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MRPM 2026 - IFSC USP
Yi-Qiao - Confirmed Speaker - MRPM 2026

Characterization of magnetic rocks: a challenge for NMR

Mapping mineral and pore distributions across scales is crucial for evaluating geochemical and reactive transport properties of subsurface rocks that underlie subsurface applications such as, oil and gas production, geological carbon storage/mineralization, geologic hydrogen generation, and mining exploration. Many of the relevant rocks contain a high percentage of iron and magnetic minerals so that the NMR relaxation is strongly affected by diffusion in the internal magnetic fields, even for very short echo times. Furthermore, the internal fields and their gradients are heterogeneous among the different pores, making it difficult to obtain the intrinsic T2. We developed a new pulse sequence to separate the diffusion and intrinsic relaxation effects and recover the intrinsic T2 for pore size determination.  We have also developed a method for high-throughput super-resolution mineralogy mapping based on SEM imaging to identify the fine grain minerals for multiscale characterizations of rock mineralogy from submicron to centimeters. We will report our results on basalt, sandstone, carbonate and other mine rock samples. These new methods could be beneficial for a wide range of subsurface exploration.

Yi-Qiao Song

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