TY - JOUR A1 - Kruschwitz, Sabine A1 - Halisch, M. A1 - Dlugosch, R. A1 - Prinz, Carsten T1 - Toward a better understanding of low-frequency electrical relaxation - An enhanced pore space characterization T2 - Geophysics N2 - Relaxation phenomena observed in the electrical low-frequency range (approximately 1 mHz-10 kHz) of natural porous media like sandstones is often assumed to be directly related to the dominant (modal) pore throat sizes measured, for instance, with mercury intrusion porosimetry. Attempts to establish a universally valid relationship between pore size and peak Spectral Induced Polarization (SIP) relaxation time have failed, considering sandstones from very different origins and featuring great variations in textural and chemical compositions as well as in geometrical pore space properties. In addition working with characteristic relaxation times determined in Cole-Cole or Debye decomposition fits to build the relationship have not been successful. In particular, samples with narrow pore throats are often characterized by long SIP relaxation times corresponding to long “characteristic length scales” in these media, assuming that the diffusion coefficients along the electrical double layer were constant. Based on these observations, three different types of SIP relaxation can be distinguished. We present a new way of assessing complex pore spaces of very different sandstones in a multi-methodical approach to combine the benefits of mercury intrusion porosimetry, micro-computed tomography, and nuclear magnetic resonance. In this way, we achieve much deeper insight into the pore space due to the different resolutions and sensitivities of the applied methods to both pore constrictions (throats) and wide pores (pore bodies). We experimentally quantify pore aspect ratios and volume distributions within the two pore regions. We clearly observe systematic differences between three SIP relaxation types identified previously and can attribute the SIP peak relaxation times to measured characteristic length scales within our materials. We highlight selected results for a total of nine sandstones. It seems that SIP relaxation behavior depends on the size difference of the narrow pore throats to the wide pore bodies, which increases from SIP Type 1 to Type 3. PB - Society of Exploration Geophysicists KW - µ-CT KW - Spectral induced polarization KW - Nuclear magnetic resonance KW - Pore space PY - 2020 UR - https://opus4.kobv.de/opus4-bam/frontdoor/index/index/docId/50976 AN - OPUS4-50976 UR - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:kobv:b43-509763 SN - 0016-8033 VL - 85 IS - 4 SP - MR257 EP - MR270 AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany