Nano‐Scale Characterization of Particulate Iron Pyrite Morphology in Shale

Abstract

This study analyses the morphology of iron pyrite particles within a shale sample, captured using nano-computed tomography (Nano-CT). The complex, framboidal morphology of the iron pyrite particles is characterised using various metrics, and comparisons are drawn on their effectiveness to quantify their observed morphological characteristics. Then, simplified representations of selected iron pyrite particles are generated to facilitate a sensitivity analysis of the effect of imaging resolution on morphological parameters of particle form. A discussion is developed on the required number of pixels per particle diameter for particle shape characterisation. It is shown that shape indices that rely on the simplified main particle dimensions can be accurately calculated even for low fidelity levels of 10 pixels per particle diameter. More complex shape indices, that use vertices, volume and surface area, are more sensitive to image resolution even for 40 pixels per particle diameter.

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“…To make image analysis feasible, μCT images of each sample are resized with a factor of 0.25 resulting in a decrease in the size of the 3D matrix to 1861 × 1861 × 7117 voxels. This increases the computational efficiency, while making sure that the particles size and shape are conserved [12].…”