1. Tools for pressure core sub-coring and pore-scale micro-CT (computed tomography) scans
- Author
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Greg Wunderlich, Bill Grey, Karl Jarvis, Daniel Hill, Taehyung Park, Jeong-Hoon Choi, Xuerui Gai, Liang Lei, Chris McArdle, and Yongkoo Seol
- Subjects
QE1-996.5 ,Temperature control ,010504 meteorology & atmospheric sciences ,medicine.diagnostic_test ,business.industry ,Mechanical Engineering ,Pore scale ,Clathrate hydrate ,Energy Engineering and Power Technology ,Mineralogy ,Geology ,Computed tomography ,010502 geochemistry & geophysics ,01 natural sciences ,Coring ,Core (optical fiber) ,Natural gas ,medicine ,business ,Micro ct ,0105 earth and related environmental sciences - Abstract
The pore habits of gas hydrate in natural sediment matrices provide essential clues for understanding physical (mechanical, thermal, hydraulic, and electrical) properties of hydrate-bearing sediments, yet there are no tools that can directly visualize the pore habits of natural gas hydrate other than indirect interpretation based on core-scale or field-scale observations. A significant challenge is to obtain a mini-core from pressure cores retrieved from natural reservoirs for high-resolution micro-CT (computed tomography) scans while maintaining pressure and temperature conditions required for stability of gas hydrate during all operational steps including manipulation, cutting, transferring, sub-coring and CT scanning. We present a new set of tools for pore-scale micro-CT imaging of natural hydrate-bearing sediments while maintaining pressure and temperature control. The tests with laboratory-prepared cores and pressure cores successfully demonstrate the capability of this set of tools to subsample a mini-core from pressure cores, transfer the mini-core to an X-ray transparent core holder, and conduct micro-CT scans. Successfully obtained CT images prove the functionality of this set of tools.
- Published
- 2021