A novel laboratory method for reliable water content determination of shale reservoir rocks

摘要

The paper presents a novel laboratory evaporation method (EM) of the water saturation measurement of the shale reservoir rock samples with initial water content down to below 1 wt%. The EM offers fast, efficient, and accurate measurements of the total water content, free and loosely clay-bound water. The method is characterized in terms of its operating domain and relative measurement error. The research results show that a good quality data set requires the use of fresh samples with a maximum preserved initial water saturation, fragmented into pieces with specific dimensions of a few centimetres. A comprehensive comparison between the EM and the Dean-Stark method conducted on low-permeable shale rocks of the Bazhenov formation clearly shows EM's advantages regarding accuracy and turn-around time.