Control of water and air in the root zone of plants remains a challenge in the microgravity environment of space. Due to limited flight opportunities, research aimed at resolving microgravity porous media fluid dynamics must often be conducted on Earth. The NASA KC-135 reduced gravity flight program offers an opportunity for Earth-based researchers to study physical processes in a variable grav...

wood is a porous three dimensional, hydroscopic, viscoelastic, anisotropic bio-polymer composite composed of an interconnecting matrix of cellulose, hemicelluloses and lignin with minor amounts of inorganic elements and organic extractives. some, but not all, of the cell wall polymer hydroxyl groups are accessible to moisture and these accessible hydroxyls form hydrogen bonds with water. as the...

in this research, moisture sorptions of sayer date were determined at 20, 30, 40 and 60°c, using the standard static gravimetric method developed by the european cooperation project cost 90. several mathematical models, namely gab, bet, iglesias & chirif and halsey were employed to fit the experimental data through non-linear regression. results indicate that equilibrium moisture content increa...

A new method is described for studying the metabolism of air-dry seeds. An initial pulse of (14)CO(2) was supplied to seeds maintained in air at controlled low water potentials for 6 months. Seeds were also infiltrated with 2-(14)C-acetate and with (14)C-l-leucine at 0 C, redried rapidly at 0 C, and maintained at controlled low water potentials for 4 to 6 weeks. The metabolism of the air-dry se...

Acrylamide/2-hydroxyethyl methacrylate hydrogels were prepared by simultaneous radiation-induced cross-linking copolymerization of acrylamide (AAm), 2-hydroxyethyl methacrylate (HEMA) and water mixtures at a radiation dose of 10 kGy. Hydrogels were characterized by infrared spectroscopy. Dynamic and equilibrium swelling of hydrogels in water and in buffer solutions were investigated. They were ...

Natural gas hydrates (primarily methane hydrates) are considered to be an important and promising unconventional source of hydrocarbons. Most natural hydrate accumulations exist in pore space associated with reservoir rocks. Therefore, studies porous media particular interest, as well as, the phase equilibria hydrates, including determination equilibrium water content (nonclathrated water). Non...

 The equilibrium moisture content of malting barley grains (cv. Scarlett) was determined by gravimetric-static method in the range 20-50°C using saturated salt solutions (LiCl, MgCl2.6H2O, K2CO3, NaBr, NaNO2, KI, NaNO3, NaCl, (NH4)2SO4) to provide water activities for each temperature between 0.11 and 0.813. Desorption isotherms were obtained at 20, 30, 40, and 50°C. All the sorption curves w...