NMR Relaxation and Petrophysical Properties

Abstract

NMR relaxation is routinely used in the field of geosciences to give basic petrophysical properties such as porosity, pore size distribution, saturation etc. In this tutorial, we focus on the pore size distribution deduced from NMR. We recall the basic principle used in the interpretation of the NMR signal and compare the results with other standard petrophysical techniques such as mercury pore size distribution, BET specific surface measurements, thin section visualizations. The NMR pore size distribution is a unique information available on water saturated porous media and can give similar results as MICP in certain situations. The scaling of NMR relaxation time distribution (s) into pore sizes (μm) requires the knowledge of the surface relaxivity (μm/s) and we recommend using specific surface measurements as an independent determination of solid surface areas. With usual surface relaxivities, the NMR technique can explore length‐scales starting from nano‐meters and ending around 100 μm. Finally, we will introduce briefly recent techniques sensitive to the pore to pore diffusional exchange, providing new information on the connectivity of the pore network, but showing another possibility of discrepancy in the determination of pore size distribution with standard techniques.