0000000000787327
AUTHOR
Guillaume Desbois
Imaging pore space in tight gas sandstone reservoir: insights from broad ion beam cross-sectioning
Monetization of tight gas reservoirs, which contain significant gas reserves world-wide, represents a challenge for the entire oil and gas industry. The development of new technologies to enhance tight gas reservoir productivity is strongly dependent on an improved understanding of the rock properties and especially the pore framework. Numerous methods are now available to characterize sandstone cores. However, the pore space characterization at pore scale remains difficult due to the fine pore size and delicate sample preparation, and has thus been mostly indirectly inferred until now. Here we propose a new method of ultra high-resolution petrography combining high resolution SEM and argon…
Multi-scale characterization of porosity in Boom Clay (HADES-level, Mol, Belgium) using a combination of X-ray μ-CT, 2D BIB-SEM and FIB-SEM tomography
Abstract The Oligocene age Boom Clay is a potential host material for radioactive waste disposal in Belgium. To better understand the physical basis of transport mechanisms of radionuclides, we aim to characterize the pore space and its connectivity at nm-scale in 3D. In the present study, X-ray μ-CT and FIB-SEM (focused ion beam scanning electron microscopy) tomography were combined, to investigate the 3D pore space of a Boom Clay sample from the Mol-1 borehole (depth corresponding to the level of the HADES-URF – ‘high activity disposal experimental site underground research facility’) at the Mol–Dessel research site for radioactive waste disposal (Belgium). BIB-SEM (broad ion beam scannin…