Interfacial Molecular Mechanisms Governing the NMR Relaxation of Clay-Bound Water in Organic-Rich Shales with Implications for NMR Logging
Xuanhua Zhang, Xinmin Ge, Zhenying Liu, Minjie Li · 2026
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Description
Xuanhua Zhang, Xinmin Ge, Zhenying Liu, and Minjie Li present a 2026 study of how water clings to clay in oil-rich shale, and why that bends well logs. NMR tools read pore sizes from how fast water's signal fades, but clay-bound water fades freakishly fast. The usual math treats the surface pull as one fixed rate. Shale from a Chinese block was probed with a shelf of lab tools plus atom-level sims.
Bound water sat in the fastest fade band, while the true pull rate spread threefold across samples. Water grip tracked charge-swap capacity and surface hydroxyl groups. Fade speed, though, hung on magnetic trace centers and on how trapped the molecules were. Logs can now split grip from speed. Better splits mean truer pore maps.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Xuanhua Zhang, Xinmin Ge, Zhenying Liu, Minjie Li |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2026 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 88 KB |
| VERSION | 1.0 |
| LICENSE | CC BY 4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |