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Abstract
This paper was adapted from the poster presentation “3-D Printed Reservoir Sandstone: How Accurate Are Pore System Copies?” presented at the AAPG Annual Convention and Exhibition, Denver, Colorado, May 31–June 3, 2015.
DOI: 10.1306/11111616038
Resurrection of a reservoir sandstone from tomographic data using three-dimensional printing
Sergey Ishutov,1 Franciszek J. Hasiuk,2 Shawn M. Fullmer,3 Antonio S. Buono,4 Joseph N. Gray,5 and Chris Harding6
1Department of Geological and Atmospheric Sciences, Iowa State University, Science 1, 2237 Osborn Drive, Ames, Iowa 50011; [email protected]
2Department of Geological and Atmospheric Sciences, Iowa State University, Science 1, 2237 Osborn Drive, Ames, Iowa 50011; [email protected]
3ExxonMobil Upstream Research Company, 22777 Springwoods Village Parkway, Spring, Texas 77389; [email protected]
4ExxonMobil Upstream Research Company, 22777 Springwoods Village Parkway, Spring, Texas 77389; [email protected]
5Center for Non‐Destructive Evaluation, Iowa State University, Applied Sciences 2, 1915 Scholl Road, Ames, Iowa 50011; [email protected]
6Department of Geological and Atmospheric Sciences, Iowa State University, Science 1, 2237 Osborn Drive, Ames, Iowa 50011; [email protected]
ABSTRACT
Three-dimensional (3-D) printing provides an opportunity to build lab-testable models of reservoir rocks from tomographic data. This study combines tomography and 3-D printing to reproduce a sample of the Fontainebleau sandstone at different magnifications to test how this workflow can help characterization of transport properties at multiple scales. For this sandstone, literature analysis has given a porosity of 11%, permeability of 455 md, mean pore throat radius of 15 μm, and a mean grain size of 250 μm. Digital rock analysis of tomographic data from the same sample yielded a porosity of 13%, a permeability of 251 md, and a mean pore throat radius of 15.2 μm. The 3-D printer available for this study was not able to reproduce the sample’s pore system at its original scale. Instead, models were 3-D printed at 5-fold, 10-fold, and 15-fold magnifications. Mercury porosimetry performed on these 3-D models revealed differences in porosity (28%–37%) compared to the literature (11%) and to digital calculations (12.7%). Mercury may have intruded the smallest matrix pores of the printing powder and led to a greater than 50% increase in measured porosity. However, the 3-D printed models’ pore throat size distribution (15 μm) and permeability (350–443 md) match both literature data and digital rock analysis. The powder-based 3-D printing method was only able to replicate parts of the pore system (permeability and pore throats) but not the pore bodies. Other 3-D printing methods, such as resin-based stereolithography and photopolymerization, may have the potential
to reproduce reservoir rock porosity more accurately.
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