Water Sorption in Nanoporous Shale

Water adsorption and desorption phenomena are widely encountered in our daily lives and many industrial and environmental situations (Tokunaga, 2009). Water vapor sorption in nanoporous media is commonly used to interpret the pore structure and initial water saturation of mudrock, a typical nanoporous medium (Sang et al., 2020). For instance, Zolfaghari et al. (2017a, 2017b) combined water sorption and nitrogen sorption experiments to characterize the organic and inorganic PSD of shale. However, the indirect techniques used in water sorption experiments, and the wettability complexity of shale, make it difficult to interpret the results. Additionally, the spatial distribution of water and its influences on pore connectivity cannot be evaluated using this method.