Abstract

A new optical technique is employed in petroleum prospecting and exploiting departments for determining capillary pressure curves and measuring dynamic parameters of oil layers. This method is more accurate and automatic than traditional mercury intrusion and semipermeable portioned methods. In petroleum prospecting and exploiting, a high-speed centrifuge is employed to determine the oil contents of core samples. As the rotating speed of the centrifuge increases from 300 to 21000 rpm, the oil and water in the rotating core are separated gradually; the height of the separation level gives information on the percentage of oil. In our system, four rotating cores are synchronously illuminated by an xenon flash lamp that is monitored by a laser synchrosystem attached to the rotating axis of the centrifuge. The dynamically steady image is photographed by a video camera and displayed on a television monitor. I propose that the water column height can be determined by number of horizontal scan lines. To do this the video signal is processed with a binary-state pulsed strobe, and the processed data are sent to the printer. As a result, the experimental data can be analyzed by using the method of least squares.

© 1990 Optical Society of America