A study of correlation between permeability and pore space based on dilation operation

Abstract

CO2 and fracturing liquid injection into tight and shale gas reservoirs induces reactivity between minerals and injected materials, which results in porosity change and thus permeability change. In this paper, the dilation operation is used to simulate the change of the porosity and the corresponding change of permeability based on Lattice-Boltzmann is studied. Firstly we obtain digital images of a real core from CT experiment. Secondly the pore space of digital cores is expanded by dilation operation which is one of basic mathematical morphologies. Thirdly, the distribution of pore bodies and pore throats is obtained from the pore network modeling extracted by maximal ball method. Finally, the correlation between network modeling parameters and permeabilities is analyzed. The result is that the throat change leads to exponential change of permeability and that the big throats significantly influence permeability.