SOLIDIFICATION PROCESSES OF SOLUTIONS

Recent progress in modeling pure liquid and dendritic alloy solidifica tion is reviewed to lay the groundwork for freezing of solutions relev ant to cryopreservation of biological materials. The classical Stefan problem of freezing/melting a pure substance is discussed first to int roduce some of the fundamental concepts, and then the framework for mo deling the freezing of solutions is reviewed. The formalism is extende d to the freezing of a solution-saturated porous media. As an applicat ion of the methodologies developed by engineers, freezing of a sodium chloride solution in a Aat bag is simulated, and then using the temper ature and salt concentration data calculated the kinetics of water los s from a model cell is predicted. (C) 1997 Academic Press.