Unfrozen water contents of submarine permafrost determined by nuclear magnetic resonance

ABSTRACT Tice, A.R., Anderson, D.M. and Sterrett, K.F., 1981. Unfrozen water contents of submarine permafrost determined by nuclear magnetic resonance. Eng. Geol., 18: 135-146. Prior work resulted in the development of techniques to measure the unfrozen water contents in frozen soils by nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR). It has been demonstrated that NMR is a promising new method for the determination of phase composition (the measurement of unfrozen water content as a function of temperature) which circumvents many of the limitations inherent in the adiabatic and isothermal calorimetric techniques. The NMR technique makes it possible, in a non-destructive, non-intrusive way, to explore hysteresis by determining both cooling and warming curves. Corrections are made for dissolved paramagnetic impurities which have the effect of increasing the signal intensity at decreasing temperatures. The results demonstrate that NMR techniques can be effectively utilized both at and below the melting point of ice in frozen soils and that accurate melting points (freezing point depressions) can be determined.