Special Issue "Recent Progress in Industrial Crystallization"
A special issue of Crystals (ISSN 2073-4352). This special issue belongs to the section "Industrial Crystallization".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 30 June 2022 | Viewed by 6439
Special Issue Editors

Interests: phase equilibria; crystallization kinetics; process monitoring & design; separation of fine chemicals, large scale industrial products and renewable resources; innovative crystallization-based separation concepts; enantiomers; natural products; multi-component mixtures
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Interests: industrial crystallization; freeze crystallization; water treatment

Interests: melt crystallization; crystallizer design; fractional crystallization; phase equilibria; crystallization kinetics; continuous crystallization; process monitoring; process design; applied population balance and process modelling; process intensification and combination; process optimization; novel measurement techniques

Interests: industrial crystallization; crystal growt mechanisms; hydrometallurgy; biomineralization; resource recovery
Special Issue Information
Crystallization is an important industrial process, a purification technique, a separation process and a branch of particle technology. It also encompasses several key areas of chemical and process engineering. Industrial crystalline products include bulk chemicals, such as sodium chloride and sucrose, fertilizer chemicals such as potassium chloride and urea and, high-price products such as pharmaceuticals, platinum group metal salts, high-grade materials for battery production and organic fine chemicals such as food additives. Industrial crystallization further plays a role in the new and rapidly expanding field of engineered nanoparticles and the production of crystals for the electronics industry and biotechnology. Other prominent industrial application domains comprise the use of crystallization in water and effluent treatment, reflecting the waste-to-resource movement that is becoming increasingly important and relevant in the field.
The overall theme of this Special Issue is how theoretical concepts are adapted in industrial crystallization, and how practical understanding in the field is enhanced through applied research. The latter covers a wide range of subjects, such as crystallization fundamentals, analytical tools for process analysis and monitoring, crystallization process and product design, as well as the integration of crystallization in industrial process chains for, for example, solving environmental and sustainability issues. These topics are also the focus of the 21st International Symposium on Industrial Crystallization (ISIC 21) held from 31 August to 2 September this year (https://dechema.de/en/ISIC_2021), seen as the most important international conference in the field.
This Special Issue is dedicated to Professor Gerda van Rosmalen (27 May 1936–18 January 2021), who was a pioneer in this field. She developed the field of industrial crystallization research through her original courses developed over many decades and given to industrial partners and postgraduate students. Professor van Rosmalen spent 20 years as the Professor of Industrial Crystallization and Clean Technology at the Laboratory for Process Equipment at TU Delft in the Netherlands, and her distinguished positions include being a Board Member of the Working Party on the Industrial Crystallization of the European Federation of Chemical Engineers. She was regarded globally as a pre-eminent figure in industrial crystallization.
The keywords given below encompass examples addressed in the Special Issue, but papers concerning other innovative and novel subjects in industrial crystallization are also welcome.
Prof. Dr. Heike Lorenz
Prof. Dr. Alison Emslie Lewis
Dr. Erik Temmel
Prof. Dr. Jens-Petter Andreassen
Guest Editors
Manuscript Submission Information
Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.
Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Crystals is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.
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Keywords
- Nucleation
- Crystal growth
- Polymorphism, solvates, co-crystals and solid solutions
- Crystallization
- Precipitation
- Monitoring of crystallization
- Crystallization hybrid processes
- Application in large-scale, fine chemical, specialty and life science industries
- Sustainability: circular economy, resource recovery
Related Special Issue
- Advances in Industrial Crystallization in Crystals (16 articles)
Planned Papers
The below list represents only planned manuscripts. Some of these manuscripts have not been received by the Editorial Office yet. Papers submitted to MDPI journals are subject to peer-review.
1. Tentative title: *Thermal Deformations of Crystal Structures Formed in the L-Aspartic Acid /**L-Glutamic Acid Enantiomer System*
Authors: *Roman Sadovnichii1, Elena Kotelnikova1 and Heike Lorenz2*
1 Department of Crystallography, St. Petersburg State University, St. Petersburg, Russia
2 Max Planck Institute for Dynamics of Complex Technical Systems, Magdeburg, Germany
2.Tentative title: Purification of Styrene from Waste Plastics
Authors: Temmel1, M. Stepanski1, P. Cramers1, J. Ulrich2
1 Sulzer Chemtech Ltd, Sulzerallee 48, CH-8404 Winterthur, Switzerland
2 Martin Luther University, Halle-Wittenberg, Center of Engineering Science, Process Engineering/ TVT, D-06099 Halle, Germany
Abstract: Recycling of waste plastics is nowadays a major challenge for environmental protection and sustainability, as long as oil-based polymers are still as widely applied as today. Pyrolysis is a common process in that context to break down the polymer chains utilizing heat and catalysts, which facilitates the recovery of the main polymer educts. As a result, a complex reaction mixture is created, which varies with the waste feed composition and needs to be separated in several steps to produce single components in the required purity for further usage. Multi-column distillation is usually the first choice for such mixtures due to its excellent separation efficiency, its continuous operation and the long-term experience with this technology in almost every company. For certain tasks, involving separating of close- and/ or co-boiling substances, distillation requires, however, large installations, significant energy input or the intended separation is even not possible. In these cases, a combination with melt crystallization can be reasonable since operational and maybe also the investment costs can be reduced.
The advantages of such process combinations are illustrated on the example of styrene recovery from polystyrene pyrolysis oils. The standalone separation efficiencies of both technologies are demonstrated, at first, based on recent experimental findings in lab- and pilot-scale and the basics of the separation problem are explained. A typical example of a pyrolysis oil serves then as the benchmark to quantify the expenses for a common distillation process designed with the relevant VLE. Subsequently, different scenarios are derived for oil compositions containing substances boiling together or close to styrene, which represent different pyrolysis products from different waste plastic sources. Finally, the benefits of a distillation-crystallization process to produce ultra-pure styrene (Purity > 99.95%) are quantified based on these scenarios to simplify future evaluations of such process combinations.
3. Title: Solubility and crystallization of piroxicam from different solvents in evaporative and cooling crystallizations
Authors: Iben Ostergaard and Haiyan Qu
*Abstract:* Piroxicam is a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID) and it can form 4 anhydrous polymorphs and one monohydrate. In this work, the solubility of the polymorphic form II, which is the most stable form at room temperature, was investigated in seven different solvents with various polarities; It has been found that the solubility of piroxicam in the solvents is in the following order: chloroform > dichloromethane > acetone > ethyl acetate > acetonitrile > acetic acid > methanol > hexane. Crystallization of piroxicam from different solvents has been performed with evaporative crystallization and cooling crystallization, the effects of solvent evaporation rate and solute concentration have been studied. Both form I and form II could be produced in cooling and evaporative crystallization, and no simple link can be identified between the operation parameters and the polymorphic outcome. Results obtained in the present work showed the stochastic nature of nucleation of different polymorphs as well as the complexity of the crystallization of a polymorphic system.
4. Title: Crystallization in fluidized bed reactors: from fundamental knowledge to full scale applications
Author: Seckler, Marcelo Martins
Department of Chemical Engineering of the Polytechnic School, University of São Paulo, Brazil
Abstract: A review is presented on fifty years of research on crystallization in fluidized bed reactors (FBR). FBR´s are suitable for recovery of slightly soluble compounds from aqueous solutions, as it yields large (centimeter-sized) particles that are easily processed for reuse and permits liquid residence times of only a few minutes. Full scale application for water softening has been applied since the years 1980´s, for phosphate removal since the years 2000 and new applications have been developed or are in development since then, involving crystallization of a wide range of metals, as well as carbonates, phosphates, chromates, sulfides and sulfates.Besides, process integration with other unit operations have been proposed to address a number sustainability demands, as shown in the following examples. In desalination and in water treatment for reuse with zero liquid discharge, metals precipitation in FBR are combined with membrane processes to reduce scaling upon membrane surfaces, thereby reducing energy demand. In carbon capture from air, calcium carbonate precipitation in FBR combined with absorption and calcination units offer an efficient closed system. In remediation of contaminated areas due to acid mine drainage, metals sulfide precipitation in FBR´s are integrated with biogenically produced H2S and HCO3 with low energy and chemicals consumption. Wastewater treatment using FBR combined with adsorption, membrane filtration, membrane distillation, electrochemical systems, among others, have been applied to reduce and concentrate waste materials or to valorize them as products.
Further, novel FRB concepts have been proposed, such as an aerated FBR for chemical-free precipitation of calcium carbonate, a FBR where the seeds and target compound are of the same material to yield a pure particulate product, FBR´s in series to selective separation of pure metals from multicomponent mixtures and a circulating FBR for improved recovery of the target compound.
Intensified processes have been proposed to yield core-shell products with desired performance, such as an integrated supercritical antisolvent-fluidized bed process for pharmaceutical formulations. A novel FBR – microbial electrochemical cell allows simultaneous removal of organics and of mineral particulate. A modified Fenton process for organics removal consists of a FBR where undesirable iron hydroxide sludge is removed by aggregation upon active carbon seeds.
Fundamental studies have elucidated the elementary steps of crystallization in FBR´s. For example, crystal growth has been found to be the dominant process for the formation of calcium carbonate and struvite particles, whereas agglomeration is important for calcium phosphate and metal sulfides. Fluid dynamics has also received attention, as FBR´s are populated with particles with varying density and size, which tend to segregate to minimize the potential energy, but they also mix due to turbulence. These phenomena have been incorporated in population, mass and energy balances to describe certain experimental systems. Consequently, mathematical models have been extensively used for process optimization and control at bench, pilot and full-scale units.