(233a) Population Balance Modeling of Breakage of High Aspect Ratio Crystals in Stirred Slurries

Modeling of crystal breakage predominantly focuses on low aspect ratio crystals. When high aspect ratio crystal breakage is studied, it is often through single particle impact experiments or with multiple crystals in mills or agitated dryers. However, breakage also occurs in slurries in stirred vessels such as crystallizers. This work investigates breakage of high aspect ratio crystals, such as paracetamol, in agitated slurries. The aim is to develop realistic functions for specific rates of breakage and breakage distribution functions for high aspect ratio crystals. This work presents the development of specific rates of breakage and the breakage distribution functions from experimental data. Specifically, these functions are based on both the aspect ratio and the major axis of each crystal. A population balance model that includes the newly developed functions is used to generate crystal size distributions as a function of time. Comparisons of the model results with experimental data indicates how well these functions account for real behavior. Although this development is for a single system, the approach is of general applicability and can be used for other high aspect ratio crystals.