Pore characterization of oil sands by X-ray MicroCT and 3D image analysis.

Oil is what drives the petroleum industry, where conventional oil has been and still is the prime source due to its easier production and hence cost, and as it is a finite source and reserves are declining it has opened the doors to a secondary source that is the oil sands also called tar sands. Limited work on oil sands charachterisation is available tilll now. In the context of a multidisciplinary study conducted on this new resource, in this work 3D image analysis procedures have been considered and first results are shown in order to supply a quantitative characterization of the oil sands inner structure . In particular, micro-CT scans from unconsolidated material from Canada have been performed. Two kind of approaches in 3D image analysis have been applied: "pore-throat analysis" (PT Analysis) based on the medial axis transform, proposed by Lindquist et al. (2000) and the "successive opening algorithm" (SO Analysis) based on mathematical morphology approach (Serra, 1982). Pore throat radii distribution and tortuosity, 3D Pore Size Distribution and Vertical Connectivity have been performed.