The objective of this study is to evaluate the flow characteristics of reservoir rock using Digital Rock Physics (DRP). In this study, advanced imaging tools are utilized to build a reliable pore-scale model that can be used to predict important reservoir flow properties using numerical simulation. In addition, a comparative analysis is presented to know how well the results obtained by the proposed numerical solutions match the available experimental measurements.
The core samples of sandstone and carbonate were considered for evaluating the core properties. The core samples images were obtained using an X-ray computed tomographic scan, after obtaining the digital images of the samples, a 3D digitized model of the samples is analyzed to construct a 3D pore network, and the porosity is estimated. Numerical simulations were used to obtain the permeability of the core samples. Laboratory measurements of porosity and permeability were conducted on the same samples imaged by an X-ray computed tomographic scanner. Results obtained from numerical simulations are compared with laboratory measurements for validation.
The results from the study show that the flow characteristic obtained from carbonate and sandstone rock using Digital Rock Physics requires a different approach. The carbonate rock samples' flow characteristics are affected by the images due to variation in the pore size distribution and required to consider the many thin sections for characterizing the flow properties. While for the sandstone, the flow characteristics are easier to obtain compared to carbonate rock and do not require thin section analysis. However, the presence of clay minerals in the sandstone alters the flow characteristics requires to consider in determining the flow properties using Digital Rock Physics.
A new systematic approach has been shown in this study to evaluate the characteristic of carbonate and sandstone rock. The correlation between variation in flow characteristics for the carbonate and sandstone rock is provided to utilize Digital Rock Physics to obtained flow characteristics and validated them with the experimental data.
