The modern energy economy and environmental infrastructure rely on the flow of fluids through fractures in rock. Yet this flow cannot be imaged directly because rocks are opaque to most probes. Here we apply chattering dust, or chemically reactive grains of sucrose containing pockets of pressurized carbon dioxide, to study rock fractures. As a dust grain dissolves, the pockets burst and emit acoustic signals that are detected by distributed sets of external ultrasonic sensors that track the dust movement through fracture systems. The dust particles travel through locally varying fracture apertures with varying speeds and provide information about internal fracture geometry, flow paths and bottlenecks. Chattering dust particles have an advantage over chemical sensors because they do not need to be collected, and over passive tracers because the chattering dust delineates the transport path. The current laboratory work has potential to scale up to near-borehole applications in the field.

现代能源经济和环境基础设施依赖于通过岩石裂缝的流体流动。然而，由于大多数探针不透明，岩石无法直接成像。在这里，我们使用chat不振的灰尘或含有加压二氧化碳气袋的蔗糖的化学反应性颗粒来研究岩石裂缝。当尘粒溶解时，凹穴破裂并发出声音信号，这些声音信号由分散的一组外部超声波传感器检测到，这些传感器跟踪灰尘在断裂系统中的运动。灰尘颗粒以不同的速度穿过局部变化的裂缝孔，并提供有关内部裂缝几何形状，流动路径和瓶颈的信息。抖动的尘埃颗粒比化学传感器具有优势，因为不需要收集它们，以及无源示踪剂，因为颤动的灰尘勾勒出传输路径。当前的实验室工作有潜力扩大到该领域的近井应用。