Precipitation of calcium carbonate from a calcium acetate and ammonium carbamate batch system

In this paper, we report a novel approach for preparing precipitated calcium carbonate using solutions of ammonium carbamate and calcium acetate as the sources of calcium and carbon dioxide, respectively. Two different concentrations of the starting solutions at three different temperatures (15, 25 and 50 °C) were used for the reaction. The influence of temperature and concentration on the polymorphism and the resulting morphology of calcium carbonate are discussed. The most important parameter for controlling a particular crystal structure and precipitate morphology were the concentrations of the initial solutions.When initial solutions with lower concentrations were used, the crystal form of the precipitate changed with time. Regardless the different polymorphism at different temperatures, after one day only the calcite form was detected in all samples, regardless of at which temperature the samples were prepared.At higher concentrations, pure vaterite or a mixture of vaterite and calcite were present at the beginning of the experiment. After one day, pure vaterite was found in the samples that were prepared at 15 and 25 °C. If calcium carbonate precipitated at 50 °C, the XRD results showed a mixture of calcite and vaterite regardless of the time at which the sample was taken.The morphology of calcium carbonate particles prepared at various conditions changed from calcite cubes to spherical particles of vaterite and aragonite needles. When a low starting concentration was used, the morphology at the initial stage was strongly affected by the temperature at which the experiments were conducted. However, after one day only, cubes were present in all cases at low initial concentrations. In contrast, at high concentrations spherical particles precipitated at all three temperatures at the beginning of the reaction. Spherical particles were made up from smaller particles. Over time, the size of the particles was diminishing due to their disintegration into primary particles; after one day, particles of 30–50 nm were obtained. The lower the temperature was during the experiment, the faster the larger particles fell apart. To our knowledge, this behavior has thus far not yet been reported. Moreover, for the first time ammonium carbamate and calcium acetate are used together to prepare calcium carbonate.