Cooling crystallization of aluminum sulfate in pure water

• A parallel synthesis platform was used to determine the solubility.
• SDBS can inhibit crystal nucleation and promote growth.
• Mechanisms of SDBS were explored from view of kinetics and surface tension.

This study investigated the cooling crystallization of aluminum sulfate to explore the basic data for the recovery of aluminum resources from coal spoil. First, the metastable zone width (MSZW) of aluminum sulfate was reported. A parallel synthesis platform (CrystalSCAN) was used to determine the solubility from 10 °C to 70 °C, and an automatic lab reactor (LabMax) equipped with focused beam reflectance measurement (FBRM) was adopted to determine the supersolubility. The effects of operating variables on MSZW were experimentally explored. Results show that the MSZW of aluminum sulfate decreases with increasing stirring speed, while it increases with increasing cooling rate.Second, the continuous crystallization kinetics of aluminum sulfate was investigated in a laboratory-scale mixed-suspension mixed-product removal (MSMPR) crystallizer at a steady state. Growth kinetics presented size-dependent growth rate, which was well fitted with the MJ3 model. Both the growth rate (G) and the total nucleation rate (BTOT) were correlated in the power law kinetic expressions with good correlation coefficients.Third, aluminum sulfate products were modified by sodium dodecylbenzenesulfonate (SDBS). Crystals with large sizes and regular hexagonal plate morphologies were obtained. These crystals reveal that SDBS can inhibit crystal nucleation and promote crystal growth.