Probing soil and aquifer material porosity with nuclear magnetic resonance

Nuclear magnetic resonance relaxation measurements were used to identify different characteristic porosity domains in soil and aquifer materials. The porosity distribution can be inferred from these measurements by a regularization method applicable to any nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) relaxation, or by an analytic method applicable only to multiexponential relaxations (D. Orazio et al., 1989). The porosity distribution obtained from NMR relaxation measurements strongly depends on the pore shape factor. For the Borden aquifer material, both the regularized and the analytic pore size distribution obtained from NMR relaxation measurements are consistent with those obtained by Ball et al. (1990) using Hg porosimetry and N2 adsorption. For the Eustis and the Webster soils, the measured porosity domains are qualitatively consistent with those expected based on their respective composition. Our findings suggest that due to the long time required to saturate fine pores, NMR measurements of porosity distribution that are collected at short saturation times are biased toward larger pore sizes.

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