A NEW PETROPHYSICAL CORRELATION FOR THE PERMEABILITY OF CARBONATE ROCKS
Conference Paper
Overview
Identity
Additional Document Info
Other
View All
Overview
abstract
Copyright 2019, held jointly by the Society of Petrophysicists and Well Log Analysts (SPWLA) and the submitting authors. Investigation of the permeability of carbonate rocks is essential and challenging due to the heterogeneity of carbonates at all scales. At the micro-scale, pore geometry, pore size distribution, and pore connectivity are important factors controlling permeability. This study focuses on the influence of pore size distribution and pore structure on permeability to better understand the fluid flow in carbonate rocks. In this paper, we use micro-computer tomography (micro-CT) to capture the microscopic heterogeneity in the pore structure. Firstly, we collected seven 1 x 6 inch carbonate rock samples including Indiana Limestone, Desert Rose, and Travertine with various porosities and permeabilities. The porosity was measured gravimetrically, and permeability was measured with core plug flooding experiments. Cubic centimeter size core samples were scanned with enhanced micro-CT imaging with the resolution of 6-8 m/voxel, then scanned 2D images were processed with image processing software to distinguish the pore system from the matrix. The pore size distribution for each rock sample was determined by fitting a statistical function based on the binarized images. We defined a concept of equivalent pore radius to characterize the pore system, which effectively filters out the non-contributing small pores and preserves the pores actually contributing to fluid flow. The relationship between the equivalent pore radius of each rock and permeability was investigated. Based on the 2D image stack, we also constructed the 3D pore network to observe the pore structure, quantify connectivity and specific surface ratio to study their influence on permeability. We found that laboratory measured permeability from core plugs was strongly correlated to the equivalent pore radius calculated from micro-CT scanned images among the investigated carbonate rock samples. The semi-logarithmic correlation between permeability and effective pore radius fit the measured permeability data very well over a permeability range of more than two orders of magnitude. The findings of pore-scale pore structure and pore size distribution in this study are helpful for carbonate rock analysis, and the proposed new correlation between equivalent pore radius and permeability is practical for permeability estimation for a wide range of carbonate rocks.
