Numerical porosimetry: Evaluation and comparison of yield stress fluids method, mercury intrusion porosimetry and pore network modelling approaches

Abstract

Mercury Intrusion Porosimetry (MIP) is still today the reference porosimetry technique despite its environmental health and safety concerns. As a safe alternative, the Yield Stress fluids Method (YSM) consists in computing the Pore Size Distribution (PSD) of a given material from the pressure drop vs. flow rate measurements during injection of a yield stress fluid. However, the question arises whether the PSDs provided by YSM are representative of the actual pore dimensions. To answer this question, three numerical methods to obtain the PSD from digital images are proposed and compared in the present work. First, direct numerical simulations of YSM tests are performed in the considered media. Then, realistic PSDs are extracted from the images by using pore Network Modelling (NM). Furthermore, the obtained networks are also used to simulate MIP tests. The quantitative numerical results allow the evaluation of the relevance of YSM as an alternative to toxic MIP.