Abstract
Crystallization behavior of hexadecane (C16H34), octadecane (C18H38), eicosane (C20H42), and docosane (C22H46) dispersions of similar mean droplet diameter (x50.2 ≈ 15 µm) was investigated in quiescent systems and compared to crystallization under mechanical stress. In quiescent systems, the required supercooling decreased with increasing chain length of the alkanes to initiate crystallization. Crystallization of alkane dispersions under mechanical stress resulted in similar onset crystallization supercooling, as during quiescent crystallization. Increase of mechanical stress did not affect the onset crystallization supercooling within alkane dispersions.
Highlights
Crystalline dispersions are widely used in the chemical and life science industry [1,2,3]
Due to the distinctive viscoelastic behavior of the encapsulating material, these dispersions are usually produced in a two-step melt emulsification process: in the first step, the dispersed phase is emulsified above its melting temperature and transferred under supercooling into a fine crystalline dispersion in the second step [11,12,13]
Three parameters—droplet size (Appendix A), melting point (Appendix B) and time dependency (Appendix C)—of crystallization behavior in alkane dispersions were analyzed prior the determination of crystallization index. Since these parameters were needed for the quiescent crystallization analysis, but are not the main topic of our discussion, details are given in the Appendices A–C
Summary
Crystalline dispersions are widely used in the chemical and life science industry [1,2,3]. The individual crystallization behavior in dispersions is strongly dependent on the formulation and process parameters, such as droplet size, additives, dispersed phase content, cooling rate, external forces and supercooling, as the driving force for crystallization in molten droplets [3,9,16,17,18]. Those parameters are adjusted to transform all droplets into spherical crystalline particles of the same size. Crystallization to different structures, incomplete crystallization and/or colloidal processes often occur during supercooling and destabilize the dispersions [19,20,21,22,23,24]
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