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The importance of pore throats in controlling the permeability of magmatic foams

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Abstract

Vesiculation of hydrous melts at 1 atm was studied in situ by synchrotron X-ray tomographic microscopy at the TOMCAT beamline of the Swiss Light Source (Villigen, Switzerland). Water-undersaturated basaltic, andesitic, trachyandesitic, and dacitic glasses were synthesized at high pressures and then laser heated at 1 atm. on the beamline, causing vesiculation. The porosity, bubble number density, size distributions of bubbles, and pore throats, as well as their tortuosity and connectivity, were measured in three-dimensional tomographic reconstructions of sample volumes, which were also used for lattice Boltzmann simulations of viscous permeabilities. Connectivity of bubbles by pore throats varied from ~ 100 to 105 mm−3, and for each sample correlated with porosity and permeability. Consideration of the results of this and previous studies of the viscous permeabilities of aphyric and crystal-poor magmatic samples demonstrated that at similar porosities permeability can vary by orders of magnitude, even for similar compositions. Comparison of the permeability relationships from this study with previous models (Degruyter et al., Bull Vulcanol 72:63–74, 2010; Burgisser et al., Earth Planet Sci Lett 470:37–47, 2017) relating porosity, characteristic pore-throat diameters, and tortuosity demonstrated good agreement. Modifying the Burgisser et al. model by using the maximum pore-throat diameter, instead of the average diameter, as the characteristic diameter reproduced the lattice Boltzmann permeabilities to within 1 order of magnitude. Correlations between average bubble diameters and maximum pore-throat diameters, and between porosity and tortuosity, in our experiments produced relationships that allow application of the modified Burgisser et al. model to predict permeability based only upon the average bubble diameter and porosity. These experimental results are consistent with previous studies suggesting that increasing bubble growth rates result in decreasing permeability of equivalent porosity foams. This effect of growth rate substantially contributes to the multiple orders of magnitude variations in the permeabilities of vesicular magmas at similar porosities.

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Acknowledgments

All of the members of the TOMCAT team and of the Swiss Light Source at the Paul Scherrer Institut are thanked for their creation of the facility that allowed this study to be done and their continuing dedication to providing support to external users of the beamline. D.R. Baker thanks NSERC for their continued support for his research through the Discovery Grant Program. We also thank the editors, K. Cashman and J. Taddeucci, and the reviewers, H. Wright, L. Chevalier, and A. Burgisser, for their detailed and thoughtful comments that significantly improved the presentation of our research in this contribution.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Earth and Planetary Sciences, McGill University, 3450 rue University, Montreal, QC, H3A 0E8, Canada

    Don R. Baker, Alexandra LaRue & Cedrick O’Shaughnessy

  2. Elettra-Sincrotrone Trieste S.C.p.A., S.S. 14-km 163.5, Basovizza, 34149, Trieste, Italy

    Francesco Brun & Lucia Mancini

  3. Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (INFN) - Sezione di Trieste, Padriciano, 99, 34149, Trieste, Italy

    Francesco Brun

  4. Laboratory for Synchrotron Radiation, Swiss Light Source, Paul Scherrer Institut, 5232, Villigen, Switzerland

    Julie L. Fife

  5. Department of Earth Sciences, University of Toronto, 22 Russell St., Toronto, M5S 3B1, Canada

    Cedrick O’Shaughnessy

  6. Department of Chemical Engineering, McGill University, 3610 rue University, Montreal, QC, H3A 0E5, Canada

    Reghan J. Hill

  7. School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Manchester, Manchester, UK

    Margherita Polacci

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  1. Don R. Baker
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Correspondence to Don R. Baker.

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Editorial responsibility: K.V. Cashman; Deputy Executive Editor: J. Tadeucci

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Baker, D.R., Brun, F., Mancini, L. et al. The importance of pore throats in controlling the permeability of magmatic foams. Bull Volcanol 81, 54 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00445-019-1311-z

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