30 May 2022 to 2 June 2022
Asia/Dubai timezone

Water confined in salt crusts: insights from molecular simulations

2 Jun 2022, 09:10
15m
Oral Presentation (MS13) Fluids in Nanoporous Media MS13

Speaker

Simon Gravelle (Institute for Computational Physics)

Description

The evaporation of water from a bare soil can be accompanied by the formation of a layer of crystallized salt. This salt crust forms an additional porous layer that affects the evaporation of water in a counter-intuitive way: depending on the conditions (i.e. depending on the pore size of the crust, soil-crust connection, external atmospheric conditions), the crust can hinder or enhance the net flow of water. To better understand the transport properties of water through porous salt crusts, we use molecular simulations and explore the behavior of water confined by three types of solid surfaces: NaCl, Na2SO4, and charged silica. We measure NMR relaxation times T1 and T2, extract their values for different degrees of confinement, relative humidity, and surface rugosity, and discuss their relation with the structure of water near solid interfaces. Then, using non-equilibrium molecular dynamics, we study the transport properties of water at the salt interface. Our results show that at low humidity, transport through salt crust is likely to be dominated by a thin layer of water of a few molecules at the salt wall.

Participation Online
Country Germany
MDPI Energies Student Poster Award No, do not submit my presenation for the student posters award.
Time Block Preference Time Block A (09:00-12:00 CET)
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Primary author

Simon Gravelle (Institute for Computational Physics)

Co-authors

Sabina Haber-Pohlmeier (Institut für Wasser und Umweltsystemmodellierung) Prof. Alexander Schlaich (Institute for Computational Physics) Prof. Christian Holm (Institute for Computational Physics)

Presentation materials

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