Porous Media

Enhanced understanding of the connection between structure and transport phenomena in multiphase systems has the potential to impact human endeavors ranging from industrial activities such as food and pharmaceutical processing to geophysics and the environmental remediation of contaminated earth formations. The list of applications is extensive, spanning industry, science, medicine and the natural environment. This research program applies and develops nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) methods to study transport phenomena in model and natural multiphase systems. NMR methods provide the ability to experimentally vary length and time scales of measurement. Due to this ability, NMR data have become a template for testing theories of transport such as nonlocal dispersion in porous media and percolation theory as well as other concepts relevant to a range of chemical engineering, hydrology and physics problems. The NMR data obtained will provide tests of averaged transport models and motivate model development incorporating concepts from nonequilibrium statistical mechanics and nonlinear dynamics theory.

Model Homogeneous Porous Media in Varying Size Columns