Permeability-velocity model for clay bearing and cemented sandstone

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Yijie Zhou*,
Zakir Hossain
Rock Solid Images Inc, 2600 South Gessner Road, Suite 650, Houston, USA.

Summary Introduction
Sandstone is one of the most significant groups of reservoir
The objective of this study is to experimentally and rocks as approximately half of the known hydrocarbon
theoretically revise the relations between porosity, reserves are in sandstone. Sandstones are mainly
permeability, and elastic wave velocity of diagenetic composed of a mixture of clastic quartz grains. Sandstones
sandstone. Many such relationships exist in the literature, have better granular geometry than carbonate rocks,
however, they do not consider diagenetic effects. We found therefore interpretation of their physical properties can be
clean sandstone can be modeled with Kozenys relation; considered to be an easier task. However, sandstones are
however it breaks down for clay-bearing sandstones and often found to have undergone diagenetic processes. Clay
diagenetically-altered sandstones. Porosity is the first order bearing and cemented sandstones are common place in
parameter that affects permeability and elastic properties;
clay and cement cause secondary effects on these
properties.Combining theoretical models with laboratory
measured data, we have derived mathematical relationships
for porosity-permeability, porosity-velocity and
permeability-velocity in diagenetic sandstone. The effects
of clay and cementation are described using coefficients
introduced into these relationships. The relationships
provided in this study can greatly help to determine
permeability and velocity from porosity or to estimate Figure 1: Geological processes of sandstone diagenesis. (a)
permeability from velocity measurements. Dense packing of quartz grains, (b Quartz overgrowth cemented
sandstone, (d) Pore-filling cemented/clay bearing sandstone.

Figure 2: Cross plot of porosity and permeability for sandstone (Gomez, 2009), clay bearing sandstone (Han, 2010) and cemented sandstone
(Hossain et al., 2011). The reference lines represent published porosity-permeability relations. Clay bearing and cemented sandstones show
different trends than the traditional models.

2014 SEG DOI http://dx.doi.org/10.1190/segam2014-0774.1

SEG Denver 2014 Annual Meeting Page 2941
 Permeability-velocity model for clay bearing and cemented sandstone

sedimentary basins and can degrade the overall reservoir

quality compared to clean sandstones. Diagenesis of
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sandstones, resulting in for example silica lining (Figure

1b) or pore-filling clay minerals (Figure 1c), can greatly
change the shape of inter-granular pores, and the
corresponding physical properties. Clay and cement in
sandstones also increase the complexity of rock physics
analysis.

Porosity and permeability are two of the most important

parameters required to characterize the reservoir. Both vary
as a function of pore geometry, grain packing, grain shape,
pore-filling solids, sorting, and any associated diagenesis
facies. Kozeny (1927) introduced the relationship between
porosity (), permeability (k) and specific surface area of
bulk volume (S) using well known Kozenys equation as:

3
k c Equation 1
S2
where, c is Kozenys factor. This factor can be estimated
from porosity via a simple model of linear 3D
interpenetrating tubes (Mortensen et al., 1998):

1
1 4
c 4 cos arccos2 1 4 Equation 2
3 3

Figure 2 shows the cross plot of porosity and permeability

for clay-bearing sandstone, greensand, and clean sandstone.
Different porosity and permeability model curves are also
plotted for reference. We can see that some porosity-
permeability relations may be captured using reference
curves. However, these reference curves do not describe the
clay-bearing sandstone and cemented greensand. For clay-
bearing sandstone, due to the clay effect, the permeability
will decrease, given certain porosities. Similarly,
permeability will also decrease due to the cementation in
greensand. Diagenesis of sandstone can greatly change the
shape of inter-granular pores, the specific surface area of
bulk volume will correspondingly change due to the clay
and cementation effect, therefore, the traditional Kozeny
equation does not apply to such diagenesis sandstone.

The objective of this study is to experimentally and

theoretically revisit the relations between porosity,
permeability, and elastic wave velocity of diagenetic
sandstone. We analyze how porosity relates to
permeability, and velocity using laboratory measured and
theoretical models. We derive porosity-permeability
models for clean sandstone, clay bearing sandstone and
glauconite bearing sandstone, which is further combined
with rock physics models to derive the permeability-
velocity relations for such sandstones.
Figure 3: (a) Porosity-permeability relationships: 1-model-derived
porosity-permeability trend for pure sandstone, 2-model-derived
porosity-permeability trend for clay bearing sandstone and 3-model-
derived porosity-permeability trends for pore-filling cementation and
grain rimming. (b) Model derived porosity-specific surface area of
bulk volume (S) relationships, (c) Model derived porosity- Kozenys
constant relation.

2014 SEG DOI http://dx.doi.org/10.1190/segam2014-0774.1

SEG Denver 2014 Annual Meeting Page 2942
 Permeability-velocity model for clay bearing and cemented sandstone

Data, Method and Results

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We used three laboratory measured data sets: glauconite

bearing greensand from the North Sea (Hossain et al.,
2011); Fontainbleau sandstone (Gomez, 2009) and clay
bearing sandstone (Han, 2010). The glauconite bearing
Paleocene greensand is dominated by quartz but weakly
cemented to quartz cemented. The mineralogy of
Fontainbleau sandstone is 100% quartz with an average
grain size of 250 m. The clay bearing sandstones include
0-30% clay content.

The effects of clay and cement on porosity-permeability

relations are complex. Therefore, using the traditional
permeability models, we are unable to describe these
effects (Figure 2). Figure 3a shows the three models
derived for porosity-permeability trends, which are
obtained through curve fitting to clean sandstone, clay
bearing sandstone and cemented sandstone. Figure 3b
shows the model derived porosity-specific surface area of
the bulk volume and how this relates to the porosity-
permeability trends using Kozenys equation. We observe
that for each type of sandstone, the porosity and specific
surface area of the bulk volume has a linear relationship in
the log-log plot. Thus porosity and specific surface area of
bulk volume have the following relationship:
log(S ) a log( ) b Equation 3
Combining Equation 3 with the Kozenys equation, we
have new permeability model:
3 2 a
k c Equation 4
102b
where, a and b are the coefficients that need to be
determined according to different rock types. For clean
sandstone, a is -1.0, and b is -2.2; for clay-bearing
sandstone, a is -2.5, and b is -2.3; for greensand with pore-
filling cementation, a is -5.5 and b is -3.0. c is Kozenys
factor, which can be estimated from porosity using
Mortensen method (1998). To simplify Mortensen method,
we can also derive the relation for porosity- Kozenys
constant in Figure 3c through curving fitting:
c 0.15 0.18 Equation 5
With the simplified porosity-permeability model provided,
assuming we can determine the coefficients a and b, given
certain rock type and porosity, we can easily determine the
permeability using by using the modified Kozenys
equation (Equation 4).
Figure 4: Modeling of porosity and velocity relations using Rock
Physics Diagnostics (RPD). Diagenetic and pore structure are
primary textural controls on porosity-velocity relationships.
Green curve is obtained from the soft-sediment model for
greensand.
Figure 4 shows velocity and porosity relationships for
different sandstones. The samples are plotted together with
rock physical modeling as described above. Most of the
clean sandstones (yellow points) follow the stiff-sand trend,
but the clay-bearing sandstone (black points), and
greensands with pore-filling cement (green points) are
scattered in different intermediate stiff-sand models due to
diagenetic effects.
We simplified the soft-sand and stiff-sand model curves
using the curve fitting method. Here, we can see that the
soft-sand model usually provides the lower bound of the
velocity, and it can be fit with a power equation as:
V p 1.86 0.28 Equation 6
And stiff-sand model provides the upper bound of the
velocity, and it can be fitted with a linear equation as:
V p 8.23 6.04 Equation 7
With the above two equations, we can simplify the
estimation of the bounds of the velocity, given certain
porosity. However, the coefficients within the equations
may change respectively with different rocks.

2014 SEG DOI http://dx.doi.org/10.1190/segam2014-0774.1

SEG Denver 2014 Annual Meeting Page 2943
 Permeability-velocity model for clay bearing and cemented sandstone
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Figure 5: Modeling of permeability-velocity relationship: 1-model-derived from stiff-sand model and permeability model for pure sandstone, 2-
model-derived from stiff-sand model and permeability model for cemented sandstone, 3-model-derived from soft-sand model and permeability
model for cemented sandstone, 4-model-derived from soft-sand model and permeability model for pure sandstone. Given a porosity value, for
example 0.2, the possible region of permeability-velocity should fall in a rectangular square (marked) in the cross-plot.

Combining Equation 4, 6, 7, we can derive the Conclusions

permeability-velocity relations for different diagenetic
sandstones, which are shown in Figure 5. For the first and The permeability for clean sandstone can be estimated with
second cases modeled with the stiff-sand model, we have: Kozenys relation; however it breaks down for clay-bearing
sandstones and diagentically-altered sandstones. We
3 2a propose new correlation models for specific surface area of
6.04 V p ( )
k c
10 2b Equation 8 bulk volume, which can consider diagenetic effects by
8.23 changing the coefficients of the correlation. The new
correlation, combined with Kozenys relation can better
predict the permeability of different sandstones, including
The coefficient should change according to different clay-bearing sandstones and diagentically-altered
sandstones. For the third and fourth cases modeled with sandstones. For porosity-velocity relations we employed
soft-sand model, we have: simplified soft-sand and stiff-sand models. Combining
0.28( 3 2a )
V p ( ) these relations with the new permeability models, we
k c
10 2b Equation 9 defined permeability-velocity relations for clay-bearing
1.86 sandstones and diagentically-altered sandstones.

2014 SEG DOI http://dx.doi.org/10.1190/segam2014-0774.1

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 http://dx.doi.org/10.1190/segam2014-0774.1

EDITED REFERENCES
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SEG Technical Program Expanded Abstracts have been copy edited so that references provided with the online metadata for
each paper will achieve a high degree of linking to cited sources that appear on the Web.
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