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X-ray Microtomography of Intermittency in Multiphase Flow at Steady State Using a Differential Imaging Method

Publisher
British Geological Survey (BGS)
Updated
28 August 2026
Topic
Not set
Licence
Not set

Summary

The images in this dataset are a sample of Bentheimer Sandstone from a micro-computed tomography (micro-CT) scan acquired with a voxel resolution of 6.00µm. We imaged the steady state flow of brine and decane in Bentheimer sandstone. We devised an experimental method based on differential imaging to examine how flow rate impacts the pore-scale distribution of fluids during coinjection. This allows us to elucidate flow regimes (connected, or breakup of the nonwetting phase pathways) for a range of fractional flows at two capillary numbers, Ca, namely 3.0E-7 and 7.5E-6. At the lower Ca, for a fixed fractional flow, the two phases appear to flow in connected unchanging subnetworks of the pore space, consistent with conventional theory. At the higher Ca, we observed that a significant fraction of the pore space contained sometimes oil and sometimes brine during the 1 h scan: this intermittent occupancy, which was interpreted as regions of the pore space that contained both fluid phases for some time, is necessary to explain the flow and dynamic connectivity of the oil phase; pathways of always oil-filled portions of the void space did not span the core. This phase was segmented from the differential image between the 30 wt % KI brine image and the scans taken at each fractional flow. Using the grey scale histogram distribution of the raw images, the oil proportion in the intermittent phase was calculated. The pressure drops at each fractional flow at low and high flow rates were measured by high precision differential pressure sensors. The relative permeabilities and fractional flow obtained by our experiment at the mm-scale compare well with data from the literature on cm-scale samples.

Data links

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Citation Information - Digital Object Identifier (DOI) 28/8/2026
Resource locator 28/8/2026

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Additional information

Source Metadata
XML, HTML
Date added
28 August 2026
Harvest GUID
76385908-22bc-74ee-e054-002128a47908
Dataset reference date (creation)
2018-09-20
Frequency of update
notApplicable
Access constraints
The copyright of materials derived from the British Geological Survey's work is vested in the Natural Environment Research Council [NERC]. No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a retrieval system of any nature, without the prior permission of the copyright holder, via the BGS Intellectual Property Rights Manager. Use by customers of information provided by the BGS, is at the customer's own risk. In view of the disparate sources of information at BGS's disposal, including such material donated to BGS, that BGS accepts in good faith as being accurate, the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) gives no warranty, expressed or implied, as to the quality or accuracy of the information supplied, or to the information's suitability for any use. NERC/BGS accepts no liability whatever in respect of loss, damage, injury or other occurence however caused.
Responsible party
Qatar Carbonates and Carbon Storage Research Centre (author, pointOfContact); Imperial College London (principalInvestigator, pointOfContact)
ISO 19139 resource type
nonGeographicDataset
Metadata language
eng

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