Crystallization Process and Technology

Crystallization is a key technique for separation and purification of substances as well as for product design in chemical, pharmaceutical and biotechnological process industries. It is vital in many aspects of food preparation and storage, as well as in producing and refining the ingredients for foods and everyday use products. Crystallization is also employed to purify sugars and fats, in addition to change the texture of things such as ice cream, fondant, fudge, and chocolate. Controlling crystallization is important when freezing foods. Crystallization occurs in nature like water freezing and snowflakes formation, stalactites/stalagmites, rings formation, natural (mineral) crystal formation, removing sucrose from beet solutions, removing KCl from an aqueous solution.This book gives a clear, concise, balanced and up to date presentation of crystallization and solid-liquid separation of the crystalline product. Addressing topics that reflect key applications and recent trends of crystallization; it contains separation and formulation of drug or nutrition components in pharmaceutical and food industry, crystallization issues in medical applications, crystallization process design in production of bulk chemicals. A number of topics are concerned with particle and shape engineering by additives or controlled nucleation, displaying the ongoing interest in defining a specific product quality by crystallization. Ultimate problems of crystallization such as quantifying and understanding phase equilibria and admixture effects, elucidating growth mechanisms, and altering the growth behavior are addressed. The aim of the book is to outline the vital aspects of crystallization theory and practice, together with some closely associated topics.