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This article represents numerical simulation technique for determining effective spectral electromagnetic properties (effective electrical conductivity and relative dielectric permittivity) of saturated porous media. Information about these properties is vastly applied during the interpretation of petrophysical exploration data of boreholes and studying of rock core samples. The main feature of the present paper consists in the fact, that it involves three-dimensional saturated digital rock models, which were constructed based on the combined data considering microscopic structure of the porous media and the information about capillary equilibrium of oil-water mixture in pores. Data considering microscopic structure of the model are obtained by means of X-ray microscopic tomography. Information about distributions of saturating fluids is based on hydrodynamic simulations with density functional technique. In order to determine electromagnetic properties of the numerical model time-domain Fourier transform of Maxwell equations is considered. In low frequency approximation the problem can be reduced to solving elliptic equation for the distribution of complex electric potential. Finite difference approximation is based on discretization of the model with homogeneous isotropic orthogonal grid. This discretization implies that each computational cell contains exclusively one medium: water, oil or rock. In order to obtain suitable numerical model the distributions of saturating components is segmented. Such kind of modification enables avoiding usage of heterogeneous grids and disregards influence on the results of simulations of the additional techniques, required in order to determine properties of cells, filled with mixture of media. Corresponding system of differential equations is solved by means of biconjugate gradient stabilized method with multigrid preconditioner. Based on the results of complex electric potential computations average values of electrical conductivity and relative dielectric permittivity is calculated. For the sake of simplicity, this paper considers exclusively simulations with no spectral dependence of conductivities and permittivities of model components. The results of numerical simulations of spectral dependence of effective characteristics of heterogeneously saturated porous media (electrical conductivity and relative dielectric permittivity) in broad range of frequencies and multiple water saturations are represented in figures and table. Efficiency of the presented approach for determining spectral electrical properties of saturated rocks is discussed in conclusion.

Traditional geological search methods going to be ineffective. The exploration depth of kimberlite bodies and ore deposits has increased significantly. The only direct exploration method is to drill a system of wells to the depths that provide access to the enclosing rocks. Due to the high cost of drilling, the role of inter-well survey methods has increased. They allows to increase the mean well spacing without significantly reducing the kimberlite or ore body missing probability. The method of inter-well radio wave survey is effective to search for high contrast conductivity objects. The physics of the method based on the dependence of the electromagnetic wave propagation on the propagation medium conductivity. The source and receiver of electromagnetic radiation is an electric dipole, they are placed in adjacent wells. The distance between the source and receiver is known. Therefore we could estimate the medium absorption coefficient by the rate of radio wave amplitude decrease. Low electrical resistance rocks corresponds to high absorption of radio waves. The inter-well measurement data allows to estimate an effective electrical resistance (or conductivity) of the rock. Typically, the source and receiver are immersed in adjacent wells synchronously. The value of the of the electric field amplitude measured at the receiver site allows to estimate the average value of the attenuation coefficient on the line connecting the source and receiver. The measurements are taken during stops, approximately every 5 m. The distance between stops is much less than the distance between adjacent wells. This leads to significant spatial anisotropy in the measured data distribution. Drill grid covers a large area, and our point is to build a three-dimensional model of the distribution of the electrical properties of the inter-well space throughout the whole area. The anisotropy of spatial distribution makes hard to the use of standard geostatistics approach. To build a three-dimensional model of attenuation coefficient, we used one of machine learning theory methods, the method of nearest neighbors. In this method, the value of the absorption coefficient at a given point is calculated by $k$ nearest measurements. The number $k$ should be determined from additional reasons. The spatial distribution anisotropy effect can be reduced by changing the spatial scale in the horizontal direction. The scale factor $\lambda$ is one yet external parameter of the problem. To select the parameters $k$ and $\lambda$ values we used the determination coefficient. To demonstrate the absorption coefficient three-dimensional image construction we apply the procedure to the inter-well radio wave survey data. The data was obtained at one of the sites in Yakutia.

New numerical simulation technique to calculate electrical properties of rocks with two-phase “oil– water” saturation is proposed. This technique takes into account surface conductivity of electrical double layers at the contact between solid rock and aqueous solution inside pore space. The numerical simulation technique is based on acquiring of electrical potential distribution in high-resolution three-dimensional digital model of porous medium. The digital model incorporates the spatial geometry of pore channels and contains bulk and surface grid cells. Numerical simulation results demonstrate the importance of surface conductivity effects.