The behaviour of minerals (i.e. salts) such as sodium chloride and calcite in porous media is very important in various applications such as weathering of artworks, oil recovery and CO₂ sequestration. We report a novel method for manufacturing single layer porous media in which minerals can be entrapped in a controlled way in order to study their dissolution and recrystallization. In addition, our manufacturing method is a versatile tool for creating monomodal, bimodal or multimodal pore size microporous media with controlled porosity ranging from 25% to 50%. These micromodels allow multiphase flows to be quantitatively studied with different microscopy techniques and can serve to validate numerical models that can subsequently be extended to the 3D situation where visualization is experimentally difficult. As an example of their use, deliquescence (dissolution by moisture absorption) of entrapped NaCl crystals is studied; our results show that the invasion of the resulting salt solution is controlled by the capillary pressure within the porous network. For hydrophilic porous media, the liquid preferentially invades the small pores whereas in a hydrophobic network the large pores are filled. Consequently, after several deliquescence/drying cycles in the hydrophilic system, the salt is transported towards the outside of the porous network via small pores; in hydrophobic micromodels, no salt migration is observed. Numerical simulations based on the characteristics of our single layer pore network agree very well with the experimental results and give more insight into the dynamics of salt transport through porous media.

中文翻译：

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夹带矿物的单层多孔介质，用于多相流的微观研究

矿物（即盐），例如氯化钠和方解石在多孔介质中的行为在各种应用中非常重要，例如艺术品的风化，采油和CO ₂隔离。我们报告了一种新颖的制造单层多孔介质的方法，其中可以以受控方式截留矿物以研究其溶解和重结晶。此外，我们的制造方法是一种通用工具，可用于创建孔隙率范围从25％到50％不等的单峰，双峰或多峰孔径微孔介质。这些微模型允许使用不同的显微镜技术对多相流进行定量研究，并可用于验证数值模型，随后可将其扩展到实验上难以可视化的3D情况。作为其使用的一个例子，研究了截留的NaCl晶体的潮解（通过吸湿溶解）。我们的结果表明，所得盐溶液的侵入受多孔网络内的毛细管压力控制。对于亲水性多孔介质，液体优先侵入小孔，而在疏水网络中，大孔被填充。因此，在亲水性系统中经过数个潮解/干燥循环后，盐向多孔网络的外部传输通过小孔；在疏水微模型中，未观察到盐迁移。基于我们的单层孔隙网络特征的数值模拟与实验结果非常吻合，并且可以更好地了解盐通过多孔介质传输的动力学。