A method for determining permeability of a porous medium is described which comprises the steps: a) obtaining a three-dimensional picture of the porous medium by an imaging system, b) dividing the three-dimensional picture into a number n of two-dimensional parallel slices, wherein n is an integer of 2 or more, c) identifying one or more pores in a first outermost slice (n.sub.1) using a grid which defines image pixels, d) identifying one or more pores in a second slice (n.sub.2) directly neighboring the first outermost slice (n.sub.1) using the same grid which defines image pixels as for the first outermost slice (n.sub.1), and e) labelling the one or more pores in the second slice (n.sub.2) as connected if at least one of its neighbours in the first outermost slice (n.sub.1) is a pore to give a number of connected pores as a connectivity result. Also described is a system comprising means for carrying out such a method.

The present invention provides a composite oxide that can achieve a high low-temperature output characteristic, a method for manufacturing the same, and a positive electrode active material in which the generation of soluble lithium is suppressed and a problem of gelation is not caused during the paste preparation. A positive electrode active material for non-aqueous electrolyte secondary batteries, including a lithium-metal composite oxide powder including a secondary particle configured by aggregating primary particles containing lithium, nickel, manganese, and cobalt, or a lithium-metal composite oxide powder including both the primary particles and the secondary particle. The secondary particle has a porous structure inside as a main inside structure, the slurry pH is 11.5 or less, the soluble lithium content rate is 0.5[% by mass] or less, the specific surface area is 3.0 to 4.0 [m.sup.2/g], and the porosity is more than 50 to 80[%].

A method of analyzing a composite plug includes creating a composite plug, where the composite plug includes a formation layer, a cement layer, and an interface region between them, and the cement extends into the formation sample in the interface region. The method further includes imaging the composite plug to gather a series of discrete images, where each discrete image in the series depicts a cross section of the composite plug and the discrete images are taken at set increments throughout a depth of the composite plug. The method further includes analyzing each discrete image in the series of discrete images to determine a porosity measurement of each discrete image, determine a first and second boundary of the interface region from the porosity measurement of each discrete image, and determine a depth of the interface region by a number of discrete images between the first boundary and the second boundary.

An apparatus for determining the spatial distribution of materials within a sample using electromagnetic waves. The apparatus probes a sample with electromagnetic waves, measures the response, and determines the spatial configuration based on the measured response.

A method includes screening heterogeneity of a rock sample using nuclear magnetic resonance testing to determine a composition of the rock sample, drilling at least one smaller rock sample representative of the determined composition, and testing the at least one smaller rock sample with mercury injection capillary pressure to obtain a capillary pressure distribution of the at least one smaller rock sample. The method further includes decomposing a T.sub.2 distribution from the nuclear magnetic resonance testing and the capillary pressure distribution using Gaussian fitting to identify multiple pore systems, where the small ends of the Gaussian fitted T.sub.2 distribution and the Gaussian fitted capillary pressure distribution are overlapped for at least one of the identified pore systems.

A method and apparatus for identifying porosity in a structure made by an additive manufacturing process in which a laser is scanned across layers of material to form the structure. Pyrometry data comprising images of the layers acquired during additive manufacturing of the structure is received. The pyrometry data is used to generate temperature data comprising estimated temperatures of points in the layers in the images of the layers. The temperature data is used to identify shapes fit to high temperature areas in the images of the layers. Conditions of the shapes fit to the high temperature areas in the images of the layers are identified. Outlier shapes are identified in the shapes fit to the high temperature areas in the images of the layers using the conditions of the shapes.

A measuring device for pore throat pressure of Jamin effect based on mechanochromic materials is provided and includes: a bubble pressurization part, configured to inject bubbles into a microscopic visualization test part; the microscopic visualization test part including a mechanochromic material and a pore throat structure, configured to characterize changes of pore throat pressure during bubble injection; a waste liquid recycling part, configured to recycle bubble waste liquid passing through the microscopic visualization test part; a data acquisition and analysis part, configured to acquire changing data of the pore throat pressure in the microscopic visualization test part and analyze the changing data to obtain the pore throat pressure. The device is simple in structure and easy to operate, and provides a method for measuring an internal surface pressure of an object. The method can realize a real time measurement of the pore throat pressure of Jamin effect.

A method for estimating in-situ porosity based on cutting images employs a neural network trained with labeled images, the labels indicating wireline porosity values. The method may be used to obtain porosity values along a vertical, deviated or horizontal well, where wireline logging data is not available or unreliable. The method uses machine learning. Training and validating the neural network may be ongoing processes in the sense that any new labeled image that becomes available can be added to the training set and the neural network being retrained to enhance its predictive performance.

The present invention provides a method for estimating fluid saturation of a hydrocarbon-bearing rock from a rock image. The image is segmented to represent either a pore space or solid material in the rock. An image pore volume is estimated from the segmented image, and a corrected pore volume is determined to account for the sub-resolution pore volume missing in the image of the rock. An image-derived wetting fluid saturation of the rock is estimated using a direct flow simulation on the rock image and corrected for the corrected pore volume. A backpropagation-enabled trained model can be used to segment the image. A backpropagation-enabled method can be used to estimate the fluid saturation using an image selected from a series of 2D projection images, 3D reconstructed images and combinations thereof.

The present invention discloses a method of separating, identifying and characterizing cracks in 3D space, which processes as follows to a volumetric image, so as to perform the separation, identification and the characterization of the cracks in the 3D space: 1) preprocessing digital image; 2) statistically analyzing basic information of the digital image: the basic information of the image includes porosity, connectivity of each pore, statistics of pore size, and position, size, orientation and anisotropy of each pore-structure; 3) filtration: removing non-crack structure in the image; 4) smoothening: smoothening and mending the image; 5) thinning: thinning the void structure into a thickness d (d can be any value, but more appropriate to be 2 to 3 voxels generally) in a direction with shortest extension in the 3D space; 6) separation: separating intersected cracks in a crack network by breaking the connections; 7) combination: combining those elongated cracks that are disconnected in the last step, merging tiny structures that are formed during the separation to a nearby large cluster, and restoring cracks to the thickness before thinning, and eventually giving out the characterization of the cracks. In the following expression, the wording “void” is used more, emphasizing the “empty” gap in the image rather than the rock solid. In this patent application, it is mainly for the case where the void appears in a state of crack, not excluding the case where the void appears in a state of small pore.