QUANTITATIVE 3D CHARACTERISATION OF THE PORE SPACE OF REAL ROCKS: IMPROVED µ-CT RESOLUTION AND PORE EXTRACTION METHODOLOGY

Pore network models are generally used to calculate and predict two phase transport properties of porous media from pore space structure information. The predictability of such models depends on the accuracy with which the network captures the complex geometric and topological properties of the pore space. High resolution Computed Micro Tomography (CMT) appears to be the ideal method to validate these models and improve their predictability in the case of complex geometry media. In this paper, we present a methodology combining high resolution CMT measurement, providing 20003 voxel images at micron resolution in less then 3h acquisition time, and a fast and efficient partitioning of the pore space enabling a complete and realistic description of the geometry and topology of the associate large subsets. Relevant parameters are then extracted for pore network simulations. The partitioned volume is directly used to simulate mercury injection which is confronted to experimental HPMI results. The equivalent extracted network is used to calculate absolute permeability using a Pore Network Model (PNM) code. The methodology is applied to a set of real porous media and shows a good agreement between experiments and simulation when the studied volume is representative