Pore Scale Modeling of Rock Properties and Comparison to Laboratory Measurements
Name
Xin_2009.pdf
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Checksum (MD5)
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Author(s)
Zhan, Xin
Schwartz, Larry
Smith, Wave
Toksoz, M. Nafi
Morgan, Frank Dale
Date Issued
2009
Publisher
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Earth Resources Laboratory
Series/Report no.
Earth Resources Laboratory Industry Consortia Annual Report;2009-01
Abstract
The microstructure of a porous medium and the physical characteristics of the solid and fluid
phases determine the macroscopic transport properties of the medium. The purpose of this paper
is to test numerical calculations of the geometrical and transport properties (electrical
conductivity, permeability, specific surface area, and surface conductivity) of porous, permeable
rocks, given their 3D digital microtomography (μCT) images. We focus on μCT data for a 23.6%
porosity sample of Berea Sandstone 500 (BS500) with 2.8 micron resolution. Finite difference
methods are used to solve the Laplace and Stokes equations for electrical and hydraulic
conductivities. We show that the permeability and formation factor are well correlated using a
hydraulic radius computed from the digitized image. Electrical transport in the BS500 sample is
complicated by the presence of clays. A three phase conductivity model, which includes the
double layer length and counter-ion mobility, is developed to compute interface conductivity from the μCT image and measured values of the cation exchange capacity (CEC). Our
calculations compare well with the laboratory measurements on cm[superscript 3] core samples. Finally, we
examine the influence of image size and image resolution on our numerical results.
Subjects
Fluid flow
Modeling
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