Dynamics of capillary flow and transport properties in porous media by time-controlled porosimetry

The dynamics of capillary flow in porous media at the pore-scale, the absolute permeability, the effective and the relative permeability are calculated from time-controlled porosimetry data. Recent research into the experimental mode of data acquisition in mercury porosimetry has shown that the time-controlled mercury intrusion allows us to analyse the pore-scale complexity of a pore network and to obtain local relaxation phenomena due to the presence of a well-controlled local permeability of the porous media. The study of the flow regime in Hg-air displacements and different values of log M-log Ca obtained in mercury porosimetry show that the main flow regime is a capillary regime. An extended Washburn equation proposed by Sorbie et al. has already been used to analyse the dynamics of capillary flow, the pore filling time and the relative filling order of large and small pores. This method was applied to different calcareous porous materials characterized by different textures. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.