Gint2D-T2 correlation NMR of porous media

The internal magnetic field gradient induced in porous media by magnetic susceptibility differences at material interfaces impacts diffusion measurements in particular at high magnetic field and can be used to probe the pore structure. Insight about the relationship between pore space and internal gradient G(int) can be obtained from 2D Laplace NMR experiments. When measuring distributions of transverse relaxation times T-2 in fluid filled porous media, relaxation and diffusion in internal gradients arise simultaneously and data are often interpreted with the assumption that one or the other parameter be constant throughout the sample. To examine this assumption we measure correlations of the distributions of G(int)(2)D and T-2 by 2D Laplace NMR for three different kinds of samples, glass beads with different bead diameters saturated with water, glass beads filled with oil and water, and a wet mortar sample. For the first two samples the cases where either the internal gradient or diffusion dominates were examined separately in order to better understand the relationship between G(int) and D. These results are useful for assessing the impact of internal gradients and diffusion in unknown samples, such as the mortar sample. The experiments were performed at different magnetic field strengths corresponding to 300 MHz and 700 MHz H-1 Larmor frequency to identify the impact of the magnetic field on the internal gradient. Subsequently, spatially resolved G(int)(2)D-T-2 maps were obtained to study the sample heterogeneity. (C) 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.