Petrophysical Properties of Icelandic Rocks
Petrophysical Properties of Icelandic Rocks
复制标题
冰岛岩石的岩石物理性质
DOI:
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发表时间:
2001
期刊:
影响因子:
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通讯作者:
G. Ó. Friðleifsson
中科院分区:
文献类型:
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作者:
H. Franzson;Steinar Þór Guðlaugsson;G. Ó. Friðleifsson
A systematic rock sampling has been carried out in the eroded equivalents of the presently active hydrothermal areas in Iceland in order to study the reservoir characteristics of geothermal systems. A total of about 500 rock samples form the database. The project is ongoing and in this paper we focus on two aspects of the data collection: Firstly, petrographic data is presented to show that hydrothermal alteration severely alters the primary porosity of the rock and furthermore show that the rock alteration in basaltic lavas is related to the primary porosity of the rock. It is suggested that the observed systematic difference between the porosity determined with gas expansion and petrographical analysis of thin sections is due to microporosity (<30 μm) which is below the detection limit in the thin section analysis. This difference is mostly within 5% for basaltic intrusions and for most lavas. At high alteration larger differences are observed for some of the lavas. Tuffaceous rocks and sediments show a much greater difference indicating higher proportion of microporosity . The pores are more than 85% filled at higher alteration than mixed layer clay zone. Rocks with primary porosities higher than about 14% seem to fill more readily than those with lower porosities, probably indicating better permeability of the former. Grain density is shown to decrease with increasing alteration, and it is plausible that grain density increases again as the rocks go through progressively higher temperature alteration where higher density alteration minerals are preferentially formed. The permeability of a young unaltered olivine tholeiite lava flow in Reykjavik shows unusual petrophysical properties: The highly porous margin of the flow has an order of magnitude lower permeability than the less porous inner part. The high permeability – low porosity samples are also characterised by low seismic velocity and high grain density. The preferred explanation of the permeability anomaly is that an extensive connected network of grain boundary microcracks is the feature that causes high permeability in the coarser and inner part of the flow. Another but apparently less likely explanation is that an isolating glass coating around the vesicles in the marginal part of the lava flow inhibits permeable connections between the pores.