A Novel Design of Heat Exchanger for Epsom Salt Cooling Crystallization

Abstract

We introduced a design of a novel cooling heat exchanger for crystallization process of MgSO4.7H2O, and described the concepts of primary nucleation and secondary nucleation. To avoid the primary nucleation during crystallization process, the super-cooling degree limit of the salt lake brine was measured to define the supersaturation limit to MgSO4.7H2O, and the result is 1.32°C at-1°C. In this design, a primary circulation of solution is employed with a large enough flow rate to control the super-cooling degree of solution not to exceed 0.7 °C. A secondary circulation of cooling media is designed to add to this system, instead of the coldest cooling media being fed to shell directly, it is fed to the circulation pipe of the shell. It will help to prevent the supersaturation of solution exceeding the metastable zone width, thus to gurantee no primary nucleation during the Epsom salt crysatllization process.