Water Filling and Emptying Kinetics in Two-Dimensional Hexagonal Mesoporous Silica of the Same Pore Diameter but Different Pore Lengths

Abstract

The effect of pore length on the water filling and emptying rates was studied using mesoporous silica (MPS) with same pore diameter but different pore lengths. The pore diameter of the synthesized MPS was ∼8 nm, whereas the average pore lengths were 460, 1,770, and 4000 nm. The gravimetric method was employed to record the time course of the adsorbed mass of water in MPS at 298 K and 1 atm. In both the filling and emptying processes, the relaxation curves (time course of adsorbed mass of water per unit mass of sample) were not significantly related to the pore length. This independence of the initial adsorption and desorption rates on the pore length suggests that the surface of the MPS aggregates is the bottleneck in the overall adsorption and desorption processes and that the initial mass flux in each nanopore is inversely proportional to the pore length. Furthermore, because the relaxation times to reach the equilibrium state were independent of the pore length, the mass flux of water uptake, release, and transport probably increase with an increase in the pore length during the entire adsorption and desorption processes. A transport model to describe these phenomena was proposed.