A thermal porosimetry method to estimate pore size distribution in highly porous insulating materials

Standard pore size determination methods such as mercury porosimetry, nitrogen sorption, microscopy, or x-ray tomography are not always applicable to highly porous, low density, and thus very fragile materials. For this kind of materials, a method based on thermal characterization is proposed. Indeed, the thermal conductivity of a highly porous and insulating medium is significantly dependent on the thermal conductivity of the interstitial gas that depends on both gas pressure and size of the considered pore (Knudsen effect). It is also possible to link the pore size with the thermal conductivity of the medium. Thermal conductivity measurements are realized on specimens placed in an enclosure where the air pressure is successively set to different values varying from 10(-1) to 10(5) Pa. Knowing the global porosity ratio, an effective thermal conductivity model for a two-phase air-solid material based on a combined serial-parallel model is established. Pore size distribution can be identified by minimizing the sum of the quadratic differences between measured values and modeled ones. The results of the estimation process are the volume fractions of the chosen ranges of pore size. In order to validate the method, measurements done on insulating materials are presented. The results are discussed and show that pore size distribution estimated by the proposed method is coherent. (C) 2012 American Institute of Physics. [http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4704842]