THE USE OF MAGNETIC-RESONANCE IMAGES IN THE SIMULATION OF DIFFUSION IN POROUS CATALYST SUPPORT PELLETS

Previous work on the simulation of diffusion in porous materials and, in particular, catalyst support pellets has, in general, made use of a bstract mathematical models to represent the structure of those materi als. In this work; a magnetic resonance image of the spatial distribut ion of voidage within a thin slice through a porous catalyst support p ellet is used as the basis for a potentially more realistic representa tion of the porous structure. Simulations of diffusion are performed u sing a simulation lattice derived from the image and the resulting pre dictions of tortuosity are compared with experimentally determined val ues obtained using PGSE NMR and magnetic resonance imaging techniques. This approach is applied to the study of five different types of cata lyst support pellet, (C) 1998 Academic Press.