Geo Materials Solutions

With the globally increasing demand for more energy, the world's oil and gas resources have been strained to its limits. As the price of oil increases, scientists are exploring every material available containing natural energy resources like oil and gas shale, carbonates, and limestones. Conventional core analysis techniques take months to produce viable results resulting in a production halt during the time of analysis. With Xradia's MicroXCT, scientists can now obtain pore connectivity and microstructure modeling on-site and within minutes.

The MicroXCT-100 was specifically built for mobility to enable on-site imaging of cuttings taken from core drilling. It combines a high-flux laboratory X-ray source with proprietary X-ray optics into a compact ultra-high resolution CT scanner useful for imaging large rock samples and also subsampling small cuttings for accurate extrapolation of large scale data. Because of its unique optics allowing for preferred detector and source setups, the MicroXCT can offer turnaround times on the order of minutes without compromising resolution or field of view. Some of the applications the MicroXCT supports are:

• Sandstone imaging for high-resolution grain orientation and pore connectivity
• Limestone imaging for fossil detection and pore dispersion
• Shale imaging for inclusions and micron sized pores
• Oil and tar sands for high-resolution grain orientation, density dispersion, and pore connectivity