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Nitrogen adsorption at 77 K is the current standard means for pore size determination of adsorbent materials. However, nitrogen adsorption reaches limitations when dealing with materials such as molecular sieving carbon with a high degree of ultramicroporosity. In this investigation, methane and carbon dioxide adsorption is explored as a possible alternative to the standard nitrogen probe. Methane and carbon dioxide adsorption equilibria and kinetics are measured in a commercially derived carbon molecular sieve over a range of temperatures. The pore size distribution is determined from the adsorption equilibrium, and the kinetics of adsorption is shown to be Fickian for carbon dioxide and non-Fickian for methane. The non-Fickian response is attributed to transport resistance at the pore mouth experienced by the methane molecules but not by the carbon dioxide molecules. Additionally, the change in the rate of adsorption with loading is characterized by the Darken relation in the case of carbon dioxide diffusion but is greater than that predicted by the Darken relation for methane transport. Furthermore, the proposition of inkbottle-shaped micropores in molecular sieving carbon is supported by the determination of the activation energy for the transport of methane and subsequent sizing of the pore-mouth barrier by molecular potential calculations.

Measurements of water adsorption equilibrium and kinetics in Takeda carbon molecular sieve (CMS) were undertaken in an effort to characterize fundamental mechanisms of adsorption and transport. Adsorption equilibrium revealed a type III isotherm that was characterized by cooperative multimolecular sorption theory. Water adsorption was found to be reversible and did not display hysteresis upon desorption over the conditions studied. Adsorption kinetics measurements revealed that a Fickian diffusion mechanism governed the uptake of water and that the rate of adsorption decreased with increasing relative pressure. Previous investigations have attributed the observed decreasing trend in the rate of adsorption to blocking of micropores. Here, it is proposed that the decrease is attributed to the thermodynamic correction to Fick's law which is formulated on the basis of the chemical potential as the driving force for transport. The thermodynamically corrected formulation accounted for observations of transport of water and other molecules in CMS.

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A review of thin film drainage models is presented in which the predictions of thinning velocities and drainage times are compared to reported values on foam and emulsion films found in the literature. Free standing films with tangentially immobile interfaces and suppressed electrostatic repulsion are considered, such as those studied in capillary cells.The experimental thinning velocities and drainage times of foams and emulsions are shown to be bounded by predictions from the Reynolds and the theoretical MTsR equations. The semi-empirical MTsR and the surface wave equations were the most consistently accurate with all of the films considered. These results are used in an accompanying paper to develop scaling laws that bound the critical film thickness of foam and emulsion films.