The representative sample size in shale oil rocks and nano-scale characterization of transport properties

Saraji, Soheil; Piri, Mohammad

doi:10.1016/j.coal.2015.04.005

Cited by 101 publications

(59 citation statements)

References 23 publications

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“…In multi-scale studies of shales, how features of interest are identified and quantified is important. Of particular importance is the prediction and modelling of petrophysical properties including permeability, diffusion, deformation and electrical conductivity (Mishra and Akbar 2011;Yoon and Dewers 2013;Saraji and Piri 2015). The acquisition of representative data in very heterogeneous materials is a fundamental problem in shale characterisation.…”

Section: Representative Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

Correlative multi-scale imaging of shales: a review and future perspectives

Fauchille

Dowey³

et al. 2017

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As the fastest growing energy sector globally, shale and shale reservoirs have attracted the attention of both industry and scholars. However, the strong heterogeneity at different scales and the extremely fine-grained nature of shales makes macroscopic and microscopic characterisation highly challenging. Recent advances in imaging techniques have provided many novel characterisation opportunities of shale components and microstructures at multiple scales. Correlative imaging, where multiple techniques are combined, is playing an increasingly important role in the imaging and quantification of shale microstructures (for example, one can combine optical microscopy, SEM/TEM and X-ray radiography in 2D, or XCT and 3D-EM in 3D). Combined utilization of these techniques can characterize the heterogeneity of shale microstructures over a large range of scales, from macroscale to nanoscale (~10 0-10-9 m). Other chemical and physical measurements can be correlated to imaging techniques to provide complementary information for minerals, organic matter and pores. These imaging techniques and subsequent quantification methods are critically reviewed to provide an overview of the correlative imaging workflow. Applications of the above techniques for imaging particular features in different shales are demonstrated and key limitations and benefits summarized. Current challenges and future perspectives in shale imaging techniques and their applications are discussed.

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Section: Representative Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

Correlative multi-scale imaging of shales: a review and future perspectives

Fauchille

Dowey³

et al. 2017

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“…Saraji et al . [ 17 ] reported that the average pore radius of several reservoir samples from Bakken formation is within the 5–100 nm range. The characteristics of nanoscale porosity and complicated interfaces of the oil reservoirs result in a considerable amount of petroleum hydrocarbons confined in intricate microscale or nanoscale pores [ 18 – 20 ].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Molecular mechanism of viscoelastic polymer enhanced oil recovery in nanopores

et al. 2018

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Polymer flooding is a promising chemical enhanced oil recovery (EOR) method, which realizes more efficient extraction in porous formations characterized with nanoscale porosity and complicated interfaces. Understanding the molecular mechanism of viscoelastic polymer EOR in nanopores is of great significance for the advancement of oil exploitation. Using molecular dynamics simulations, we investigated the detailed process of a viscoelastic polymer displacing oil at the atomic scale. We found that the interactions between polymer chains and oil provide an additional pulling effect on extracting the residual oil trapped in dead-end nanopores, which plays a key role in increasing the oil displacement efficiency. Our results also demonstrate that the oil displacement ability of polymer can be reinforced with the increasing chain length and viscoelasticity. In particular, a polymer with longer chain length exhibits stronger elastic property, which enhances the foregoing pulling effect. These findings can help to enrich our understanding on the molecular mechanism of polymer enhanced oil recovery and provide guidance for oil extraction engineering.

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“…Although the application of µ-CT in the geosciences was previously introduced by Ketcham and Carlson (2001) and Ketcham (2005), many investigations that analyze irregular particle shapes are still performed with 2-D approaches (Buller et al, 1990;Zhang et al, 2016;Petrak et al, 2015). So far, µ-CT studies of 3-D features have mostly been related to the characterization of volcanic rocks (Eiríksson et al, 1994;Riley et al, 2003;Shea et al, 2010;Vonlanthen et al, 2015) or spheroidal objects (Robin and Charles, 2015), and these features are usually described by means of equivalent size or shape parameters, such as roundness or aspect ratio (Little et al, 2015;Saraji and Piri, 2015). Nevertheless, these intuitive descriptors provide more qualitative denotation and might obscure information regarding the original particle shape.…”

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confidence: 99%

Classification and quantification of pore shapes in sandstone reservoir rocks with 3-D X-ray micro-computed tomography

et al. 2016

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Abstract. Recent years have seen a growing interest in the characterization of the pore morphologies of reservoir rocks and how the spatial organization of pore traits affects the macro behavior of rock-fluid systems. With the availability of 3-D high-resolution imaging, such as x-ray microcomputed tomography (µ-CT), the detailed quantification of particle shapes has been facilitated by progress in computer science. Here, we show how the shapes of irregular rock particles (pores) can be classified and quantified based on binary 3-D images. The methodology requires the measurement of basic 3-D particle descriptors (length, width, and thickness) and a shape classification that involves the similarity of artificial objects, which is based on main pore network detachments and 3-D sample sizes. Two main pore components were identified from the analyzed volumes: pore networks and residual pore ganglia. A watershed algorithm was applied to preserve the pore morphology after separating the main pore networks, which is essential for the pore shape characterization. The results were validated for three sandstones (S 1 , S 2 , and S 3 ) from distinct reservoirs, and most of the pore shapes were found to be plate-and cube-like, ranging from 39.49 to 50.94 % and from 58.80 to 45.18 % when the Feret caliper descriptor was investigated in a 1000 3 voxel volume. Furthermore, this study generalizes a practical way to correlate specific particle shapes, such as rods, blades, cuboids, plates, and cubes to characterize asymmetric particles of any material type with 3-D image analysis.

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The representative sample size in shale oil rocks and nano-scale characterization of transport properties

Cited by 101 publications

References 23 publications

Correlative multi-scale imaging of shales: a review and future perspectives

Correlative multi-scale imaging of shales: a review and future perspectives

Molecular mechanism of viscoelastic polymer enhanced oil recovery in nanopores

Classification and quantification of pore shapes in sandstone reservoir rocks with 3-D X-ray micro-computed tomography

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