- Institut of Geoscience, Friedrich Schiller University Jena, Germany
The transport of heat from the Earth’s interior to its surface is the main
driving force for many geological processes, like e.g. lithosphere dynamics and
mantle convection. To understand these processes, it is essential to capture
the spatially and temporally dependent temperature field of the Earth’s crust.
The structure of this temperature field is largely determined by the thermal
properties of the rocks. One of the key thermophysical properties is thermal
conductivity, which plays a critical role in various scientific and economic fields,
such as the study of sedimentary basins and geothermal potentials.
To characterize the thermal properties of various lithologies, measurements
on core samples are of ultimate interest. However, as coring is highly expen-
sive, drill cores are not often taken during drilling campaigns. Nonetheless, drill
cuttings would be available from nearly all drill holes. The drill cuttings can
be ground and compressed to form measuring tablets for thermal conductivity
tests, which changes the rock structure and thus also the thermal properties. An
alternative could be to embed drill cuttings in materials of known thermal prop-
erties like resin to prepare samples ready to be used with the widely available
Thermal Conductivity Scanner (TCS).
In this study, we present an innovative method for determining the thermal
conductivity of drill cuttings using TCS by preparing various samples drill cut-
tings embedded in epoxy resin. We investigate how grain size of the encased
cuttings affects the estimation of thermal conductivity with the TCS. To test
this novel approach, we use artificially produced drill cuttings, mini-cores em-
bedded in epoxy resin, and undisturbed reference samples. Our investigations
suggest that grain size and thermal edge effects resulting from embedding the
samples in resin can be corrected with sufficient precision to enable accurate
conclusions about the thermal conductivity of the undisturbed rock.
How to cite: Schulz, A., Kasburg, V., Goepel, A., and Kukowski, N.: Thermal Conductivity Measurements of in Resin-Embedded Cuttings Using the Optical Scanning Method, EGU General Assembly 2025, Vienna, Austria, 27 Apr–2 May 2025, EGU25-12870, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu25-12870, 2025.
