Growth light scattering, nucleation

A. R. Nerheim, E. K. Samuelson, and T. M. Svartaas. Investigation of hydrate kinetics in the nucleation and early growth phase by laser light scattering. In Proceedings Volume, volume 1, pages 620-627. 2nd Soc Offshore Polar Eng et al Offshore Polar Eng Int Conf (San Francisco, CA, 6/14-6/19), 1992. 

The development and refinement of population balance techniques for the description of the behavior of laboratory and industrial crystallizers led to the belief that with accurate values for the crystal growth and nucleation kinetics, a simple MSMPR type crystallizer could be accurately modelled in terms of its CSD. Unfortunately, accurate measurement of the CSD with laser light scattering particle size analyzers (especially of the small particles) has revealed that this is not true. In mar cases the CSD data obtained from steady state operation of a MSMPR crystallizer is not a straight line as expected but curves upward (1. 32. 33V This indicates more small particles than predicted... 

It is shown that while solute concentration data can be used to estimate the kinetic growth parameters, information about the CSD is necessary to evaluate the nucleation parameters. The fraction of light obscured by an illuminated sample of crystals provides a measure of the second moment of the CSD. Numerical and experimental studies demonstrate that all of the kinetic parameters can be identified by using the obscuration measurement along with the concentration measurement. It is also shown that characterization of the crystal shape is very important when evaluating CSD information from light scattering instruments. 

Figure 7. Particle nucleation and growth kinetics determined by laser light scattering Rayleigh ratio vs. time. Exp. 1 no surfactant present Exp. 2 (SDS) = 6 X 10 4 mol dm 3. Theor Calculated from Curve 4, Figure 5, considering particle growth by polymerization.

Figure 4 shows the light-scattering curve for nine selected potassium aluminosilicate solutions. Two types of behaviour were apparent. For low-silica solutions, a low, steady amount of scattered light is followed by a sharp increase as the solution becomes cloudy prior to gelling, possibly suggesting a nucleation-and-growth mechanism. There is a direct relation between the persistence of the low value and the observed gel time - the... 

Nucleation of protein crystals typically requires extremely high supersaturation levels. Studies of protein nucleation are limited, with most efforts focused on light scattering as a tool to detect nucleation. Feher and Kam s work set the tone for much of the work that followed (Feher and Kam 1985). They model nucleation in a classical fashion, as a cooperative step-by-step addition of monomers to a cluster. Light scattering is utilized to follow the cluster size distribution as a function of time and solution variables, which yield estimates for the relative forward (cluster growth) and reverse (cluster dissolution) rates of monomer addition. Certainly, the protein crystal nucleation is an area that deserves additional study. 

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