Ice-Crystal Nucleation in Water: Thermodynamic Driving Force and Surface Tension. Part I: Theoretical Foundation

New Sensor to Measure the Microencapsulated Active Compounds Released in an Aqueous Liquid Media Based in Dielectric Properties in Radiofrequency Range

In recent years, the general and scientific interest in nutrition, digestion, and what role they play in our body has increased, and there is still much work to be carried out in the field of developing sensors and techniques that are capable of identifying and quantifying the chemical species involved in these processes. Iron deficiency is the most common and widespread nutritional disorder that mainly affects the health of children and women. Iron from the diet may be available as heme or organic iron, or as non-heme or inorganic iron. The absorption of non-heme iron requires its solubilization and reduction in the ferric state to ferrous that begins in the gastric acid environment, because iron in the ferric state is very poorly absorbable. There are chemical species with reducing capacity (antioxidants) that also have the ability to reduce iron, such as ascorbic acid. This paper aims to develop a sensor for measuring the release of encapsulated active compounds, in different media, based on dielectric properties measurement in the radio frequency range. An impedance sensor able to measure the release of microencapsulated active compounds was developed. The sensor was tested with calcium alginate beads encapsulating iron ions and ascorbic acid as active compounds. The prediction and measurement potential of this sensor was improved by developing a thermodynamic model that allows obtaining kinetic parameters that will allow suitable encapsulation design for subsequent release.

Statistical Approach to Crystal Nucleation in Glass-Forming Liquids

In this work, methods of description of crystal nucleation by using the statistical approach are analyzed. Findings from classical nucleation theory (CNT) for the average time of formation of the first supercritical nucleus are linked with experimental data on nucleation in glass-forming liquids stemming from repetitive cooling protocols both under isothermal and isochronal conditions. It is shown that statistical methods of lifetime analysis, frequently used in medicine, public health, and social and behavioral sciences, are applicable to crystal nucleation problems in glass-forming liquids and are very useful tools for their exploration. Identifying lifetime with the time to nucleate as a random variable in homogeneous and non-homogeneous Poisson processes, solutions for the nucleation rate under steady-state conditions are presented using the hazard rate and related parameters. This approach supplies us with a more detailed description of nucleation going beyond CNT. In particular, we show that cumulative hazard estimation enables one to derive the plotting positions for visually examining distributional model assumptions. As the crystallization of glass-forming melts can involve more than one type of nucleation processes, linear dependencies of the cumulative hazard function are used to facilitate assignment of lifetimes to each nucleation mechanism.

Analytical Determination of the Nucleation-Prone, Low-Density Fraction of Subcooled Water

Subcooled water is the primordial matrix for ice embryo formation by homogeneous and heterogeneous nucleation. The knowledge of the specific Gibbs free energy and other thermodynamic quantities of subcooled water is one of the basic prerequisites of the theoretical analysis of ice crystallization in terms of classical nucleation theory. The most advanced equation of state of subcooled water is the IAPWS G12-15 formulation. The determination of the thermodynamic quantities of subcooled water on the basis of this equation of state requires the iterative determination of the fraction of low-density water in the two-state mixture of low-density and high-density subcooled water from a transcendental equation. For applications such as microscopic nucleation simulation models requiring highly frequent calls of the IAPWS G12-15 calculus, a new two-step predictor-corrector method for the approximative determination of the low-density water fraction has been developed. The new solution method allows a sufficiently accurate determination of the specific Gibbs energy and of all other thermodynamic quantities of subcooled water at given pressure and temperature, such as specific volume and mass density, specific entropy, isothermal compressibility, thermal expansion coefficient, specific isobaric and isochoric heat capacities, and speed of sound. The misfit of this new approximate analytical solution against the exact numerical solution was demonstrated to be smaller than or equal to the misprediction of the original IAPWS G12-15 formulation with respect to experimental values.

Application of the Nucleation Theorem to Crystallization of Liquids: Some General Theoretical Results

Different aspects in applying the nucleation theorem to the description of crystallization of liquids are analyzed. It is shown that, by employing the classical Gibbs’ approach in the thermodynamic description of heterogeneous systems, a general form of the nucleation theorem can be formulated that is valid not only for one-component but generally for multi-component systems. In this analysis, one basic assumption of classical nucleation theory is utilized. In addition, commonly employed in application to crystallization, it is supposed that the bulk properties of the critical clusters are widely identical to the properties of the newly evolving crystal phase. It is shown that the formulation of the nucleation theorem as proposed by Kashchiev [J. Chem. Phys. 76, 5098-5102 (1982)], also relying widely on the standard classical approach in the description of crystal nucleation, holds for multi-component systems as well. The general form of the nucleation theorem derived by us is taken then as the starting point for the derivation of particular forms of this theorem for the cases that the deviation from equilibrium is caused by variations of either composition of the liquid phase, temperature, or pressure. In this procedure, expressions recently developed by us for the curvature dependence of the surface tension, respectively, its dependence on pressure and/or temperature are employed. The basic assumption of classical nucleation theory mentioned above is, however, in general, not true. The bulk and surface properties of the critical crystal clusters may differ considerably from the properties of the evolving macroscopic phases. Such effects can be incorporated into the theoretical description by the application of the generalized Gibbs approach for the specification of the dependence of the properties of critical crystal clusters on the degree of metastability of the liquid phase. Applying this method, it is demonstrated that a similar formulation of the nucleation theorem, as derived based on classical nucleation theory, holds true also in cases when a dependence of the state parameters of the critical clusters on the degree of deviation from equilibrium is appropriately accounted for.