Separation Process Engineering, 5th Edition

Chapter 18

Melt Crystallization

Melt crystallization is crystallization of material that is normally solid at normal ambient temperature and has no added solvent. Originally the term referred to crystallization of molten metals. Although the focus of this chapter is on melt crystallization to separate organics, the use of the melt crystallization with the zone melting process for purification of semiconductor materials is discussed in Section 18.6. A defining characteristic of melt crystallization is that heat transfer effects dominate the process (Ulrich and Stelzer, 2013). Melt crystallization should be considered as a separation method when

1. Distillation cannot be used (e.g., material is nonvolatile) or is very expensive (e.g., with relative ...