scholarly journals Hydraulic characterisation of iron oxide-coated sand and gravel based on nuclear magnetic resonance relaxation modes analyses

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephan Costabel ◽  
Christoph Weidner ◽  
Mike Müller-Petke ◽  
Georg Houben
Keyword(s):  
Nuclear Magnetic Resonance ◽  
Relaxation Time ◽  
Pore Size ◽  
Nmr Relaxation ◽  
Size Distributions ◽  
Nmr Data ◽  
Pore Size Distributions ◽  
Relaxation Modes ◽  
Sand And Gravel ◽  
Coated Sand

Abstract. The capability of nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) relaxometry to characterise hydraulic properties of iron oxide-coated sand and gravel was evaluated in a laboratory study. Past studies have shown that the presence of paramagnetic iron oxides and large pores as present in coarse sand and gravel disturbs the otherwise linear relationship between relaxation time and pore size. Consequently, the commonly applied empirical approaches fail when deriving hydraulic quantities from NMR parameters. Recent research demonstrates that higher relaxation modes must be taken into account to relate the size of a large pore to its NMR relaxation behaviour in the presence of significant paramagnetic impurities at its pore wall. We performed NMR relaxation experiments with water-saturated natural and reworked sands and gravels, coated with natural and synthetic ferric oxides (goethite, ferrihydrite) and show that the impact of the higher relaxation modes increases significantly with increasing iron content. Since the investigated materials exhibit narrow pore size distributions, and can thus be described by a virtual bundle of capillaries with identical apparent pore radius, recently presented inversion approaches allow for estimating a unique solution yielding the apparent capillary radius from the NMR data. We found the NMR-based apparent radii to correspond well to the effective hydraulic radii estimated from the grain size distributions of the samples for the entire range of observed iron contents. Consequently, they can be used to estimate the hydraulic conductivity using the well-known Kozeny-Carman equation without any calibration that is otherwise necessary when predicting hydraulic conductivities from NMR data. Our future research will focus on the development of relaxation time models that allow for broader pore size distributions. Furthermore, we plan to establish a measurement system based on borehole NMR for localising iron clogging and controlling its remediation in the gravel pack of groundwater wells.

scholarly journals Hydraulic characterisation of iron-oxide-coated sand and gravel based on nuclear magnetic resonance relaxation mode analyses

2018 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
pp. 1713-1729 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephan Costabel ◽  
Christoph Weidner ◽  
Mike Müller-Petke ◽  
Georg Houben
Keyword(s):  
Nuclear Magnetic Resonance ◽  
Relaxation Time ◽  
Pore Size ◽  
Nmr Relaxation ◽  
Size Distributions ◽  
Nmr Data ◽  
Pore Size Distributions ◽  
Relaxation Modes ◽  
Sand And Gravel ◽  
Coated Sand

Abstract. The capability of nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) relaxometry to characterise hydraulic properties of iron-oxide-coated sand and gravel was evaluated in a laboratory study. Past studies have shown that the presence of paramagnetic iron oxides and large pores in coarse sand and gravel disturbs the otherwise linear relationship between relaxation time and pore size. Consequently, the commonly applied empirical approaches fail when deriving hydraulic quantities from NMR parameters. Recent research demonstrates that higher relaxation modes must be taken into account to relate the size of a large pore to its NMR relaxation behaviour in the presence of significant paramagnetic impurities at its pore wall. We performed NMR relaxation experiments with water-saturated natural and reworked sands and gravels, coated with natural and synthetic ferric oxides (goethite, ferrihydrite), and show that the impact of the higher relaxation modes increases significantly with increasing iron content. Since the investigated materials exhibit narrow pore size distributions, and can thus be described by a virtual bundle of capillaries with identical apparent pore radius, recently presented inversion approaches allow for estimation of a unique solution yielding the apparent capillary radius from the NMR data. We found the NMR-based apparent radii to correspond well to the effective hydraulic radii estimated from the grain size distributions of the samples for the entire range of observed iron contents. Consequently, they can be used to estimate the hydraulic conductivity using the well-known Kozeny–Carman equation without any calibration that is otherwise necessary when predicting hydraulic conductivities from NMR data. Our future research will focus on the development of relaxation time models that consider pore size distributions. Furthermore, we plan to establish a measurement system based on borehole NMR for localising iron clogging and controlling its remediation in the gravel pack of groundwater wells.

Pore-Size Distributions for Organic-Shale-Reservoir Rocks From Nuclear-Magnetic-Resonance Spectra Combined With Adsorption Measurements

SPE Journal ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 20 (04) ◽  
pp. 824-830 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard F. Sigal
Keyword(s):  
Nuclear Magnetic Resonance ◽  
Magnetic Resonance ◽  
Pore Size ◽  
Surface Relaxation ◽  
Size Distributions ◽  
Pore Sizes ◽  
Pore Size Distributions ◽  
Shale Reservoirs ◽  
Organic Shale ◽  
Nuclear Magnetic

Summary The behavior of fluids in nanometer-scale pores can have a strong functional dependence on the pore size. In mature organic-shale reservoirs, the nuclear-magnetic-resonance (NMR) signal from methane decays by surface relaxation. The methane NMR spectrum provides an uncalibrated pore-size distribution for the pores that store methane. The distribution can be calibrated by calculating a pore-wall-surface area from a methane-Langmuir-adsorption isotherm. When this method was applied to samples from a reservoir in the dry-gas window, the pores containing methane had pore sizes that ranged from 1 to approximately 100 nm. Approximately 20–40% of the pore volume was in pores smaller than 10 nm, where deviation from bulk-fluid behavior can be significant. The samples came from two wells. The surface relaxivity for the sample from Well 2 was somewhat different from the relaxivity for the two samples from Well 1. Samples that adsorbed more methane had smaller pore sizes. This methodology to obtain pore-size distributions should be extendable to more-general organic-shale reservoirs.

scholarly journals Investigation on the Application of NMR to Spontaneous Imbibition Recovery of Tight Sandstones: An Experimental Study

Energies ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (9) ◽  
pp. 2359 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chaohui Lyu ◽  
Qing Wang ◽  
Zhengfu Ning ◽  
Mingqiang Chen ◽  
Mingqi Li ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Nuclear Magnetic Resonance ◽  
Magnetic Resonance ◽  
Pore Size ◽  
Early Stage ◽  
Spontaneous Imbibition ◽  
Size Distributions ◽  
Pore Size Distributions ◽  
Two Samples ◽  
Tight Formations ◽  
Nuclear Magnetic

In this paper, the nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) technique is applied to exploring the spontaneous imbibition mechanism in tight sandstones under all face open (AFO) boundary conditions, which will benefit a better understanding of spontaneous imbibition during the development of oil & gas in tight formations. The advantages of nuclear magnetic resonance imaging (NMRI) and NMR T2 are used to define the distribution of remaining oil, evaluate the effect of micro structures on imbibition and predict imbibition recovery. NMR T2 results show that pore size distributions around two peaks are not only the main oil distributions under saturated condition but also fall within the main imbibition distributions range. Spontaneous imbibition mainly occurs in the first 6 h and then slows down and even ceases. The oil signals in tiny pores stabilize during the early stage of imbibition while the oil signal in large pores keeps fluctuating during the late stage of imbibition. NMRI results demonstrate that spontaneous imbibition is a replacement process starting slowly from the boundaries to the center under AFO and ending with oil-water mixing. Furthermore, the wetting phase can invade the whole core in the first 6 h, which is identical with the main period of imbibition occurring according to NMR T2 results. Factors influencing the history of oil distribution and saturation differ at different periods, while it is dominated by capillary imbibition at the early stage and allocated by diffusion at later time. Two imbibition recovery curves calculated by NMRI and NMR T2 are basically consistent, while there still exists some deviations between them as a result of the resolutions of NMRI and NMR T2. In addition, the heterogeneity of pore size distributions in the two samples aggravates this discrepancy. The work in this paper should prove of great help to better understand the process of the spontaneous imbibition, not only at the macroscopic level but also at the microscopic level, which is significant for oil/gas recovery in tight formations.

Relating nuclear magnetic resonance relaxation time distributions to void-size distributions for unconsolidated sand packs

Geophysics ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 78 (6) ◽  
pp. D461-D472 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kristina Keating ◽  
Samuel Falzone
Keyword(s):  
Nuclear Magnetic Resonance ◽  
Relaxation Time ◽  
Magnetic Resonance ◽  
Diffusion Regime ◽  
Fast Diffusion ◽  
Size Distributions ◽  
Void Size ◽  
Surface Relaxivity ◽  
Grain Sizes ◽  
Nmr Data

Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) is used in near-surface geophysics to understand the pore-scale properties of geologic material. The interpretation of NMR data in geologic material assumes that the NMR relaxation time distribution ([Formula: see text]-distribution) is a linear transformation of the void-size distribution (VSD). This interpretation assumes fast diffusion and can be violated for materials with high surface relaxivity and/or large pores. We compared [Formula: see text]-distributions to VSDs using grain-size distributions (GSDs) as a proxy for VSDs. Measurements were collected on water-saturated sand packs with a range of grain sizes and surface relaxivities, such that some samples were expected to violate the fast diffusion assumption. Samples were prepared from silica sand with three different average grain sizes and were coated with the iron-oxide mineral hematite to vary the surface relaxivity. We found analytically that outside the fast diffusion regime, the [Formula: see text]-distributions are broader than in the fast diffusion regime, which could lead to misinterpretation of NMR data. The experimental results showed that the [Formula: see text]-distributions were not linear transformations of the GSDs. The GSDs were a single peak independent of the hematite coating. The [Formula: see text]-distributions were broader than the measured GSDs, and the center of the distribution depended on the coating. Using an equation that does not assume fast diffusion to transform the [Formula: see text]-distributions to NMR-estimated VSDs resulted in distributions that were centered on a single radius. However, our attempts to recover the VSDs, as estimated from laser particle size analysis, were unsuccessful; the NMR-estimated VSDs were broader and yielded average pore radii that were much smaller than expected. We found that our approach was useful for determining relative VSDs from [Formula: see text]-distributions; however, future research is needed to develop a method for calibrating the NMR-estimated VSDs for unconsolidated sands.

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