Controlled Nucleation in Aerosol Reactors for Suppression of Agglomerate Formation: A Numerical Study

The formation of agglomerated particles can be a detriment to the production of highly sinterable materials. It has been seen experimentally that agglomerates are almost exclusively constructed from 10–30-nm primary particles. This paper develops criteria for the avoidance of these small primary particles through control of the nucleation rate. The relationship between particle size and number density can be used to obtain regions of stable and unstable particle growth. It is seen that the critical source rate for the prevention of runaway nucleation can be scaled without knowledge of the monomer number density.