Growth rate dispersion in MSMRP crystallizers: Solution by regularization

Abstract

An inverse problem approach is formulated for the determination of growth rate dispersion from measurement of size distribution of crystals in mixed-suspension mixed-product removal crystallizers. The resulting Fredholm integral equation of the first kind, which is ill-posed, is solved by combining regularization with three different methods of representation of the unknown distribution. The methods are shown to be relatively insensitive to experimental error. Application to the analysis of published data on the sucrose—water system is also demonstrated, and it is seen that the different methods yield similar solutions.