ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Earth Sci.
Sec. Georeservoirs
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/feart.2025.1576484
Multiscale pore/throat characterization in tight sandstone formation with multi-threshold image segmentation algorithm
Provisionally accepted
- 1Yangtze University, Wuhan, China
- 2Research Institute of Petroleum Exploration and Development of PetroChina, Beijing, China
- 3iRock Technologies, Beijing, China
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Pore space in tight sandstone formation is very complex with micro-scale and nano-scale pores/throats, the multi-scale characteristics needs to be considered for the construction of microscopic pore model accurately. In this paper, micro-CT is used to obtain the representative 3D micro-scale gray image, and nano-CT is used to obtain the representative 3D nano-scale gray image based on the representative nano subsample. Then, the multi-threshold image segmentation algorithm is introduced to segment the micro-scale and nano-scale gray image respectively. Three distinct phases are identified in microscale images: (1) micro pore/throat phase, (2) micro-particle phase, and (3) a transitional matrix phase exhibiting intermediate grayscale values. This matrix phase represents unresolved nano-porosity and nano-particles beyond micro-CT resolution limits. Conversely, nanoscale images reveals two discrete phases: well-defined nanopore/throat phase and nano-particle phase. The micro-pore/throat and nano-pore/throat digital rocks are constructed respectively, and the corresponding pore network model in tight sandstone are extracted, the porosity and pore/throat size distribution at micro scale and nano scale is calculated respectively. Moreover, the nano pore/throat characteristics in nano-pore/throat digital rock is upscaled into the matrix phase of micro-pore/throat digital rock, which could calculate the total porosity and multiscale pore/throat size distribution in tight sandstone formation accurately. The digital rock analysis results are verified correctly with the comparison of the lab test results, which provides a fundamental platform for multiscale pore/throat characterization and formation evaluation in tight sandstone formation with important academic and application value.
Keywords: Tight sandstone, micro-nano pore/throat, 3D digital rock, Multiscale characteristic, multi-threshold image segmentation
Received: 14 Feb 2025; Accepted: 21 Apr 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Hu, Han, Wang, Zhu and Dong. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Chenchen Wang, Yangtze University, Wuhan, China
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