Stochastic approach for the prediction of PSD in nonisothermal antisolvent crystallization processes

Abstract

A stochastic formulation for the description of cooling‐antisolvent mediated crystal growth processes based on the Fokker‐Planck equation is discussed. Previous results are further extended to include not only the additional degree of freedom (temperature) in the approach, but also to formulate the model parameters dependencies with the input manipulated variables (antisolvent flow rate and temperature) toward a global model to be used within all possible operating regimes. The obtained global models are used to define, for the first time, an operating map of the crystallization process, where asymptotic isomean and isovariance curves are reported in an antisolvent flow‐rate‐temperature plane. Input multiplicities are identified and validated both numerically and experimentally for the NaCl‐water‐ethanol nonisothermal antisolvent crystallization system. © 2013 American Institute of Chemical Engineers AIChE J, 59: 2843–2851, 2013