Pore-scale rock modeling specialist Ingrain is investigating ‘nano’ scale structure of oil and gas shales with an Auriga CrossBeam workstation from Carl Zeiss. The workstation combines focused ion beam (FIB) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM)to analyze shale porosity and permeability and evaluate unconventional reservoir potential.
Ingrain will use the Auriga to generate high resolution 3D images which are captured with its ‘vRock’ digital reservoir rock model. Ingrain then uses its fluid flow modeling techniques to determine a reservoir’s commercial potential from the vRock digital analogues.
The Zeiss Auriga’s FIB acts like a nanoscale ‘scalpel’ to remove very thin slices of material from a sample and the SEM provides high resolution images of the rock’s structure, distinguishing between voids and minerals. The automated system produces image slices as thin as 5 nano meters.
By our reckoning (actually Wolfram Alpha), that is around five million slices per inch. That should make for a healthy file size—anyone for a hundred exabytes per cubic inch?
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