oa Evolution in Thermal Oil-Gas Petrophysics Due to Development of Optical Scanning Technology

Reservoir thermal properties play an important role in thermal enhanced oil recovery (EOR) methods,<br>temperature logging data interpretation, and the modeling of heat and mass transfer in reservoirs and<br>wells. Nevertheless, up to now it has proved complicated to obtain reliable data on reservoir thermal properties.<br>The situation changed when an optical scanning method and two optical scanning instruments were<br>developed for measuring thermal conductivity, diffusivity, and the volumetric heat capacity on full<br>cores and core plugs at laboratory conditions. Optical scanning has allowed us to record the variations<br>of thermal conductivity and diffusivity along the inhomogeneous sample and to determine thermal<br>conductivity and diffusivity tensor components for three-dimensional anisotropy.