Sales manager Pete Shickel is the face of Porometer at this event and explains the company’s innovative approach.
Shickel highlights that Porometer utilises capillary flow porometry (CFP), a technique that calculates pore size using liquid expulsion. This method focuses on pores that traverse entirely through a solid material, aptly referred to as through pores.
One of the standout products demonstrated by Shickel is the POROLUX Cito series, a range of gas-liquid porometers (GLP). These instruments determine pore sizes through the pressure scan method, a fast and highly reproducible approach. Shickel elaborates on this method, explaining that it involves a gradual increase in air pressure while simultaneously recording the resulting flow rates.
The instruments provide comprehensive insights, including the first bubble point (largest pore, ASTM F-316), mean flow pore size, smallest pore, pore size distribution, cumulative flow distribution, and gas permeability, all with the highest precision across the entire pressure range. Shickel explains the process, saying, "We exclusively measure the spaces or pores that traverse the material. First, the material is wetted with a solution, and then it's placed in the instrument, sealed. The instrument pressurises with dry gas, like nitrogen, pushing down on the material. When enough pressure is reached to expel the liquid, the instrument calculates the precise pressure and translates it into pore size using an equation."
This approach ensures exceptionally accurate measurements, and the porometers can collect up to 400 real data points, offering unrivaled resolution for characterizing the pore sizes of various materials.
