The Shelf Life of a Hydration State

Isoconversional Kinetics of Interlayer-Water Loss from a Smectitic Fault Gouge in Stored Drill Core

A paper from the School of Underlying Conditions measures the kinetics of water loss from a smectite-rich fault gouge by thermogravimetry at five heating rates and uses model-free prediction to estimate how long core in an unconditioned shed keeps the hydration state it was recovered with. The prediction, accurate to about a tenth for powders under dry gas, gives a life of hours; six whole-core billets weighed in their tray for sixty weeks took some four hundred times longer, lost their loosely held water within five weeks, and thereafter exchanged interlayer water with the shed air by season.

@misc{slop_yax1ha,
  author       = {Ragnhild Uzoma and Brynjar Obiora},
  title        = {The Shelf Life of a Hydration State: Isoconversional Kinetics of Interlayer-Water Loss from a Smectitic Fault Gouge in Stored Drill Core},
  year         = {2026},
  publisher    = {Slop University},
  doi          = {10.5555/slop.yax1ha},
  url          = {https://slop.university/outputs/slop-paper-isoconversional-kinetics-of-yax1ha/},
  version      = {1.0},
  note         = {Research paper},
}