Science & Technology: Promising Technique for Geothermal Reservoir Characterization Using CT Scanning

Continuous porosity characterization: Metric-scale intervals in heterogeneous sedimentary rocks using medical CT-scanner (Science Direct)

by Stéphanie Larmagnata et al

CT-Scanner (Wikipedia Commons)

Although computed tomography (CT-Scanning) has been regularly applied to core analyses in petroleum geology, there is still a need to improve our ways to document porosity and porosity distribution in the entire pore scale spectrum, from the tens of nanometer to the meter-scale.

Porosity imaging is particularly crucial for complex and heterogeneous rocks such as hydrothermally altered and fractured carbonates. The present work proposes an improved method using medical-CT to reliably estimate reservoir porosity.

The methodology tested on a large set of reference core material shows a strong correlation between conventional gas porosimetry techniques and porosity from CT-scan. The added value of the porosity measurements by CT-scan is, first of all, the generation of 3D images of pore network, allowing to assess spatial attributes of macropores, their distribution and connectivity. Secondly, the CT-scan method also provides continuous porosity profile at the millimetric scale. Both developments are crucial for the understanding of reservoir rock properties.

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Continuous porosity characterization: Metric-scale intervals in heterogeneous sedimentary rocks using medical CT-scanner by Stéphanie Larmagnata et al. Marine and Petroleum Geology. Volume 109, November 2019, Pages 361-380.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.marpetgeo.2019.04.039