Do Pores Exist?—Foundational Issues in Pore Structural Characterisation

Abstract

This work reviews a range of fundamental theoretical considerations in pore structural characterisation. The pore concept is essential for providing a better understanding of physical processes arising within porous media than purely phenomenological approaches. The notion of a pore structure is found to be independently valid and invariant during theory change concerning said physical processes, even for structural models obtained via indirect methods. While imaging methods provide a more direct characterisation of porous solids, there is often a surfeit of information beyond that which can be wielded with current computing power to predict processes sufficiently accurately. Unfortunately, the pore network model extraction methods cannot decide in advance the level of simplification necessary to obtain the optimum minimal idealisation for a given physical process. Pore network models can be obtained with differing geometrical and topological properties, but similar mass transfer rates, for reasons that are often not clear. In contrast, the ‘pore-sifting’ strategy aims to explicitly identify the key feature of the void space that controls a mass transport process of interest.