Editorial: Understanding the behavior of reactive solid materials in chemical processes

Reactions on solids is a rather complex, but very important area in the field of Chemical Reaction Engineering, as they are in the core of large-scale industrial sectors such as hydrometallurgy, and biomass valorization. The reactive solids behavior influences greatly the overall reaction kinetics and thus, process efficiency and economics and understanding the factors influencing this is the key for process development and fundamental understanding. Typically, the diffusion of material influences significantly the overall reactivity and the system is also dynamic, as the interacting solid particles may change in geometrical shape during the reaction–therefore the interpretation of kinetics need to be tackled by understanding advanced phenomena and models that describe the change in parameters including shape and surface area. In this special issue, many of the often-encountered scenarios dealing with solid-fluid reactions have been discussed from different angles and methods for overcoming the complexity of a solid-liquid or solid-gas system have been presented.