Crystallizer design and operation

Nucleation. Crystal nucleation is the formation of an ordered soHd phase from a Hquid or amorphous phase. Nucleation sets the character of the crystallization process, and it is, therefore, the most critical component ia relating crystallizer design and operation to crystal size distributions. 

The past 30 years have seen great advances in our understanding of the fundamentals of crystallization and has resulted in improved crystallizer design and operation. A dominant theme during this period was the analysis and prediction of crystal size distributions in realistic industrial crystallizers. This led to the development and refinement of the population balance technique which has become a routine tool of the crystallization community. This area is best described in the book of Randolph and Larson (1) which has been an indispensable reference and guide through two editions. 

The design of any equipment that involves the flow or stirring of liquids requires a knowledge of the fluids viscosity. Since crystallization operations involve the stirring and movement of suspensions of particles in fluids, the viscosity of suspensions is important in crystallization design and operation. Viscosity is a property of a... 

It is perhaps no wonder that crystallization was once called an art rather than a science, but to do so today would be to ignore the tremendous advances that have been made over the past three or more decades in both the theory and practice of the subject. The object of this chapter is to describe some of the recent developments in the area of crystallizer design and operation and to demonstrate how simple laboratory scale tests, some of which have been described in earlier chapters, can provide basic design information. 

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