Batch Crystallizers: A Review

This review outlines the advances that have been made in experimental data reduction and analysis techniques which can be used to characterise the crystallization kinetics and crystal size distributions in batch crystallizers. A process description based on batch conservation equations describing population, mass and energy balances together with appropriate kinetic events represented by phenomenological models and proper boundary conditions should be used. Several general and useful techniques to extract reliable growth and nucleation kinetics based on solution and solid-side information are reviewed. Good compilations of kinetic studies, design and analysis methods and investigations of operating systems are reported. The review should help as a starting point in the rational design, understanding and better utilization of batch crystallizers.