Coal Reservoir

Characterization
Coal Porosity, & Coal Permeability
Coal Porosity
Coal Reservoir Characterization
- a fundamental property that makes coal a unique material; the majority
of methane is adsorbed in the pore system of the coal matrix. Therefore,
the study of coal porosity is essential.

Coal Porosity is categorized as;

Total porosity
- Related to coalbed methane production which denotes the porosity with the
entire porous volume, including closed pores
Effective porosity
- The porosity with connectivity, refers to the porosity excluding closed pores
Cleat porosity
- Represents the porosity that only involves the cleat system, and is often
used in the development and evaluation of permeability models.
Macropores – diameters are > 50 nm
- micropores increase with increasing carbon content
Mesopores – diameter are > 2 and < 50 nm
- macropores increase with decreasing carbon content
Micropores – diameter are < 2 nm
Methods to measure and calculate coal porosity;

• Helium Porosity

• Traditional Mercury Intrusion Porosimetry (MIP)

• Nitrogen adsorption at 77 K

• Microfocus X-ray Computerized Tomography (µCT)

• Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM)

• Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR)

• Well Logging
HELIUM POROSITY
- In this technique, the assumptions that helium does not adsorb in the
coal or the adsorption amount is negligible, and it can be regarded
as an ideal gas. The pore space of a coal sample is replaced by
helium, the amount of which is detected to develop the porosity
(Hedenblad 1997).

- Since helium has the smallest molecular size available, it can

penetrate the whole coal structure more thoroughly than any other
gases.

- Moreover, the low molecular weight and high diffusivity features

make helium capable to acquire the information of coal with low
porosity. This measurement also allows repeatable experiments with
high precision results (Kazimierz et al. 2004).
MERCURY INTRUSION POROSIMETRY
- The pores in coal are assumed as tiny cylinders or capillaries, and
the basic physical principle is that mercury is a kind of nonwetting
fluid, so that capillary action does not enable mercury to permeate
through pores unless an external pressure is applied.

- The mercury injection apparatus, or also known as mercury

porosimeter, by the application of gradual injection of liquid
mercury into an evacuated pore system under continuously
increasing external pressures by small increments.

- The porosity can be then acquired by transferring the volume

pressure curve to the porosity-pressure curve using software. The
mercury pressure is raised up by small increments, and the
corresponding injected mercury volumes are recorded periodically.
- The higher the external pressure is, the smaller size of a pore can be
penetrated by mercury.
- MIP does not measure the internal size of a pore, it rather determines
the largest entrance toward a specific pore, and due to the pore throat
structure, the intruded mercury may not fill the whole space of a pore,
which is called the ink bottle effect.
NITROGEN ADSORPTION at 77K

- used method for the determination of coal surface area and

characterization of coal pore size distribution.

- This is accepted as the standard procedure for the estimate of

microstructure of porous media due to a number of advantages,
including high chemical stability, less destruction compared to
mercury intrusion method, and easy implementation compared to
other visual methods such as SEM.

- The main drawback of nitrogen adsorption at 77 K is the diffusional

problems of nitrogen molecule into the narrow coal pores at such low
temperature, and consequently, the results obtained using nitrogen
adsorption are often smaller than other methods.
Brunauer–Emmett–Teller (BET)
- is used to evaluate the surface area of a porous media

Barrett–Joyner–Halenda (BJH)
- This method is used to calculate porosity pore size distribution using
the Kevin model, but applies only to the range of mesopore and
macropore size
 MICROFOCUS X-RAY COMPUTED
TOMOGRAPHY

- Computed tomography (CT) technique implements an X-ray

detector and mathematical algorithms for tomographic imaging
reconstruction, producing cross-sectional image slices of the inner
structure of a sample, which is resulted from the measurement and
analysis of penetrating multiple radiation beams through the
sample in a same plane.

- The Microfocus X-ray CT (µCT) is a nondestructive method,

allowing visualization of the inner microstructure of coal and
therefore, is suitable for estimating coal porosity. This technique
can provide coal porosity at any position of a sample. Moreover,
µCT makes it possible to measure coal porosity including those
closed pores inside.
SMALL ANGLE X-RAY/NEUTRON
SCATTERING

- Small angle X-ray (SAXS) and Small angle neutron scattering

(SANS) can be used to detect the cross-sectional geometry of
pore space of coal samples, including pore size distribution, as
well as total porosity.

- SAXS and SANS are nonintrusive techniques that are

costefficient, and do not require much sample preparation.
Though they only give the cross-sectional information of a coal
sample, the results derived from these methods can be regarded
as representative of the whole sample if taken the average
(Radlinski et al. 2004). In the light of these statements, the total
porosity can be estimated.
NUCLEAR MAGNETIC RESONANCE
(LOGGING)

- NMR measures the gross population of hydrogen protons in coal

formation, including those of the water and gas in coal porosity
systems, but excluding those in the solid matrix. That is to say that in
general cases, NMR signal solely reveals the hydrogen nuclei in the
pore space of coal.

- NMR measurement contains two major parts: aligning hydrogen

magnetic moments by the employment of an external magnetic field
and generating a dipole moment in the hydrogenous module of a
coal mass.
 - NMR can be used as an efficient tool to characterize the total coal porosity,
and it does not require sample destruction when compared with other
conventional methods. It is an advanced and quantitative method in such
application.
- Furthermore, the NMR technology is applied to in-situ logging, exhibiting
relatively high practical applicability in measuring coal porosity and even
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porosity, the NMR logging was the most direct and efficient
WELL LOGGING

- Well logging delivers in-situ coal petrologic information by using

logging devices in boreholes.

• Density Logging
- utilizes a gamma ray source to measure the bulk density of
coal. The basis of this measurement is the Compton effect
(Compton 1923), indicating that the gamma ray is partially
scattered by the atoms in coal formation, and partially
adsorbed, and the gamma ray count is inversely related to coal
density.

• Sonic Logging
- also called as an acoustic log, employs acoustic measurements
to record interval transit time of a sound wave traveling
through the coal formation.
COAL PERMEABILITY
- Coal permeability describes the transportability of water and gas to flow
through interconnected pores and cleats of coal formations, and plays a key
role in achieving economic methane flow and production rates (Guo and
Cheng 2013).

- However, it is affected greatly by gas desorption and effective stress change

due to gas depletion.

- As the reservoir pressure reduces below the desorption pressure, methane is

released from coal matrix to fracture network, and consequently coal matrix
shrinks. As a result of the shrinkage, the cleats dilate and cleat permeability
correspondingly improves. On the other hand, the gas depletion reduces
reservoir pressure, and in turn increases effective stress, which closes cleat
apertures and reduces permeability.
- Whether the resultant dynamic permeability is greater or less than the
original permeability value depends on the net results of these two
competing mechanisms (Chen et al. 2011).

- The heterogeneities of coalbeds also play an important role in the coal

permeability distribution feature. It makes coal permeability vary not
only from basin to basin but also within a certain seam, depending on
coal rank, geological age, purity, in-situ stress, gas and water
saturations, gas concentrations, seam depth, tectonics, and localized
shear zone.

- The permeability variation within a basin over the course of depletion is

usually greater than that between basins. The definition of coal
permeability is segregated as the combination of absolute permeability
and gas or water relative permeability, yet in reservoir engineering, coal
permeability generally refers to the absolute permeability. In order to
acquire the coal permeability, in-situ and laboratory approaches are
employed.
LABORATORY MEASUREMENTS

• Absolute Permeability
- This is an inherent property of coal, rather than the fluids running
through it; however, it does rely on in-situ stress and gas
concentration.

- Absolute permeability can be further divided into matrix permeability

and cleat permeability due to the dual porosity system of coal. To be
specific, matrix permeability is determined only by the pores within
coal matrix, while cleat permeability is determined by the naturally
developed fractures including face cleat and butt cleat, which are
commonly found perpendicular to each other.
- Absolute permeability values and gas or water saturations play a key
role in determining relative permeability amount, and in turn
significantly impact coalbed methane production performance.
LABORATORY MEASUREMENTS

• Relative Permeability

- This can be obtained from in-situ and laboratory measurements. They can
be broken down into steady state and unsteady-state approaches.
 Steady-state approach, the mixture of water and gas are injected
simultaneously into a coal sample at constant flow rates until the expelled
fluids have the same fraction as the injected ones.
 Unsteady-state approaches apply one fluid to displace the second fluid in
a second-fluid-saturated coal sample, consuming much shorter time.
WELL TESTING

- Coal permeability can be determined through well testing from

the pressure response to a change in gas or water flow rate.
- The theory underlying well tests is that when a well pressure
change is made to the fluids that are in the equilibrium state, a
down-hole pressure change is produced, and such change
diffuses radially with time and finally reaches a new equilibrium
(Chen and Lian 2003).
WELL TESTING

• INJECTION/FALLOFF TESTS

- An IFT is performed by injecting water into a water-saturated coal seam

and thus, the permeability resulting from this method is the absolute
permeability. It monitors the instant pressure change that responds to the
injection rate.

 The procedure of an IFT essentially follows four steps:

1. Setting down test devices and connecting them to surface equipment.

2. Opening down-hole test valve and wellhead controlling valve and
injecting water with a constant rate.
3. Shutting in the well and stopping injection.
4. Monitoring pressure falloff curves and analyzing the data
WELL TESTING

• DRILL STEM TESTS

- A DST is a procedure that isolates disturbing influences, and tests the
permeability of a coal seam, and can be conducted in both open holes and
cased holes, allowing formation fluids to migrate to the surface or to a
chamber in the DST tool.

 The typical procedure of DSTs includes the following;

• Tester is lowered into hole: Increasing pressure of mud column.
• Packers are set: Gauge records slight pressure increase as packers expand.
• Tester valve opens and pressure drops: Formation fluids enter hole.
• Tester valve closes: Gauge records increase of pressure to shut-in
pressure.
• Packers are released: Gauge records abrupt pressure increase under mud
column.
• Tester is withdrawn: Gauge records decrease pressure of mud column.