Pore scale modeling of rock properties and comparison to laboratory measurements

Abstract

The microstructure of a porous medium and the physical characteristics of the solid and the fluids that occupy the pore space determine the macroscopic transport properties of the medium. The computation of macroscopic properties from the rock microtomography is becoming an increasingly studied topic (Alder et al., 1990; Arns, 2001; Pal et al., 2002; Kameda et al., 2006; Toumelin et al., 2008). 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 the 3D digital microtomography images. In this paper, we focus on the 3D X‐ray microtomograhpy of a 23.6% porosity Berea Sandstone 500 (BS500) core sample with 2.8 micron resolution. Numerical calculations of electrical conductivity (with and without presence of surface conductivity), permeability and surface area on the image will be compared to the laboratory measurements on core samples. The impact of image resolution on our calculation is also analyzed.