A Rebuttal Paper

To the paper entitled “An experimental study of pressure drop characteristics under single-phase flow through packed bed microreactors”

Abstract

This rebuttal paper responds to a 2024 AIChE Journal article by Zhang, Hommes, Schuring and Yue reporting an experimental study of pressure drop characteristics under single-phase flow through packed bed microreactors. The author argues that the paper is at odds with the Laws of Nature and reanalyses its data using the Quinn Fluid Flow Model (QFFM), a theory of fluid flow in closed conduits published in 2019. Only the measurements made with water are analysed, avoiding the issue of gas compressibility, for packed beds of glass beads in four column diameters and six particle sizes. Measured flow rates and pressure drops are accepted, while the spherical particle diameter equivalent and the external porosity of each column are back-calculated with the QFFM. Of the 24 reported columns, nine are discarded, eight because their underlying data could not be located and one because of an implausibly low reported external porosity, leaving 15 for analysis. The author concludes that wall effects have no measurable impact on permeability, that the measurements lie mostly in the transitional flow regime with no fully developed turbulence, that the spherical particle diameter equivalent rather than the Sauter mean diameter should be used in permeability considerations, and that discrepancies in particle diameter, sphericity and external porosity show insufficiently accurate measurement techniques in the original study.

Abstract prepared by the editorial office from the full text of the article; the authors did not supply one.