Antisolvent crystallization intensified by a jet crystallizer and a method for investigating crystallization kinetics

In this study, the antisolvent crystallization of NaCl in water-ethanol binary solvent mixtures in a multiorifice-impinging transverse (MOLT) jet crystallizer is studied both experimentally and numerically. Plug flow model coupled with population balance equation (PFM-PBE) is employed for the estimation of nucleation and crystal growth rate parameters at different supersaturation levels. Computational fluid dynamics coupled with population balance equation (CFD-PBE) is used to evaluate the macromixing and micromixing effect on the crystallization process. It is found that several microns NaCl crystals with narrow crystal size distribution (CSD) are prepared. The mixing process of the antisolvent and the solution is intensified by the MOLT jet crystallizer so that the mixing effect becomes insignificant due to a small Da number. The crystallization kinetics have also been obtained and confirmed by combining PFM-PBE and CFD-PBE approaches with the experiments. (C) 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.