A novel 3D volumetric method for directly quantifying porosity and pore space morphology in flocculated suspended sediments

Flocculated suspended sediments (flocs) are found in a variety of environments globally, and their transport and behavior bear substantial importance to several industries including fisheries, aqua -culture, and shipping. Additionally, the modelling of their behavior is important for estuarine and coastal flood prediction and defence, and the process of flocculation occurs in other unrelated in-dustries such as paper and chemical production. Floc porosity is conventionally assessed using inferential indirect or proxy data approaches. These methods underestimate floc porosity % by c. 30% and cannot measure the micro-scale complexity of these pore spaces and networks, ren-dering inputs to models sub-optimal. This study introduces a novel 3D porosity and pore space quantification protocol, that produces directly quantified porosity % and pore space data. center dot 3D floc data from micro-CT scanning is segmented volumetrically center dot This segmented volume is quantified to extract porosity and several pore space parameters from the floc structure