Variations in relative humidity (RH) can drive phase transitions of salts: crystallization upon water evaporation, and deliquescence (spontaneous crystal dissolution) upon RH increase. In porous materials, these phenomena play a central role in various applications, e.g., in heritage preservation, civil engineering, energy conversion/storage, or water management. While bulk deliquescence and...
Drying of porous media proceeds through distinct dynamical regimes that reflect the evolving morphology of the pore-scale liquid distribution. Here we combine high-resolution dilatometry with gravimetry and optical imaging to resolve the coupled mechanical and transport response of nanoporous Vycor during water desorption. We show that the macroscopic strain encodes a quantitative...
Moisture transfers in clayey soils or earthen construction materials play an essential role on the integrity of the structures and the regulation of humidity of the environment. Concentrated clay systems are nanoporous materials through which moisture transfers can involve vapor or liquid water transport. Here, with the help of NMR relaxometry and MRI allowing to distinguish the different...
Unconventional shale reservoirs have become increasingly important in sustaining oil production in response to increasing energy demand. In the northern Rocky Mountain region, the Mowry shale is recognized as a key Cretaceous source for oil and gas. Fluid flow in shale porous media is strongly governed by pore architecture, which stimulation fluids can alter, potentially influencing fluid...
Spontaneous imbibition driven by capillary forces in nanoporous media underpins a wide range of natural and engineered processes, including water transport in plants and soils, oil recovery in rocks, drug delivery, and nanofabrication. Classical porous-media theories predict that evaporation limits imbibition by establishing a dynamic balance between capillary inflow and evaporative outflow,...
Water confined in nanoporous materials is ubiquitous in many applications related to energy and environment. This includes porous solids for water purification, solid electrolytes, membranes for proton exchange fuel cells, nanofluidic devices and desalinization technology.
Under these conditions, the structure and dynamics of water molecules is significantly altered with respect to the...
Gas transport in porous materials is typically described using flow models that assume a fixed pore structure and constant transport properties [1-4]. However, in materials where gas adsorption induces deformation, such assumptions become invalid [5-6]. In microporous materials, adsorption-induced swelling may alter pore geometry, transport porosity, and permeability, resulting in a...
As a new type of unconventional resource, deep coalbed methane reservoir has demonstrated generally significant development potential. It is characterized by rapid gas breakthrough, high gas production rates, and high estimated ultimate recovery (EUR) per well. Given that gas content is a key parameter for reserve assessment and development planning, it is crucial to establish a novel gas...
Ion transport is ubiquitous in aqueous environments in biological, geological, chemical and environmental systems. Electrokinetics plays a very important and key role in some special cases where pore size is comparable to the screening length of electrical double layer. The applications include fuel cells and batteries, radiative waste disposal, high-quality water purification, and even ion...
When mesoporous carbon materials come into contact with electrolyte solutions, interactions at their surfaces can lead to the spontaneous formation of electrical potentials. Even without applying an external voltage, differences in surface properties can drive charge separation and ion rearrangement at the solid–liquid interface. When two materials with distinct surface characteristics are...
Simulations predict that elastic moduli of nanoconfined adsorbates depend significantly on the pore size [1]. However, until now this has not yet been confirmed experimentally. Using ultrasonic measurements, we study in this presentation the longitudinal modulus $\beta_{Ar,ads}$ of liquid argon in porous glass samples with different pore radii between 1.8 and 12.8 nm. Our analysis of the...
Water is undoubtedly the most important substance on earth. It is ubiquitous in nature and a necessary liquid for the emergence of life. Although by far the most classic liquid encountered in everyday life, water presents many unusual physical properties, which are not yet fully understood. A large number of studies have highlighted the crucial role of hydrogen-bonding interactions between...
Aqueous solutions confined within nanopores play a fundamental role in both natural and technological systems, governing processes such as ion regulation in cells, desalination, blue energy generation and the durability of construction materials. In this project, we aim to investigate the flow and phase behavior of aqueous solutions and the possible deviations from bulk behavior caused by...
Liquid under tension “breaks” by cavitation, forming a vapor bubble. It occurs in engineering (ultrasonic cleaning, erosion of ship propellers...) as well as in the natural sciences (gas embolism in trees, pistol shrimp...). In the cavities of a saturated porous material, the liquid is also under tension when it evaporates. In this case, it was long considered that evaporation occurs by...
Various types of porous media (both unconsolidated and consolidated geological bodies and engineering materials, etc.) and fluids (water, gas, oil, supercritical carbon dioxide, etc.) are closely intertwined with multiple fields such as the environment, geology, and geotechnical engineering, involving soil contamination and groundwater remediation, high-level nuclear waste disposal, carbon...
Kerogen is the dispersed organic matter in sedimentary rocks from which natural gas and oil are generated over time by thermal maturation. There has been widespread interest in developing atomistic models of kerogen for numerical investigations of adsorption and diffusion behavior. Currently, the most popular kerogen models for use in molecular simulations are "molecular models," which consist...
Shale reservoirs exhibit a wide distribution of nanopore sizes, ranging from ultrafine pores of roughly 5 nm to larger pores exceeding several hundred nanometers. At the smallest scales, methane adsorption becomes a dominant storage mechanism. To quantify this effect, molecular simulations coupled with an equation of state are employed to characterize CH₄ adsorption in nanopores of various...
Pore-fracture connectivity and nanoscale pore accessibility are critical factors influencing gas occurrence, transport, and fluid migration in shale reservoirs. However, due to the extremely low permeability and high heterogeneity of shale components, accurately characterizing these properties remains challenging. This study integrates advanced experimental techniques to investigate the...
Nanoporous materials are at the heart of numerous important applications: adsorption (gas sensing, drug delivery, chromatography), energy (hydrogen storage, fuel cells and batteries), environment (phase separation, water treatment, nuclear waste storage), Earth science (exchange between the soil and the atmosphere), etc. In this talk, While confinement and surface effects on fluids severely...
The phase behavior of CO2-alkane mixtures plays a central role in fluid transport, storage, and displacement in nanoporous media, with direct relevance to geological carbon sequestration, enhanced oil recovery, gas separation, and CO2 utilization technologies. Under nanoconfinement, phase equilibria, stability limits, and adsorption behavior can deviate substantially from bulk behavior due to...
A liquid can sustain tensile stress due to intermolecular attractions, but only up to a critical value beyond which it breaks through the spontaneous formation of a vapor bubble. This process, known as cavitation, is observed for instance in the wake of ship propellers or during sap ascent in trees. Cavitation also occurs during the drying of porous materials, when liquid-filled cavities are...
Understanding transport phenomena in confined fluids remains a central challenge in liquid-state theory. When liquids are restricted to nanometric dimensions—such as in porous materials, mineral interfaces, and synthetic or biological nanopores—the large surface-to-volume ratio amplifies interfacial interactions and molecular-scale inhomogeneities. As a result, transport becomes highly...
The occurrence and transport mechanisms of methane (CH4) and ethane (C2H6) in organic nanopores are crucial for the efficient development of shale gas reservoirs. While prior studies have examined the adsorption and recovery behaviors of light hydrocarbons (e.g., CH4, C2H6, C3H8) in kerogen nanopores, most analyses have focused on equilibrium states, with limited attention to dynamic...
In the context of energy transition and carbon dioxide emission reduction, the optimization and development of techniques for separating chemical species in the gas phase is a crucial challenge. Membrane separation and selective adsorption are attractive solutions due to their low energy costs compared to other processes (e.g., cryogenic distillation). In this context, innovative materials...
