Estimating specific surface area: Incorporating the effect of surface roughness and probing molecule size

The pore–solid interface and its characteristics play a key role in chemical interactions between minerals the solid soil matrix liquid pore space and, consequently, solute transport soils. Specific surface area (SSA), typically measured to characterize interface, depends not only on particle size distribution (PSD) but also shapes roughness. In this note, we investigate effects of roughness probing molecule SSA estimation, use concepts from fractals, theoretically estimate PSD water retention curve (WRC). former is used sizes latter approximately quantify by determining fractal dimension. To evaluate our approach, five Washington 21 Arizona soils for which both PSDs WRCs were accurately over wide range matric potentials. Comparison with experiments show that proposed method estimates reasonably well, RMSE = 16.8 30.1 m2 g–1 average relative error –56 –35% datasets, respectively.