Investigation of porosity and permeability effects from microstructure changes during limestone dissolution

Catherine Noiriel (1, 2, 3) , Philippe Gouze (2, 3) , Dominique Bernard (4)

1 CIG - Centre d'Informatique Géologique
2 Tectonophysique - Laboratoire de Tectonophysique
3 ISTEEM - Institut des Sciences de la Terre, de l'Environnement et de l'Espace de Montpellier
4 ICMCB - Institut de Chimie de la Matière Condensée de Bordeaux

We studied experimentally the dissolution of a porous limestone core during CO2-enriched water injection. We measured the changes in porosity and permeability arising from modifications of the pore network geometry and the fluid-rock interface. A methodology based on periodic X-ray microtomography imaging was implemented to record the evolution of the time- and scale-dependent microstructures with a spatial resolution of 4.91 μm. Two processes were successively involved in the rapid permeability increase of the sample, as documented from microscale to core-scale measurements...

Domaines: Informatique [cs]

Catherine Noiriel, Philippe Gouze, Dominique Bernard. Investigation of porosity and permeability effects from microstructure changes during limestone dissolution. Geophysical Research Letters, 2004, 31 (23), L24603 (4 p.). ⟨10.1029/2004GL021572⟩. ⟨hal-00350625⟩