Abstract
Silica aerogels have many potential applications, including as host matrices for chemical species or nuclear waste storage. For these applications, the permeability is a key parameter and data show that the silica aerogels have poor permeability (~10-60 nm 2). In this chapter we review the method to measure the liquid and gas permeability in gels, aerogels and composite aerogels. Ideally, permeability does not depend on the type of pore fluid, therefore permeability measured using gas should be the same as that measured using water. We measured gas and water permeability in sets of nano composite silica aerogels. Experimental results show that gas permeability in aerogels was larger than water permeability by almost two orders of magnitude. The observed difference in gas and water permeability was analyzed from the point of view of the slip regime (Klinkenberg correction), and transition regime (Knudsen correction), the slip flow of gas at pore walls enhance the gas flow when pore sizes are small. This work addresses the problem of estimating permeability with high porosity materials such as aerogels. The effects of structural parameters of porous media (pore volume, tortuosity, fractal features) on the Klinkenberg and Knudsen corrections are discussed and the different models proposed in the literature are tested.