Characterizing Porous Media with the Yield Stress Fluids Porosimetry Method

Abstract

A new data analyzing method to characterize pore size distribution (PSD) of porous media was recently presented in the context of an international consensus on the need to develop alternatives to toxic mercury porosimetry. It consists in measuring the flow rate Q at several pressure gradients ∇P during flowexperiments of yield stress fluids through porous media. In the present work, the PSD of different types of porous media is determined with this new technique and the obtained results are compared with those provided by mercury porosimetry. A series of experiments using a given yield stress fluid with different porous mediawere carried out in order to study the relevance of the obtained PSD.Besides, the critical aspects conditioning the experimental performance of the method were also identified and assessed.