A transient method for measuring the DC streaming potential coefficient of porous and fractured rocks

High-quality streaming potential coupling coefficient measurements have been carried out using a newly designed cell with both a steady state methodology and a new pressure transient approach. The pressure transient approach has shown itself to be particularly good at providing high-quality streaming potential coefficient measurements as each transient increase or decrease allows thousands of measurements to be made at different pressures to which a good linear regression can be fitted. Nevertheless, the transient method can be up to 5 times as fast as the conventional measurement approaches because data from all flow rates are taken in the same transient measurement rather than separately. Test measurements have been made on samples of Berea and Boise sandstone as a function of salinity (approximately 18 salinities between 10 -5 mol/dm3 and 2 mol/dm3). The data have also been inverted to obtain the zeta potential. The streaming potential coefficient becomes greater (more negative) for fluids with lower salinities, which is consistent with existing measurements. Our measurements are also consistent with the high-salinity streaming potential coefficient measurements made by Vinogradov et al. (2010). Both the streaming potential coefficient and the zeta potential have also been modeled using the theoretical approach of Glover (2012). This modeling allows the microstructural, electrochemical, and fluid properties of the saturated rock to be taken into account in order to provide a relationship that is unique to each particular rock sample. In all cases, we found that the experimental data were a good match to the theoretical model