Can sodium NMR provide more than a tracer for brine in petrophysics?

Sodium has been suggested as a tracer for brine in reservoir formations, where sodium ions are found exclusively in the aqueous phase, and can be detected by time-domain nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR). To date, petrophysical applications of sodium-23 NMR have focused on concentrated NaCl electrolyte solutions where the nuclear spin relaxation time is related to ion concentration. Therefore, a measure of brine volume is achieved directly from the sodium signal amplitude and relaxation time, available in a single measurement. However, real reservoir formation or injection brines contain many different ionic moieties. Sodium-23 relaxation times and diffusion coefficients are measured using time domain NMR and pulsed field gradient (PFG) NMR techniques, respectively, and shown to depend strongly on the ions present in solution. Correlations between sodium-23 relaxation times and sodium ion concentration are found to differ depending on the cations and other anions present in the brine. However, consistent correlations are obtained for sodium-23 relaxation times and diffusion coefficient, and brine viscosity, regardless of the ionic content of the brine. In general, sodium-23 NMR remains a qualitative technique for monitoring changes in sodium concentration or brine volume (at constant salinity) in reservoir formations. However, if knowledge of the brine chemistry is available, then sodium 23 NMR offers a non-invasive and quantitative method of robustly measuring brine volume and viscosity in petrophysical applications. (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.