Melt Crystallization Plants

The GEA Melt Crystallization systems cool a crude liquid melt to create a driving force for the formation and growth of 100% pure crystals. 

The suspension-based process distributes the crystal growth over a massive surface in the crystal suspension that provides the slow optimum growth rates needed to allow pure crystal formation even in relatively impure melts. By combining this extremely selective crystallization process with our proven wash column solid-liquid separation technology, an ultra-pure product can often be obtained after a single step.

Key features:

• Typically applied where high purity products are required
• Two stage option available for maximum yield
• Separation of components with close boiling points and those difficult to distill
• Ability to split the feed into two streams with adjustable purities
• Continuous and stable operation
• Low operation temperatures
• Low energy consumption as the product is typically crystallized only once
• Required heat is two to four times lower than for evaporation
• No need for solvents, thus, no need for solvent recovery or waste byproducts.
• Compact plant
• Debottlenecking distillation (+25% capacity)

Melt crystallization provides an economic and energy-efficient alternative purification step in cases where standard distillation is unsuitable due to close boiling isomers, azeotropic systems, products that tend to polymerize, heat sensitive products or explosive substances.

Melt Crystallization plants can be found in thousands of installations around the globe serving to diverse industrial processes such as:

• Substituted aromatics used in specialty polymers (pDCB, pCT, NVP)
• Isocyanates used in the manufacture of polyurethane (MDI, TDI)
• Xylenes to produce PET (pX and mX)
• Aliphatic and carboxylic acids (MCA, Acrylic acid, Acetic acid)
• Benzoic acid, Phosphoric acid
• Specialty solvents (acetonitrile, alcohols)
• Wide variety of high purity organic specialty chemicals