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Abstract

Precipitation is usually considered as a very fast process where solid particles are generated as a result of an irreversible chemical reaction in the liquid phase. A high supersaturation level is achievable by feeding highly concentrated reactants into the reactor. At this point the rapid and efficient mixing of the educts becomes a very important issue, which controls the subsequent process steps and the resulting product quality. It is more or less impossible to ensure that the supersaturation is spatially homogeneous if fast chemical reactions are involved. So, a narrow particle size distribution (PSD), which is favorable for numerous industrial applications, is difficult to realize by conventional precipitation. In this study the benefits of microemulsion systems (water/cyclohexane/Marlipal O13/40, water/cyclo-hexane/AOT) for carrying out precipitation reactions are investigated and discussed. As a representative model system the precipitation of calcium carbonate was chosen.