About Pore-Cor Research Suite

About Pore-Cor Research Suite

Pore-Cor Research Suite is a unique, world-leading software package which is being continually developed and enhanced by the world-leading Environmental and Fluid Modelling Group at the University of Plymouth, U.K. The research group has to date won nearly £2m of funding, mostly from the U.K. science research councils (BBSRC, EPSRC and NERC) and from industry, and its vast research expertise has been distilled into the software.

The software is available for sale direct from the University, or can be purchased, possibly at a discount , from agents of Thermo Electron (which includes CE Instruments and Carlo Erba) or Micromeritics. It also reads Quantachrome data files. It allows users to obtain much more information from mercury porosimetry and soil water retention curves than is currently possible, and to model the movement of fluids through meso- and macro-porous solids within a virtual reality environment.

Overview

Pore-Cor Research Suite is a suite of four programs:
Pore-Comp, Pore-Ped, Pore-Cor and Pore-Eye,
which can be purchased in several different combinations.

So why are the Pore-Cor Research Suite colours grey and blue? Simple - grey indicates non-wetting fluids (such as mercury), and blue represents wetting fluids (such as water). So in the opening screen shown above, you can easily see that Pore-Comp deals only with non-wetting fluids (grey arrow) and Pore-Ped only with wetting fluids (blue arrow).

Pore-Cor provides a major advance on the study of porous solids. Compared to many void structure investigation techniques, such as cyclotron or n.m.r. tomography, it is

cheaper
more accessible
more versatile.

So who uses it?

Pore-Cor Research Suite is currently being used for the following applications:

Reservoir sandstone modelling for enhanced oil recovery
Modelling of soil rhizosphere interactions
Optimisation of impregnation processes used to seal sintered castings
Inflow and outflow of fluids into porous catalysts
Development of new high performance paper coating formulations

Why is Pore-Cor unique and world-leading ?

Pore-Cor Research Suite is the first package which

interprets mercury intrusion and water retention curves using a three-dimensional, rather than two-dimensional network
converges onto the whole mercury intrusion curve or water retention curve, not just its point of inflection
does not assume an arbitrary curve shape for mercury intrusion or water retention (such as Van Genuchten or Brooks Corey), but carries out a point by point fit
uses the same geometry for a wide range of pore-level properties
allows simultaneous variation of different properties, such as pore:pore size correlation and pore:throat size correlation, while allowing the simulation to stay within the discipline of having to agree with the experimental porosity, and mercury intrusion curve or water retention curve
has a very wide flexibility in terms of the amount of data input - void space structures can be generated on a spectrum varying from a 'think of a number' basis to structures which incorporate a huge amount of experimental data
can be tuned to study extremely subtle effects, which for example do not show up as a porosity change
facilitates the optimization of the properties of a porous solid for a particular purpose.

Pore-Cor Research Suite explained

So how does Pore-Cor work? Well, perhaps surprisingly, all interpretation of experimental mercury intrusion curves currently assumes that the structure of the sample comprises a series of worm-holes going through it, as shown on the right. This is clearly unrealistic - the voids do not connect up, and go all the way through the solid from top to bottom, giving an unrealistically high permeability.

By contrast, Pore-Cor generates a void structure constructed from cubic pores and cylindrical connecting throats. These can be squashed vertically to produce an anisotropic structure as shown on the right. In the picture, you can see that what is voidage is now represented as solid, and the user when viewing the structure wanders around in the transparent solid phase.
The most important difference to the structure is that now there are large pores surrounded by small throats. The small throats are only penetrated when the mercury pressure in the porosimeter is raised to a pressure higher than would be necessary to get straight into the larger pores, or for soil only penetrated by air when the suction on the soil water is great enough. So a completely different size range of voids results. The structure is still not entirely realistic - real porous solids never contain box-like pores connected by cylindrical throats. However, it is much more realistic than the traditional worm-hole model. Also, it is now sufficiently realistic that a great deal of extra information can be obtained from mercury intrusion and water retention curves.

Components

Pore-Cor, the Pore-fluids property Correlator, is the heart of the whole suite. It unscrambles or 'inverts' percolation data in the form of mercury intrusion or water retention curves, to give a three-dimensional void structure. This structure has a much simpler geometry than the real porous network, but is sufficiently realistic that very important properties of fluid behaviour in the void network can be studied. Further details are given below. (See also Pore-Cor specifications.)

Pore-Comp, which is a data preprocessor allows correction for the compressibility of compressible samples. While doing this, it is also possible to correct for surface voidage effects, and obtain a measure of the compressibility or bulk modulus of just the solid phase of the material, rather than the compressibility of the porous sample as a whole.(See also Pore-Comp specifications.)

Pore-Ped allows calculation of water retention curves. The water retention of any English or Welsh soil can be calculated on the basis of its texture, density and organic carbon content, using the NSRI pedo-transfer function. American soils can be calculated by use of the UNSODA database and search engine. (See also Pore-Ped specifications.)

Pore-Eye allows the three-dimension void structures, and the position of fluids within the void structure, to be viewed in Virtual reality. It is possible to walk around the structure. Two important advantages of this is that it is possible to see features which are too small to draw using printed graphics on paper, and it is possible to view particular tracks of fluid, for example preferential wetting pathways. (Pore-Eye is always supplied with Pore-Cor, so its specifications are incorporated into the Pore-Cor specifications.)

Further information

For recent developments in the software, see: Product Development.

For much more detail, including tutorials and equations, download the Help system.

Products: