Industrial crystalization from solution: The precipitation of sodium perborate

Methods used in the analysis of an industrial crystallization process are presented in this article. They are implemented in the development of a population balance based model for the sodium perborate precipitation. The precipitation kinetics such as nucleation, growth and agglomeration are estimated using a novel estimation procedure, which enables the determination of crystallization kinetics from the experimental crystal size distributions. The values obtained for the crystal growth rate agree well with the values determined by other authors.