Department of Mechanical Engineering, Micro and Nano-Scale Transport Laboratory, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB T6G 2G8, Canada.
Microsc Microanal. 2012 Feb;18(1):171-8. doi: 10.1017/S1431927611012505. Epub 2012 Jan 4.
Sedimentary carbonate rocks are one of the principal porous structures in natural reservoirs of hydrocarbons such as crude oil and natural gas. Efficient hydrocarbon recovery requires an understanding of the carbonate pore structure, but the nature of sedimentary carbonate rock formation and the toughness of the material make proper analysis difficult. In this study, a novel preparation method was used on a dolomitic carbonate sample, and selected regions were then serially sectioned and imaged by focused ion beam-scanning electron microscopy. The resulting series of images were used to construct detailed three-dimensional representations of the microscopic pore spaces and analyze them quantitatively. We show for the first time the presence of nanometer-scale pores (50-300 nm) inside the solid dolomite matrix. We also show the degree of connectivity of these pores with micron-scale pores (2-5 μm) that were observed to further link with bulk pores outside the matrix.
沉积碳酸盐岩是原油和天然气等碳氢化合物的天然储层中主要的多孔结构之一。高效的碳氢化合物回收需要了解碳酸盐孔隙结构，但碳酸盐岩的形成性质和材料的韧性使得正确分析变得困难。在这项研究中，对白云岩碳酸盐样品使用了一种新的制备方法，然后对选定的区域进行连续切片，并通过聚焦离子束-扫描电子显微镜成像。所得到的一系列图像被用来构建微观孔隙空间的详细三维表示，并对其进行定量分析。我们首次显示了纳米级孔隙（50-300nm）存在于白云石基质的固体内部。我们还显示了这些孔隙与微米级孔隙（2-5μm）的连通程度，这些微米级孔隙进一步与基质外的体相孔隙相连。
