1 and
$100\,\text{days}$, and we provide a simple fit in $Y_e$, $s$, and $\tau$ to
estimate whether the ejecta is lanthanide-rich or not.
