A Reconciliation of Packed Column Permeability Data: Deconvoluting the Ergun Papers

摘要

In his 1952 publication, Ergun made the following proclamation: “Data of the present investigation and those presented earlier have been treated accordingly, and the coefficientsk1andk2have been determined by the method of least squares. The values obtained arek1 = 150and,k2 = 1.75, representing 640 experiments.” In this paper, we demonstrate that because his experimental methodology was flawed, the corrected values, which his experimental results would otherwise have established for these coefficients, are significantly higher. This is, in part, because Ergun’s reporting of his measured data was ambiguous with respect to the embedded coefficientsk1andk2. In addition, this ambiguity made it difficult for any subsequent researcher to figure out the true meaning of his empirical results which, in turn, resulted in his choice of the values for these coefficients being acceptedby defaultin the scientific community.