Minimização entrópica aplicada à cristalização do ácido monocloroacético.

Abstract

Crystallization is characterized as a process in which a crystalline product is obtained from a given solution. Such an operation has been frequently studied for being considered as an important key during separation and purification processes of chemical products, particularly in fine chemistry. Due its importance in the industrial field, the interests for the development of new methods of analysis and optimization, to achieve greater efficiency of operation, are essential. Once the classic analysis of this operation is based on mathematical models that use in its essence the mass balances and energy associated to the crystallization kinetic phenomena, this work has been proposed to apply a methodology of analysis to the crystallization of monochloroacetic acid (MCAA) process based on the mass and energy balances associated to the entropy balance used to determination of optimum operating conditions. The MCAA is an intermediary chemical compound employed in manufacture of a wide variety of products, such as Agrochemicals, pharmaceuticals and amphoteric surfactants. Through the analysis of the entropy generation rate behavior of the crystallization system of the MCAA, it was observed that the current operating conditions are under minimal entropy production rate, and the results obtained show a good agreement when compared with the experimental data. Such results indicate that the use of the analysis entropic methodology has been proved to be simple, easy to apply and requiring low computational effort.