Application of mercury porosimetry of amberlyst-35 to three dimensional (3D) stochastic network model and researching of network size effect on structure of porous media

In this study, investigation was done on the physical characterization and determination of the porosity for a ion exchange catalyst called Amberlyst-35, which is used to produce for environmentally benign gasoline by using 3-D network modeling. In addition effect of different pore sizes were investigated in porous media. First step of this study, KALINET program which is run by Compact Visual Fortran (CVF) for modeling of porous structures, porous 3-D random images for different section uses the SECTION program and 3-D network drawing uses the KALINET3D program were transformed from fortran77 to fortran90. Thereby programs were run by Compact Visual Fortran (CVF). Second step of this study, the results of mercury porosimetry experiments conducted with Amberlyst-35 revealed a porosity value of 0.30. It was also observed from the experiments that penetration was occured between 6491- 35410 psia. Next, as the results obtained from the program theoretical penetration curve was drawn and was fitted to the experimental penetration values by changing the number of pores in each pressure interval and finaly the pore size distribution. Firstly, The pore size distribution was done by 3-D network model size of : (N) =30x30x30 which included 83700 pores. It was also same process that were applied network size (N) 40x40x40-50x50x50 which included 196800-382500 pores respectively. On the other hand, various sections of the images 3-D stochastic pore network were obtained from the SECTION program, which uses the data generated by KALINET under Compact Visual Fortran (CVF). Next, 3-D network images were drawn by KALINET3D computer program. As a conclusion the mercury porosimetry method which determine the porosity of ion exchange catalyst Amberlyst-35 was come true with the computer programs and it was obtained that the average porosity of sectioned images is (0.30). It is coincidence with porosity (0.30) obtained from experimental mercury porosimetry. It was also concluded that effect of network size could not be changed after a definite dimension upon structure of porous media.