Benchtop Porosity Measurement Technique Using Electrical Capacitance Tomography (ECT) Sensor

This report consists of five chapters which are introduction, literature review,
methodology, expected results and conclusion. The introduction of the report mentioned
the background study of the project, followed by problem statement, objectives and the
scope of study. The main objective of this project is to design a sensor called Electrical
Capacitance Tomography (ECT) to measure porosity in a core sample. The conventional
techniques used in lab, using Helium Porosimeter and Water Saturation methods are
performed for comparison purposes. The literature review explained about the research
done on topics, related to the project such as the design of ECT sensor and porosity
measurement. ECT sensor is used to visualize and measure the permittivity distribution
of a cross sectional area of vessel. The measurement is done by using multi-electrode
capacitance sensor. For the methodology, it consisted of research methodology process
flow, the project activities with the aid of key milestones diagram, the tools needed for
the success of the project and experimental procedure to run the experiment. The project
started by designing and fabricating the ECT Sensor. The ECT Sensor would then be
used to measure porosity of core sample. The result will be in terms of tomography
image, and porosity of the rock sample would then be measured. The porosity measured
from ECT sensor would be compared with the conventional technique of porosity
measurement in lab to identify the effectiveness of ECT sensor in measuring porosity.
Based on the result, the measurement of ECT shows error more than 10% of the porosity
value measured using helium porosimeter and water saturation technique. The ECT
sensor may not be effective to measure porosity, yet with further improvement, the
possibility of measuring and visualizing the porosity distribution of core sample can be
done.