The importance of supersaturation on determining the solid-liquid equilibrium temperature of waxy oils

Crystallization is a process where an ordered solid structure is formed from a disordered phase. This event is divided in two main stages, namely nucleation and crystals growth. As paraffin nucleation is a stochastic process, a supercooling is needed to initiate the process. In other words, the beginning of crystal precipitation does not coincide with the highest thermodynamic solid-liquid equilibrium temperature. Therefore, during the cooling it is required that the fluid reaches a certain temperature below saturation, i.e., a metastable state, to initiate the crystal nucleation process. The difference between the saturation temperature and the crystallization temperature is called degree of supercooling. As this metastable condition may exist during not only the crystallization but also the dissolution of crystals, this work proposes a procedure to determine consistently the highest solid-liquid thermodynamic equilibrium temperature by using the results of rheometer and DSC experiments. It can be anticipated that the proposed protocol states that the highest solid-liquid thermodynamic equilibrium temperature is considered to approach the dissolution temperature when the material is heated at a very low heating rate.