Model study of the effect of pore structure and condensation on multilayer adsorbate transport in porous media

A single-pore model approach to multilayer adsorbate transport in mesoporous media, previously shown to be capable of interpreting the observed behavior of relative vapor permeability PHs/PHL (or of the corresponding surface diffusion coefficient Ds), has been incorporated in a model pore network. The resulting more sophisticated model can simulate realistically the effect on PHs/PHL or Ds (i) of salient structural features of the porous medium (notably pore size dispersion and network connectivity) and (ii) of vapor condensation, which inevitably accompanies multilayer adsorbate transport in reality. An extensive generic parametric study of these effects has been performed on this basis. The results indicate that the aforementioned effects are ordinarily unlikely to induce substantial deviations of observed PHs/PHL behavior from the single-pore model benchmark. Thus, the utility of this simple model as a good basis for data analysis is confirmed, while the network model offers the possibility of exploiting external structural and other available information for a more refined interpretation of PHs/PHL behavior in particular mesoporous solid-vapor systems.