Influence of solute type and concentration on ice scaling in fluidized bed ice crystallizers

Abstract

During crystallization of ice from aqueous solutions, ice crystals exhibit a marked tendency to adhere to the cooled heat exchanger wall resulting in the formation of an insulating ice layer, often referred to as ice scaling. A promising method to avoid ice scaling is the application of a solid–liquid fluidized bed heat exchanger in which fluidized steel particles remove the ice crystals from the walls. This paper presents experiments with a single-tube fluidized bed heat exchanger in which ice crystals were produced from aqueous solutions of various solutes with varying concentrations. The experiments reveal that ice scaling is only prevented when a certain temperature difference between wall and solution is not exceeded. This transition temperature difference appears to increase approximately linearly with the solute concentration and is higher in aqueous solutions with low diffusion coefficients. The observed phenomena are explained by the hypothesis that ice scaling is only prevented when the mass transfer controlled growth rate of ice crystals on the wall does not exceed the scale removal rate induced by the fluidized steel particles. In conclusion, a model based on these physical phenomena is proposed to predict ice scaling in fluidized bed heat exchangers.