The sensitivity of estimates of multiphase fluid and solid properties of porous rocks to image processing
File(s)Garfi2020_Article_TheSensitivityOfEstimatesOfMul.pdf (3.58 MB)
Published version
Author(s)
Garfi, Gaetano
John, Cédric M
Berg, Steffen
Krevor, Samuel
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
X-ray microcomputed tomography (X-ray μ-CT) is a rapidly advancing technology that has been successfully employed to study flow phenomena in porous media. It offers an alternative approach to core scale experiments for the estimation of traditional petrophysical properties such as porosity and single-phase flow permeability. It can also be used to investigate properties that control multiphase flow such as rock wettability or mineral topology. In most applications, analyses are performed on segmented images obtained employing a specific processing pipeline on the greyscale images. The workflow leading to a segmented image is not straightforward or unique and, for most of the properties of interest, a ground truth is not available. For this reason, it is crucial to understand how image processing choices control properties estimation. In this work, we assess the sensitivity of porosity, permeability, specific surface area, in situ contact angle measurements, fluid–fluid interfacial curvature measurements and mineral composition to processing choices. We compare the results obtained upon the employment of two processing pipelines: non-local means filtering followed by watershed segmentation; segmentation by a manually trained random forest classifier. Single-phase flow permeability, in situ contact angle measurements and mineral-to-pore total surface area are the most sensitive properties, as a result of the sensitivity to processing of the phase boundary identification task. Porosity, interfacial fluid–fluid curvature and specific mineral descriptors are robust to processing. The sensitivity of the property estimates increases with the complexity of its definition and its relationship to boundary shape.
Date Issued
2019-12-07
Date Acceptance
2019-11-27
Citation
Transport in Porous Media, 2019, 131, pp.985-1005
ISSN
0169-3913
Publisher
Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Start Page
985
End Page
1005
Journal / Book Title
Transport in Porous Media
Volume
131
Copyright Statement
© The Author(s) 2019. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
Sponsor
Shell Global Solutions International BV
Shell Global Solutions International BV
Identifier
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs11242-019-01374-z
Grant Number
PO no. 4550143956
4550187526
Subjects
Science & Technology
Technology
Engineering, Chemical
Engineering
X-ray imaging
Image processing
Contact angle
Fluid-fluid curvature
Mineralogy
RAY MICRO-TOMOGRAPHY
PORE-SCALE
CONTACT-ANGLE
CARBON-DIOXIDE
2-PHASE FLOW
SEGMENTATION
PHYSICS
CT
MICROTOMOGRAPHY
CURVATURE
0102 Applied Mathematics
0904 Chemical Engineering
0905 Civil Engineering
Environmental Engineering
Publication Status
Published
Date Publish Online
2019-12-07