Other Methods of Surface Area Determination

A simple law, known as Darcy s law (1936), states that the volume flow rate per unit area is proportional to the pressure gradient if applied to the case of viscous flow through a porous medium treated as a bundle of capillaries, 

In applying Eq. XVI-13 to an actual porous bed, r is taken to be proportional to the volume of void space Ale, where e is die porosity, divided by the amount of surface alternatively, then, 

The detailed consideration of these equations is due largely to Kozeny [50] the reader is also referred to Collins [51]. However, it is apparent that, subject to assumptions concerning the topology of the porous system, the determination of K provides an estimate of Ao- It should be remembered that Ao will be the external area of the particles and will not include internal area due to pores (note Ref. 52). Somewhat similar equations apply in the case of gas flow the reader is referred to Barrer [53] and Kraus and co-workers [54]. 

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Other methods of surface area determination depend, in general, on adsorption under well defined conditions of various solute molecules of known dimensions (Sposito, 1984 Davis and Kent, 1990). Some of these are dipole molecules so that dipole interactions with the surface or H-bonding are involved. Water adsorbed at a fixed relative water vapour pressure (e. g. 0.2) to provide a monolayer is one example (Torrent et ah, 1990). An organic dipole frequently used for soils is ethylene glycol monoethylether (EGME) (Carter et al., 1965). The main problem with these dipole molecules lies in their mutual association which may lead to localized adsorption beyond a monolayer (capillary condensation), particularly on porous material. 

Besides the three methods introduced above, there are many other methods of surface area determination Any surface-dependent phenomenon can be used for such measurement [24], Some available methods (mercury porosimetry, adsorption from solution, adsorption of dyes, chemisorption, density methods, and secondary ion mass spectroscopy) are explained in more detail elsewhere [6,30,31,32],... 

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