Effects of Cooling Rate, Saturation Temperature, and Agitation on the Metastable Zone Width of DL-Malic Acid-Water System

A study of metastable zone width (MSZW) and nucleation parameters for a cooling crystallization of DL-malic acid-water system is described in this paper. Experimental determination of the MSZW was performed using a laser method in order to carry out the estimation of nucleation parameters. Measured MSZWs can be affected by a variety of parameters, such as cooling rate, saturation temperature, agitation rate, and so on. In this work, the MSZWs were found to decrease with an increase of saturation temperature, and levels of agitation, while it increased with an increase of cooling rate. Two classical theoretical approaches, Nyvlt's approach and self-consistent Nyvlt-like approach were used to analyze the experimental data on MSZWs.