Empirical determination of water saturation of porous materials in the process of long duration imbibition

Abstract

The paper presents the results of an experimental study of the process of imbibition of porous bodies with a long stay in the impregnating medium. Experiments have confirmed, that at time of the order of 100 min there is a significant slowdown in the rise of the saturation curve, which can be taken as the end of the process. However, for the final completion of the process time is needed in the hundreds of times greater and the water saturation can increase more than twice. Experiments showed that with an increase in porosity, the length of the region of a significant deceleration of the impregnation rate tends to decrease. Regardless of the difference in the structures of the tested samples, it was possible to obtain a general analytical expression for describing the process of water saturation, which indicates similarity in the movement of fluid in the system of pore channels. The approximation of the experimental data by a logarithmic function gives a good result of an analytical representation of the process. It is also shown that the theoretical approaches used make it possible to obtain water saturation curves over long periods with good accuracy.