Abstract
Purpose
Wettability affects water configuration and thereby transport processes and microbial activity in soil. Approaches to visualize the effect of porous media wettability on water films surrounding particles are rarely available in the literature. The aim of this study is therefore (1) to visualize the effect of wettability on area and connectivity of the water phase and (2) to develop a segmentation strategy to enable water films and bulk water to be differentiated.
Materials and methods
Wettability of silica sand was rendered by silanization using dichlorodimethylsilane. The resulting contact angle was measured using the sessile drop method. Furthermore, wettability was characterized by the water penetration time test in air-dry samples and at a volumetric water content of 8 vol.%. Sulforhodamine B was used to stain distilled water at a concentration of 40 mg/l. By means of the Wilhelmy plate method, the influence of the dye on the liquid surface tension was tested. Confocal laser scanning microscopy (CLSM) was used to visualize the area and connectivity of the fluorescent-dyed water phase and the thickness of water films in untreated and silanized samples at water contents of 8, 16, and 32 vol.%.
Results and discussion
The silanization significantly increased the contact angle of silica sand, whereas the surface tension of the dye solution did not differ significantly from that of undyed water. CLSM visualized the distribution of water, focused across the surface grain layer. Thresholding of fluorescence signal in two-dimensional intensity projections enables the discrimination between film and bulk water. It was shown that even subcritical water repellency (contact angle <90) leads to a decrease in area and connectivity of the water phase by affecting film instead of bulk water. CLSM detects decreasing effects of wettability with increasing water content, which were no longer significant at a water content of 32 vol.%. CLSM was found to be more sensitive for detecting the effects of wettability than the water drop penetration time test.
Conclusions
CLSM provides new insight into wettability-dependent water configuration. One advantage over conventional microscopy arises from the capability to visualize water focused over the pore space. Compared to other three-dimensional imaging techniques, the advantage of CLSM is its simplicity. If only the optically accessible upper layer of the porous media is of interest, sample preparation, measurements, and image analysis can easily be carried out with a cost- and time-saving setup.
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Acknowledgments
We received most valuable technical assistance from Dr. Susanne K. Woche and Martin Volkmann from the Institute of Soil Science at the Leibniz University of Hannover. This project was financed by the German Research Foundation in priority program 1315 Biogeochemical Interfaces in Soil.
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An erratum to this article can be found at http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11368-011-0422-8
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Müehl, G.J.H., Rüehlmann, J., Goebel, MO. et al. Application of confocal laser scanning microscopy (CLSM) to visualize the effect of porous media wettability on unsaturated pore water configuration. J Soils Sediments 12, 75–85 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11368-011-0395-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11368-011-0395-7