Jg. Anderson et al., MICROPHASE-ASSISTED AUTOCATALYSIS IN A SOLID-LIQUID REACTION WITH A PRECIPITATING PRODUCT - I - THEORY, Chemical Engineering Science, 53(13), 1998, pp. 2451-2458
There are a number of industrially important reactions in which a spar
ingly soluble solid reacts with a liquid-phase reactant with one of th
e products precipitating out as a solid. If the particles of the preci
pitate are in microphase dimensions, i.e. less than the diffusion leng
th of the system, the solubility of the solute is increased by the mic
rophase action of the product in the vicinity of the solid phase. The
principal objective of the present work is to describe such 'autocatal
ytic' microphase action by developing a model which simultaneously con
siders reaction, crystallization, and microphase processes. The chief
conclusion is that the growth kinetics and initial crystal size distri
bution of the precipitating solids have a profound influence on the re
action rate. Earlier models were deficient in that only microphase act
ion was considered with limited effects of nucleation. The theoretical
conclusions reported here are sought to be experimentally validated i
n Part II of this study. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights res
erved.