Patent Document ID: 5430291
Application ID: 08124688
Patent Status: 1

Claim One:
1. A method to determine the contribution of fracture volume to the pore volume, comprising the steps of: (1) providing test cell means to contain an earthen core; (2) placing an earthen core in said test cell means; (3) pressurizing the test cell means to simulate reservoir conditions; (4) providing a computed tomographic (CT) scanner for scanning the earthen core and generating an image for each scan; (5) making a series of CT scans of said earthen core; (6) transferring the scan images of the CT scanner to an image analysis computer for processing; (7) translating an image from said image analysis computer, which is displayed in Hounsfield Units (HU), into an estimated porosity image by the following equations: EQU H.sub.c =(1-.phi.)*H.sub.r +.phi.*(S.sub.f *H.sub.f +S.sub.g *H.sub.g) EQU S.sub.f +S.sub.g =1 where H.sub.c =CT number (Hounsfield Units) of the core H.sub.r =CT number of the zero porosity rock matrix .phi.=core porosity H.sub.f =CT number of the fluid in core H.sub.g =CT number of the gas in the core S.sub.f and S.sub.g =the fractional saturations of the fluid and the gas in the core, respectively; (8) selecting a region of interest within the porosity image and creating a frequency histogram of the porosity distribution within that region of interest; (9) describing a gaussian distribution the shape of which approximates the peak of the frequency histogram which is caused by the matrix component of said earthen core; (10) obtaining from said gaussian distribution describing the matrix porosity both a mean and a standard deviation and identifying fractures as any areas under the frequency histogram whose porosity is more than three standard deviations above the mean of the gaussian distribution; and (11) determining the contribution to the pore volume of the fractures from the ratio of the area under the frequency histogram that has been identified as fracture to the total area under the porosity histogram.