Determination of the connectivity of porous solids from nitrogen sorption measurements—III. Solids containing large mesopores

Abstract We recently proposed a method for the determination of the connectivity of porous solids, based on an analysis of nitrogen sorption measurements. This method turns out to be inadequate for solids containing large mesopores. For such solids, the sharpness of the desorption knee reflects both the size of the pore network and the fraction of vapour-filled pores at the start of the desorption process. On the basis of experimental sorption data, it is not possible to distinguish between these two contributions. In this paper, we present a modification to our earlier method that allows narrow bounds on the mean coordination number of the pore network to be calculated for these solids.