Determination of the Multiscale Percolation Properties of Porous Media Using Mercury Porosimetry

A new technique using mercury porosimetry to characterize the percolation properties of porous media over several different length scales was presented. The methodol. employed a new theor. model of a porous medium. The model may be used to represent a highly heterogeneous, porous material, with a wide pore-size distribution, over a broad range of length scales from .apprx.4 nm to 0.01 m. The characteristic statistical parameters which defined the model were obtained from mercury porosimetry scanning loop and miniloop expts. Mercury porosimetry miniloops were shown to give rise to so-called "miniloop spectra". These spectra describe the variation of the value of a characteristic mercury entrapment function with pore size. The shapes of these spectra were sensitive to both the form of the pore-size probability d. function and the pattern of the spatial geometric arrangement of pore sizes in the void space. Addnl., complementary information on the pore structure was provided from nitrogen sorption and magnetic resonance imaging to eliminate ambiguities in the interpretation of the mercury porosimetry data. The overall approach can be considered as a methodol. for pore structure tomog. using mercury porosimetry and nitrogen sorption. [on SciFinder (R)]