Abstract：Potassium sulfate has good water solubility and stable safety performance. Elucidating its crystal nucleation process can provide guidance for controlling the size and quality of potassium sulfate crystals. In this paper, the nucleation and crystallization kinetics of potassium sulfate in a stirring crystallizer were experimentally investigated. The homogeneous and heterogeneous nucleation mechanisms of potassium sulfate crystallization were studied by using the classical nucleation theory. The nucleation induction times of K2SO4 at different temperatures and supersaturation ratios were measured, and the interfacial tension and various nucleation parameters were calculated, including the critical nucleation radius (r*), the critical nucleation free energy (ΔG*), and the critical number of nucleating molecules (i*). The results showed that when the temperature and supersaturation ratio increased, the induction time, critical nucleation free energy, critical nucleation radius and critical molecular number decreased, while the nucleation rate increased. With changes of temperature and supersaturation, the morphological changes of the crystal could be ignored, while the average particle size increased with the increase of supersaturation and temperature. The variation pattern of the measured nucleation parameters was consistent with that of classical nucleation theory.
MA Yulan,ZHENG Yayuan,WU Xieping et al. Nucleation Kinetics of Potassium Sulfate in Stirred Crystallizer[J]. Chemical Reaction Engineering and Technology, 2024, 40(5): 428-435.
