The Permeability of an Intact Granite

Abstract

The permeability of intact Barre granite is determined by conducting transient hydraulic pulse tests that induce radial flow in saturated granite cylinders containing a water-filled co-axial cavity. Saturated specimens of granite are also subjected to uniform heating on the outer cylindrical surface and the permeability of the granite is measured at the termination of a heating sequence. The theoretical basis for the use of simplified analytical solutions for evaluating the decay of the pressure pulse is examined and the permeability of the granite in the pre-heating and post-heating states is inferred from the results of pulse tests. The reported investigations document one of the limited numbers of large-scale laboratory tests conducted to determine the permeability characteristics of intact granite. The results of the permeability measurements indicate the absence of any appreciable influences of micro structural alterations in the fabric of the granite due to its heating in a saturated condition, at an average temperature of 140°Celsius.

Axial flow hydraulic pulse testing of an argillaceous limestone

“…There are several procedures that can be used to estimate the permeability of the tested rock using experimental data and the theoretical relationships. The method used here follows the procedures proposed by Selvadurai and Carnaffan (1997) and Selvadurai et al (2005), which involves assigning a range of values of K in the expressions (7) and (11), so that a set of experimentally determined pulse decay curves can be completely bounded. This procedure will result in a set of bounds for the permeability of the Lindsay Limestone rather than a specific value.…”

“…Reviews of other applications of the hydraulic pulse tests for permeability testing are given by Selvadurai and Carnaffan (1997) and Gross and Scherer (2003) (measurement of permeability of cementitious materials) and Selvadurai et al (2005) (measurement of permeability of granite cylinders, measuring 405 mm in diameter) and Song and Renner (2006) (permeability of Fontainebleau Sandstone).…”

Carbon sequestration potential of the Habanero reservoir when carbon dioxide is used as the heat exchange fluid

“…These resources, however, are in general located at significant depths (3e5 km below the surface) within geological formations of low permeability. For example, although crystalline rocks have significant radiogenic heat, their permeability is at the micro-Darcy or even nano-Darcy scale (Selvadurai et al, 2005;Bear and Cheng, 2010;Bundschuh and Suárez-Arriaga, 2010). The permeability of sedimentary rocks overlaying radiogenic heat sources is generally higher but at the milli-Darcy scale or less (Bundschuh and Suárez-Arriaga, 2010).…”

Thermo-poromechanics of a fluid-filled cavity in a fluid-saturated geomaterial

“…When dealing with quasi-static deformations in thermo-poroelasto-plastic materials with relatively low permeability (e.g. dense sandstones, limestones and granite; [56][57][58][59]), we can assume that neither the deformation rates of the medium nor the fluid flow rates result in heat generation, and therefore do not contribute to any change in temperature within the medium. This considerably simplifies the equations governing the heat transfer process, which can be expressed as a classical heat conduction equation of the form [60] 8) where k c , ρ and c p are, respectively, the effective values of the thermal conductivity, mass density and heat capacity of the saturated porous medium.…”