Determination of Porosity of Rock Samples, Torrefied Biomass, Activated Carbon and Proppant Sand for Usage in Wastewater Treatment and Simulation of Oil Reservoir Analysis using the Barnes Method and Helium Porosimetry

In industry, the porosity of petrochemical reservoirs is measured frequently by coring and is an important property when trying to determine if a site is appropriate for drilling. Porosity can also be used in waste water treatment in order to determine if a material is ideal for water purification in industrial or residential applications. The purpose of this experiment was to simulate a oil reservoir porosity test using various rock core samples, as well as to test the porosity of activated carbon, biomass, and proppant to determine their efficacy in waste water treatment. This was done by using the Barnes method to determine the porosity of the cores, and the usage of a porosimeter to determine the porosity of the carbon, biomass, and proppant. From this, known values of rock porosity could be compared with the experimental porosity to determine if the rock would be ideal for reservoir drilling, and the values of proppant and biomass porosity could be compared to activated carbon to estimate their efficacy in waste water treatment. It was found that ideally activated carbon, with a porosity of 0.60±0.04 would work best for water treatment, though biomass met the critical diameter specifications of under 0.5mm and could also be used for larger particulates. The results showed that rock core 3, with a porosity of 0.21 (roughly around sandstone) would be a good potential reservoir to drill, however 1, 16, and 111 could also prove useful, as their porosity of 0.12 roughly resembled shale, though might require more processing to be easier to drill. Rock core 7 had a porosity of 0.07, which was also around the value for shale, though more machinery or processing may be required to extract petrochemicals effectively. Rock core 17 had a porosity of 0.00, which could store little to no fluid, making it a bad candidate for drilling. Introduction In modern oil reservoir core analysis properties like porosity, permeability, and saturation, are routinely tested to determine the distribution of hydrocarbons and to control the flow of existing hydrocarbon phases within the reservoir. (1) Knowledge of effective porosity can help to determine the original hydrocarbon volume within the reservoir as well as the ease of extraction of this hydrocarbon. (1) The original porosity of the material is a property of the original material, but induced porosity can result from fractures in the rock structure, or solution cavities in the rock (often found in limestone), adding to the porosity of the material overall. (1) Factors like grain size, grain shape, sorting, clay content, compaction, and cementation all may affect the porosity of a reservoir rock. (2) Low effective porosity, and low permeability in a reservoir may affect the reservoir's commercial viability, requiring more expensive methods of extraction. (2) When cleaning waste water from these reservoirs and from other industrial sources, porosity of the adsorber must also be taken into account. (3) The filling and filtration of water through micro and mesopores in the entire pore system plays a key role in adsorbing industrial hazards such as benzene and toluene from industrial wastewater. (3) In this experiment the porosity of various unknown rock samples was determined using the barnes method, in order to simulate the determination of porosity of oil reservoir cores; helium porosimetry was also used to determine the porosity of torrefied biomass, activated carbon, and proppant sand, for possible usage in wastewater