A phenomenological connectivity measure for the pore space of rocks

Abstract: The interconnectivity of the porous space is an important characteristic in the study of porous media and their transport properties. Hence we propose a way to quantify it and relate it with the intrinsic permeability of rocks. We propose a measure of connectivity based on geometric and topological information of pore-throat network, which are models built from microtomographic images, and we obtain an analytical method to compute that property. The method is expanded to handle rocks that present a higher degree of heterogenity in the porous space, which characterization requires images from different resolutions (multiscale analysis). Trying to expand the methodology beyond the scope of images, we also propose a new interpretation for the experiment that generates the mercury intrusion curve and calculate the permeability. The methodology was applied to images of 11 rocks, 3 sandstone and 8 carbonate rock samples, and to the experimental mercury intrusion curve of 4 tight gas sand rock samples. We observe as result the existence of a correlation between the experimental and the predicted values. The notions of connectivity developed in this work seek above all to characterize a porous material before a typical macroscopic phenomenology.