Abstract
• Layer melt crystallization of aqueous sucrose solutions with different viscosities. • Viscosity influence on freezing based on ice crystal yield and purity results. • CFD study on heat transfer inside melt crystallizer prior to ice crystallization. • Temperature distributions and thermal boundary layers of undercooled solutions. In the present work, the influence of solution viscosity on growth kinetics and purification efficiency in layer melt crystallization was investigated. Melt crystallization experiments were conducted for three different types of aqueous sucrose solution as they are ideal solutions and a relatively wide viscosity range can be investigated with a moderate change of freezing points. The aqueous 10 wt%, 23 wt%, and 30 wt% sucrose solutions have a dynamic viscosity value of 2.01 mPas, 4.74 mPas, and 7.21 mPas at their respective freezing points of −0.63 °C, −1.78 °C, and −2.64 °C. The solution temperature distribution was predicted by computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations run in COMSOL Multiphysics 5.6 software. Experimental results showed that a higher solution viscosity caused a higher crystal layer impurity and lower crystal yields in static layer melt crystallization. The cooling process of different solutions predicted by a CFD heat transfer study showed that the supersaturation region is wider for less concentrated solutions as cooling proceeds more rapidly. Hence, the temperature gradients obtained follow the boundary layer theory, i.e., the thinner the boundary layer, the faster the heat transfer.
Highlights
Industrial production based on sustainable development and circular economy principles is imperative to ensure continuous economic growth with a minimized negative environmental impact by the industrial sector
As a result of the broad range of layer melt crystallization applica tions, the present study investigates the influence of the thermophysical properties of the solution on layer melt crystallization and its kinetics
The experimental results obtained in the layer melt crystallization studies and the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) results of the heat transfer phenomena are presented
Summary
Industrial production based on sustainable development and circular economy principles is imperative to ensure continuous economic growth with a minimized negative environmental impact by the industrial sector. Industrial separation processes account for 22% of total energy consumption in the USA and high-energy separation such as distillation accounts for 10–15 % of global energy consumption [2,3]. The low energy consumption of melt crystallization is the result of the property of the chemical, and that is a significantly lower latent heat of fusion than the latent heat of vaporization. It is an environmentally safe technology as there is no potential risk of leakage of vapors, nor is there any generation of waste streams because of the absence of vapor phase production and usage of additional substances [4]
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