Effects of fluid dynamics on particle size distribution in particle formation processes

The final product quality of crystallization and precipitation processes is often determined by the interplay between mixing and relevant phenomena such as, nucleation, molecular growth, aggregation and breakage. In this work we focus our attention on the aggregation/breakage processes and on the level of details needed to accurately describe it. Different modelling approaches are tested and compared and results show that when aggregation and breakage processes are much slower than mixing a simplified homogeneous model can be used whereas when aggregation and breakage occur on a timescale comparable with that of mixing then a detailed approach based on computational fluid dynamics (CFD) is needed. Eventually we propose some guidelines for appropriate accounting for the fluid dynamic description in modelling of particle formation processes.