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htp://jpst.ripi.ir Journal of Petroleum Science and Technology 2018, 8(3), 30-41
© 2018 Research Insttute of Petroleum Industry (RIPI)
ABSTRACT
Despite advancements in specifying 3D internal microstructure of reservoir rocks, identfying some
sensitve phenomenons are stll problematc partcularly due to image resoluton limitaton. Discretzaton
study on such CT-scan data always has encountered with such conficts that the original data do not
fully describe the real porous media. As an alternatve atractve approach, one can reconstruct porous
media to generate pore space representatons. The reconstructed structures are then used for simulatons
using some sort of discretzaton. In this paper, It is examined the efect of discretzaton on porosity
and saturaton calculatons in porous media models. Some 3D Boolean models of random overlapping
spheres of fxed and variable diameters in three dimensions are used. The generated models are then
discretzed over 3D grids with diferent number of voxels. The porosity can be calculated and saturaton
of the discretzed models are then compared with the analytcal solutons. The results show that when
meshgrid sizes are 8% of smallest grains, porosity is calculated with 95% precision. In additon to that,
meshgrid sizes of 5% and
3% of average grain diameter are adequate to calculate non-wetng and wetng phase saturatons with at
least 95% precision. This helps in choosing the optmum voxel size required in imaging for efciently use
of available computatonal facility.
Keywords: Boolean Model, Discretzaton, Micro-CT, Mesh-Grid, Model Porous Media, Porosity, Saturaton
Ahmed Zoeir*
1
and Jafar Qajar
2
1
Faculty of Petroleum and Natural Gas Engineering, Sahand University of Technology, Tabriz, Iran
2
School of Chemical and Petroleum Engineering, Shiraz University, Shiraz, Iran
To Express Required CT-Scan Resolution for Porosity and Saturation
Calculations in Terms of Average Grain Sizes
*Corresponding author
Ahmed Zoeir
Email: ah_zoeir@sut.ac.ir
Tel: +98 938 4508088
Fax: +98 71 36133753
Artcle history
Received: April 1, 2017
Received in revised form: September 20, 2017
Accepted: September 26, 2017
Available online: July 15, 2018
DOI: 10.22078/jpst.2017.2620.1443
Journal of Petroleum
Science and Technology
INTRODUCTION
The characterizaton of the microstructure of
natural and synthetc porous materials has been
of great importance for scientsts and engineers
over a wide range of disciplines and hence, it has
been the subject of numerous studies in various
felds. In petroleum engineering, for example,
an understanding of the interactons among rock
microstructure, mineralogy, and fuids in pore
space is crucial to us for beter interpretaton
and predicton of reservoir rock propertes
and fow processes in underground formatons.
Development in structural study of porous
materials has a long history. Over the past two
decades, direct measurements of 3D structures at
resolutons down to a few microns using X-ray micro-