Experimental studies of water crystallization in porous media

An experimental system was designed and built for determination of thermodynamic and kinetic parameters of water crystallization processes in porous media. Experimental measurements were carried out for two different types of soil, sand and sandy loam (fined-grained soil). The results showed that the kinetic data fit a simple first-order expression in which the overall crystallization rate is directly proportional to the driving force, with rate constant 1/tau, where tau is the characteristic time of the system. The driving force in this expression is defined as the difference between the prevailing and the equilibrium unfrozen water contents in the soil. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.