Residence time distribution continuous processing equipment

Tailoring of the particle size of the crystals from industrial crystallizers is of significant importance for both product quality and downstream processing performance. The scientific design and operation of industrial crystallizers depends on a combination of thermodynamics - which determines whether crystals will form, particle formation kinetics - which determines how fast particle size distributions develop, and residence time distribution, which determines the capacity of the equipment used. Each of these aspects has been presented in Chapters 2, 3, 5 and 6. This chapter will show how they can be combined for application to the design and performance prediction of both batch and continuous crystallization. 

If we accept the premise that the total strain is a key variable in the quality of laminar mixing, we are immediately faced with the problem that in most industrial mixers, and in processing equipment in general, different fluid particles experience different strains. This is true for both batch and continuous mixers. In the former, the different strain histories are due to the different paths the fluid particles follow in the mixer, whereas in a continuous mixer, superimposed on the different paths there is also a different residence time for every fluid particle in the mixer. To quantitatively describe the various strain histories, strain distribution functions (SDF) were defined (56), which are similar in concept to the residence time distribution functions discussed earlier. 

A well-known method for assessing the nonideahty of continuous process equipment is the determination of fluid residence time distributions. Residence time distribution (RTD) is a concept first developed by Danckwerts is his classic 1953 paper. In RTD analysis, a tracer is injected into the flow and the concentration of tracer in the outlet line is recorded over time (see Chapter 4). From the concentration history, the distribution of fluid residence times in the vessel can be extracted. 

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