Micro-structural information of porous materials by optical coherence tomography

• Use OCT images to measure microstructures and damages in porous media.
• First quantitative application of OCT to evaluate microstructure in natural porous media.
• OCT images used to evaluate pore size and distribution in porous rock oil samples.
• OCT images used to measure pore size and distribution in porous media.

In this study we describe the use of optical coherence tomography (OCT) to reveal microstructures and damages in porous media. An approach for establishing pore size and pore size distribution based upon OCT was developed. This approach was tested with oil source rock samples. Several sedimentary rock samples from Brazilian oil fields with porosity values ranging between 15% and 28% were evaluated, and the results agreed quite well with the traditional pycnometry method. In addition, pore size distribution for the samples in three dimensional planes were obtained. Finally, the experimental results proved that the OCT images with a suited digital post-processing can be used to measure pore size distribution in natural and artificial materials, with the advantage of being non-invasive, faster and much less expensive than other presently available methods.

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