SCA2007-18 2/12 which contain the rock information targeted by the models. The observed pore sizes inmany carbonate structures span several orders of magnitude, and were found previouslynot to be fully resolved in MCT images at 1µm resolution (Arns et al., 2004). This rangeof scales also puts the applicability of a Representative Elementary Volume (REV)concept for carbonate rocks into question. In that light, the development of a generalgeometric multiscale model for carbonate rock facies has been reported in Biswal et al.(2007).The carbonate rock modelled in this study is a dolomitized, bioclastic peloidal grainstonebelonging to Dunham’s class “recognizable depositional texture” (Dunham, 1962). A firstmodelling step is to generate the depositional texture based on input data from thinsections and MCT data, and the subsequent modelling of observed diagenetic features inthe rock. The resulting models are qualitatively and quantitatively compared with the TSand MCT data by visual inspection, two-point correlation functions and calculatedpetrophysical properties.Once a rock-representative model is generated, the extraction of the numerical porenetwork from the PSG model is straightforward, leading to a unique pore networkrepresentation. Numerical network extraction directly from the MCT images, however, isstill challenging and under continued development.
MATERIAL AND METHODS
X-ray Micro Computed Tomography And Data Processing
X-ray micro-tomography allows the 3D imaging of rock samples down to sub-micronresolutions. It is a non-destructive technique. The MCT measurements were performed inthe European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF, Grenoble, France) using the ID19beamline and a FReLoN 2048x2048 pixel camera as detector. During the dataacquisition, about 1500 radiographs are recorded, while the sample is rotating from 0 to180°. A series of 2D slices is then reconstructed (standard filtered back-projection),which are stacked together to build a 3D image (Boller, 2006).Three pixel resolutions were used with8.06µm (corresponding to a view field of 16 x8.79 mm
2
), 1.4µm (view field: 2.8 x 1.694 mm
2
), and 0.7µm (view field: 1.4 x 1.4mm
2
)to attain sufficient resolution of the pore size range. As a function of the samples,energies of 40keV, 26KeV, and 19KeV were applied for the 8.06µm, 1.4µm, and 0.7µmresolutions, respectively.The MCT data are delivered as five stacks of 256 individual images. The MCT data werepre-processed i.e., we performed sub-sampling, filtering and thresholding. Initially, allstacks were cropped into 1000x1000 pixel images and were stacked together to obtaincubes of 1000
3
voxels. In order to remove artefacts and enhance the data quality thecubes were filtered using a Hybrid 3D Median filter. Due to processing reasons, thefiltered cubes were sub-sampled into 500
3
voxel cubes and subsequently thresholded todiscriminate between the solid phase and the pore space. These pre-processed cubes(8.06µm, 1.4µm and 0.7µm resolution) were used for the direct computation of petrophysical properties, such as porosity, absolute permeabilities and formation factors.
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