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US 9,448,093 B2Granted
Measurement of properties of fluids using MRI
AssigneeAspect Ai Ltd.
InventorUri Rapoport
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A method of determining rheological properties of a fluid. The method includes: providing an open-bore tube and defining within the bore a three dimensional grid (3DG) of voxels; defining at least an inlet cross section (ICS) and an outlet cross section (OCS); defining a volume of interest within the bore between the ICS and the OCS; obtaining rheological properties of the fluid; applying a pressure gradient to the bore between the ICS and the OCS; and nuclear magnetic resonance imaging the fluid within the volume of interest to determine various aspects of the fluid.
Claims16
A method for determining rheological properties of a fluid, comprising the steps of:
- a. providing an open-bore tube and defining within said bore a three dimensional grid (3DG) of voxels, with each voxel Voxi having a position (xi, yi, zi) in said 3DG;
- defining at least two different cross sections, namely inlet cross section (ICS) and outlet cross section (OCS);
- and defining a volume of interest (VOI) within said bore between said ICS and said OCS;
- b. obtaining a database of rheological properties of said fluid;
- c. applying a pressure gradient to said bore between said ICS and said OCS, thereby flowing said fluid through said tube;
- d. NMR imaging said fluid within said VOI, said image having a plurality p of slices, each slice comprising a plane within said 3DG;
- e. from said image, for each of said voxels Voxi, determining a velocity for said fluid vi;
- f. for each of said voxels Voxi, from said velocity vi, calculating shear rate values (SRV);
- whilst, before or after determining a pressure gradient between said at least one ICS and said at least one OCS and thereby calculating shear stress values (SSV) for each voxel Voxi, from said SRV and said SSV determining at least one rheological property RPi for each voxel Voxi;
- g. comparing, for said at least one rheological property, RPi calculated for voxel Voxi to stored RPi for voxel Voxi from said database, thereby determining the difference in rheological property DRPi for voxel Voxi;
- and
- h. from the set of said DRPi, calculating 3D variations in said rheological property, therefrom determining the difference in rheological property DRPi as a function of position (xi,yi,zi) in said grid;
- wherein the resolution of said difference in rheological property DRPi is multiplied by about p compared to the per-slice resolution.
10 more elements
A method for determining rheological properties of a fluid flowing through a tube, comprising the steps of:
- a. providing an open-bore tube and defining within said bore a three dimensional grid (3DG) of voxels, with each voxel Voxi having a position (xi, yi, zi) in said 3DG;
- defining at least two different cross sections, namely inlet cross section (ICS) and outlet cross section (OCS);
- and defining a volume of interest (VOI) within said bore between said ICS and said OCS);
- b. applying a pressure gradient to said bore between said ICS and said OCS, thereby flowing said fluid through said tube;
- c. NMR imaging said fluid within said VOI, said NMR image having a plurality p of slices, each slice comprising a plane within said 3DG;
- d. from said image, for each of said voxels Voxi;
- determining a velocity for said fluid vi;
- e. for each of said voxels Voxi, from said velocity vi, calculating shear rate values (SRV);
- whilst, before or after determining a pressure gradient between said at least one ICS and said at least one OCS and thereby calculating shear stress values (SSV) for each voxel Voxi, from said SRV and said SSV determining at least one rheological property RPi for each voxel Voxi;
- f. creating at least two sets of voxels, set {VoxA} comprising at least one voxel VoxA,I and set {VoxB} comprising at least one voxel VoxB,i, locations of voxels in set {VoxA} differing from locations of voxels in set {VoxB} in a systematic way, each voxel VoxA,i, in set {VoxA} having a corresponding voxel VoxB,i, in set {VoxB};
- g. comparing, for said at least one rheological property, for said at least two sets of voxels, rheological property RPA,i, for each voxel VoxA,i, in set {VoxA} to rheological parameter RPB,j for corresponding voxel VoxB,j in set {VoxB} thereby determining differences in rheological property DRPij at relative position (xk, yk, zk);
- and
- h. from the set of said DRPij, calculating 3D variations in said rheological property, therefrom determining the relative difference in rheological property DRPij as a function of relative position (xk, yk, zk) in said grid
- wherein the resolution of said difference in rheological property DRPij is multiplied by about p compared to the per-slice resolution.
11 more elements
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.