Pore-Scale Mechanisms of Colloid Interfacial Retention as Studied With Confocal Microscopy

Due to environmental concerns related to migration of colloids and colloid-facilitated transport of contaminants, interfacial retention of colloids has drawn significant scientific attention in past years. Nevertheless, there are still questions that remain debatable or unanswered concerning the mechanisms of interfacial retention of colloids. The experimental tools traditionally include column experiments, which provide macroscopic experimental data, but not always ensure their non-ambiguous explanation. Pore-scale visualization techniques provide additional information on the occurring processes and serve the purpose of explaining the phenomena observed at larger scales. The progress in the field of microscopy provides state-of-the-art techniques for visualization experiments where behavior of single colloids can be observed and therefore analysis of the particular retention mechanism can be performed. We applied confocal microscopy to investigate the two most arguable sites of colloidal retention: AWI (air-water interface) and contact line, which proved itself as a promising technique. The benefits of confocal microscopy include visualization of single colloids, flexible positioning of the sample and therefore direct observation of the point of interest. In addition, fast image acquisition allows imaging experiments to be conducted under dynamic conditions. The combination of confocal imaging with the specialized imaging software provides the added advantage of quantitative evaluations of the acquired images. In our experiments, confocal microscopy was applied to investigate the retention of colloids on AWI and contact line as affected by colloid and solution properties (e.g., surface tension and ionic strength). Particular attention was given to the behavior of colloids on the contact line both in static and dynamic regimes including the investigation of moving evaporative fronts. Additionally, the importance of hydrodynamic effect on the colloidal retention at the pore scale was studied for the case of colloids transported in an unsaturated capillary channel. The application of confocal microscopy is not limited to the mentioned pore-scale experiments and represents a subject of the ongoing research.