A Semiempirical Kinetics for Modeling and Simulation of the Crystal Growth Process in Pure Solutions

Abstract

A kinetic model was proposed to explain the growth of crystals in pure solutions based on the solid-phase concentration, assuming that the crystal growth process follows a pseudo-second-order kinetics. The initial crystallization rate was defined based on the pseudo-second-order kinetics. The proposed model was determined to be useful in predicting the rate constant, the solid-phase concentration at equilibrium, and the initial crystallization rate. The pseudo-second-order kinetic model was applied to the experimental data of the sucrose crystal growth process for different operating temperatures and seed crystal diameters. The proposed model was accurate in modeling the experimental kinetics of sucrose crystallization process for the range of operating conditions studied. The coefficient of determination between experimental data and predicted kinetics varied from r2 = 0.943 to r2 = 0.982 at the studied temperatures. The calculated kinetic parameters were used to generate three-dimensional empirical correlations relating the crystal growth of sucrose for the range of temperature studied. The proposed model was very simple with only two unknown parameters, which can be easily determined by a simple linear or nonlinear regression analysis.