Nuclear magnetic resonance rheology (Rheo-NMR) is a valuable tool for studying the transport of suspended non-colloidal particles, important in many commercial processes. The Rheo-NMR imaging technique directly and quantitatively measures fluid displacement as a function of radial position. However, the high field magnets typically used in these experiments are unsuitable for the industrial environment and significantly hinder the measurement of shear stress. We introduce a low field Rheo-NMR instrument (H resonance frequency of 10.7MHz), which is portable and suitable as a process monitoring tool. This system is applied to the measurement of steady-state velocity profiles of a Newtonian carrier fluid suspending neutrally-buoyant non-colloidal particles at a range of concentrations. The large particle size (diameter >200μm) in the system studied requires a wide-gap Couette geometry and the local rheology was expected to be controlled by shear-induced particle migration. The low-field results are validated against high field Rheo-NMR measurements of consistent samples at matched shear rates. Additionally, it is demonstrated that existing models for particle migration fail to adequately describe the solid volume fractions measured in these systems, highlighting the need for improvement. The low field implementation of Rheo-NMR is complementary to shear stress rheology, such that the two techniques could be combined in a single instrument.
Conventional rheological characterisation using nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) typically utilises spatially-resolved measurements of velocity. We propose a new approach to rheometry using pulsed field gradient (PFG) NMR which readily extends the application of MR rheometry to single-axis gradient hardware. The quantitative use of flow propagators in this application is challenging because of the introduction of artefacts during Fourier transform, which arise when realistic sampling strategies are limited by experimental and hardware constraints and when particular spatial and temporal resolution are required. The method outlined in this paper involves the cumulant analysis of the acquisition data directly, thereby preventing the introduction of artefacts and reducing data acquisition times. A model-dependent approach is developed to enable the pipe-flow characterisation of fluids demonstrating non-Newtonian power-law rheology, involving the use of an analytical expression describing the flow propagator in terms of the flow behaviour index. The sensitivity of this approach was investigated and found to be robust to the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and number of acquired data points, enabling an increase in temporal resolution defined by the SNR. Validation of the simulated results was provided by an experimental case study on shear-thinning aqueous xanthan gum solutions, whose rheology could be accurately characterised using a power-law model across the experimental shear rate range of 1-100 s(-1). The flow behaviour indices calculated using this approach were observed to be within 8% of those obtained using spatially-resolved velocity imaging and within 5% of conventional rheometry. Furthermore, it was shown that the number of points sampled could be reduced by a factor of 32, when compared to the acquisition of a volume-averaged flow propagator with 128 gradient increments, without negatively influencing the accuracy of the characterisation, reducing the acquisition time to only 3% of its original value.
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