Investigation of feasibility of a new method to characteriz porous media in terms of pore size distribution

Abstract

Current methods employed to determine pore size distributions in porous media present several drawbacks such as their toxicity (mercury porosimetry). An original method to measure pore size distribution using yield stress fluids has been proposed in the literature [1],[2]. The main idea in these works is that using fluids with a threshold below which the fluid does not flow allows obtaining the pore size distribution by measuring the evolution of the flow rate versus pressure gradient. These authors have solved the inverse problem giving the pore size distribution for Bingham, Herschel-Bulkley (H-B) and Casson fluids. The objective of our work is to investigate the experimental feasibility of the method proposed. In this paper, relationships between the properties of the pump and those of the yield stress fluid are proposed allowing the measurement of the pore-size distribution of a model porous medium.