TOMOGRAPHY OF MACRO-MESO-PORE STRUCTURE BASED ON MERCURY POROSIMETRY HYSTERESIS

Abstract

Mercury porosimetry (MP) hysteresis loop scanning (SHL) data are used in the deduction of pore structure tomography diagrams. Macro and/or meso-pore structure tomography refers to the tracing of intrinsic pore size distributions (psd) of pore structure sections corresponding to specified volume saturation levels. Tomography information may be proved a useful tool e.g., to elucidate mass transfer, heterogeneous reaction phenomena, eic. The contribution of the present work is the simulation of the MP - scanning data, based on the random corrugated pore structure model (CPSM), reported elsewhere and the generation of the pertinent pore structure tomography spectra (i.e., a set of local, as regards saturation, intrinsic psd). The CPSM model has been applied to carry out parametric studies for the generation of theoretical loop scanning diagrams and the construction of the pertinent tomography plots. Additionally the CPSM model have been successfully used in curve fitting applications by using experimental MP hysteresis loop scanning data, taken from literature or produced in this work, and the deduction of the respective tomography diagrams. Part 1 of this work is devoted to pore structure tomography accruing from MP loop scanning along the penetration line while Part II deals with loop scanning along the retraction curve and the derivation of the respective pore structure tomography spectrum. Overall, the CPSM model simulates satisfactorily MP loop scanning data and yields credible pore structure tomography information.