Pore network simulations of thin porous medium characterization by evapoporometry

Abstract

Evapoporometry is a technique aiming at characterizing the pore size distribution of a porous medium from evaporated mass measurements. In this work, evapoporometry is studied from numerical simulations on model pore networks allowing a detailed analysis of the underlying physics at play in the technique. Simulations indicate that both the pore body size and throat size distributions can be characterized and pinpoint the need of a very accurate determination of the evaporation rate. This is notably illustrated by varying the evaporated mass acquisition time step. Evapoporometry and liquid-liquid displacement porometry techniques are discussed comparatively in relation with experimental works reporting differences between the pore size distributions identified through both techniques.