Test Description:
Mercury intrusion characterizes a material’s porosity, its pore size and pore volume. The test instrument typically uses a non-wetting fluid with a high surface tension, such as mercury, to characterize the material’s porosity.
Because of mercury’s high surface energy, the liquid mercury will not spontaneously fill the porous space in a porous material. Instead, mercury must be forced into the porous material by the mercury intrusion instrument. To accomplish this, the instrument subjects the mercury to a differential pressure whereby the mercury is forced into the pores of the porous material. As the differential pressure is increased, mercury penetrates the sample’s larger pores first. As the differential pressure is further increased, the mercury begins to penetrate the sample’s smaller pores.
The volume of mercury introduced into the sample is plotted against differential pressure. From this information, the material’s pore size distribution and pore volume values are determined.
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Applications
Wicking
by Product
