Simplified Approach to Characterize the Cooling Crystallization in a Modular Mini-Plant

The characterization of new process equipment often includes tedious experiments, particularly for (cooling) crystallization. This can be cost-intensive and time-consuming when the actual equipment has to be continuously operated to gain new insights. For multi-purpose plants that frequently change the process substance system, this can be especially laborious. In order to accelerate the generation of characterization data for the quasi-continuous filter belt crystallizer (QCFBC), a Peltier-element-driven, simplified experimental benchtop setup is validated in this work using a sucrose/water model substance system. It was shown that the operation conditions during the cooling crystallization on the continuously operated plant can be appropriately emulated; therefore, an actual operation of the entire mini-plant for characterization experiments is no longer necessary.