A Probabilistic Approach to Model the Nonisothermal Nucleation of Triacylglycerol Melts

Abstract

Crystallization studies are usually performed under isothermal conditions. Kinetic parameters characterizing the isothermal nucleation and growth processes can be obtained using classical nucleation and growth models. However, crystallization regimes found in nature, as well as those used in food and pharmaceutical processing, are rarely isothermal. Focusing on the nucleation stage, the approach followed in this work was to define a new parameter to characterize the driving force of nucleation, the supercooling-time exposure (β), which not only depends on the difference between the melting temperature (Tm) and the onset temperature of nucleation (Tc) ΔTc but also on the induction time of nucleation, tc, and therefore the cooling rate (φ), namely, β = (1/2)ΔTctc = ΔTc2/2φ. An exponential probability density function of the values of β was utilized to model changes in nucleation rate as a function of β in the form J/Jmax = . From this parametrization procedure, the energy of activation for the nucleation pr...