Avaliação das propriedades elétricas e de molhabilidade de rochas carbonáticas.

Abstract

The physical properties of the rocks have great importance in the planning, execution and cost of the reservoir engineering projects. The objective of this research is to evaluate the electrical properties of the rocks from the analysis of x-ray microtomography images, in addition to searching for a correlation with the other petrophysical properties. For the development of this research, 16 samples of carbonates, 12 limestone and 4 dolomites, were selected from three different basins (Araripe, Potiguar and Sergipe - Alagoas). In this research, from the microtomographic images and the use of Avizo Fire software, computational petrophysical data were obtained, as well as the generation of a three - dimensional mesh to simulate the electrical properties of the samples, being this simulation carried out in Comsol Multiphysics software. Using some properties obtained in the research and applying the Archie’s law, it was possible to evaluate the wettability of the samples. The values of total density also have good relation with the porosity and saturating fluid. When analyzing the relationship between porosity and permeability, can be highlighted the samples with similar porosity values, but with very different permeabilities. This factor can be explained by the low connectivity of the pores, resulting in low permeability. When comparing the porosities obtained by conventional and computational tests, in some cases different values were observed for the same sample. This can be explained by the subjective choice of the subvolume of the computational sample and the fact that the conventional test only measures the effective porosity. Still observing the results of the tests, it was verified that the porosity may present an inversely proportional relation with the tortuosity. The resistivity showed a strong relationship with the type of rock, where calcareous samples have higher resistivity than dolomite samples. The pore connectivity of a rock can be determinant in the influence of the porosity on the resistivity of this rock, since isolated pores do not have great influence on the electrical conductivity of a rock. When assessing the wettability, seven water-wettable samples, three with neutral or intermediate wettability, and six preferentially oil-wettable were identified. The wettability of the samples was directly related to the basins that were located.