Developing NMR/MRI Techniques for Characterisation of Reactive Transport in Porous Media
type: CreativeWork
description: Reactive flow in porous media is a complex transport phenomenon which involves the simultaneous flow and reaction of a fluid in a porous medium and plays a critical role in improving our understanding of carbon sequestration. When CO2 is introduced into a storage site, which might be a hosting rock formation, high temperatures and pressures result in the production of a supercritical phase, which can then react with the existing brine to generate carbonic acid. This process is defined as reactive flow and may lead to both dissolution and/or precipitation. Major effort has been invested in researching the former since it may induce significant structural changes in the formation and has previously been examined for acid stimulation treatments in the oil and gas industry. Various dissolving regimes may be encountered depending on the reservoir characteristics and the physical conditions of the hosted fluid, ranging from uniform to *wormholing*, which is characterised by the formation of dissolution channels where the majority of the fluid transfers to. X-ray microtomography is widely adopted to study this kind of systems, since it can provide information about the rock structure resolved at the micron-scale. This is usually coupled with numerical simulations in order to predict the behaviour of the reactive fluid. Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) methods are a powerful tool for characterising reactive flow because, in addition to imaging, they can give a range of information such as transport characteristics and pore-size distributions. This work attempts to characterise dissolution in a reactive flow system using NMR techniques, which is accomplished in a variety of ways. First an innovative experimental protocol is defined to dynamically study the dissolution of carbonate rocks of various heterogeneities at the core-scale, allowing for the detection of major structural changes as well as temporally-resolved direct measurements of the system transport properties via …
abstract: Reactive flow in porous media is a complex transport phenomenon which involves the simultaneous flow and reaction of a fluid in a porous medium and plays a critical role in improving our understanding of carbon sequestration. When CO2 is introduced into a storage site, which might be a hosting rock formation, high temperatures and pressures result in the production of a supercritical phase, which can then react with the existing brine to generate carbonic acid. This process is defined as reactive flow and may lead to both dissolution and/or precipitation. Major effort has been invested in researching the former since it may induce significant structural changes in the formation and has previously been examined for acid stimulation treatments in the oil and gas industry. Various dissolving regimes may be encountered depending on the reservoir characteristics and the physical conditions of the hosted fluid, ranging from uniform to *wormholing*, which is characterised by the formation of dissolution channels where the majority of the fluid transfers to. X-ray microtomography is widely adopted to study this kind of systems, since it can provide information about the rock structure resolved at the micron-scale. This is usually coupled with numerical simulations in order to predict the behaviour of the reactive fluid. Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) methods are a powerful tool for characterising reactive flow because, in addition to imaging, they can give a range of information such as transport characteristics and pore-size distributions. This work attempts to characterise dissolution in a reactive flow system using NMR techniques, which is accomplished in a variety of ways. First an innovative experimental protocol is defined to dynamically study the dissolution of carbonate rocks of various heterogeneities at the core-scale, allowing for the detection of major structural changes as well as temporally-resolved direct measurements of the system transport properties via …
author: Fraboni, Francesco
language: eng
keywords: MRI, Reactive Flow, Wormhole dissolution
license: https://apollo8-f-pro.lib.cam.ac.uk/bitstreams/9b98eee2-9750-4313-88f0-a2169142dcdb/download
license: https://www.rioxx.net/licenses/all-rights-reserved/
date published: 2023-08-16
date modified: 2026-07-22T22:23:59Z
provider: Cambridge University
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: University of Cambridge

PropertyValue
property ID: DOI
value: 10.17863/CAM.109991