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Pore Volume (PV) is defined as the ratio of a porous material’s air volume to a porous material’s total volume. But what is the total volume of a porous material? For our purposes, the total volume of a part is described by the amount of space contained within an imaginary film that has been tightly shrunken around the outside of the porous part’s exterior geometry. Lets designate the total volume within this film VT. Inside the tightly wrapped film and within the cavities of the porous part exists a certain volume of air. Let’s designate this volume of air as VA. As previously stated, Pore Volume is equal to the ratio of a porous material’s air volume to total volume (PV % = VA / VT).
Another way to illustrate Pore Volume (as shown in the animation) uses marbles and a glass to better convey a definition of pore volume. Start with an empty glass of known volume. We’ll designate this volume as the total volume, VT. Fill the glass with marbles until full. As you may recall, pore volume requires two values – a total volume and and an air volume. The air volume measurement requires us to quantify the amount of air located between the marbles. We can derive this value through liquid displacement of the air.
To perform the liquid displacement measurement, we’ll add water to the glass. After the glass is full of water, , we’ll remove the marbles and measure the amount of water added to the glass. Because this volume represents the amount of air volume contained between the marbles, will designate the value VA. Again, the ratio of VA to VT is defined as the Pore Volume of a porous material (PV % = VA / VT). In this case, the marbles represent the building blocks of Porex’s porous plastic technology. In a similar manner, the air volume in the part represents the by-product of Porex’s porous plastic technology. Note the various pore volumes that can be created through the use of raw materials made of different geometric shapes.
The technical information presented is intended as reference information only and in no way should be regarded as a limit or a constraint to our development capability.The material conditioning processes utilized by Porex to ready a polymer for use in the manufacturing process is considered proprietary. Therefore, Porex does not sell raw material for use in any external operation.
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