Precipitation in small systems-I. Stochastic analysis

Abstract

Precipitation in small droplets involving emulsions, microemulsions or vesicles is important for producing multicomponent ceramics and nanoparticles. Because of the random nature of nucleation and the small number of particles in a droplet, the use of deterministic populations balance equation for predicting the number density of particles may lead to erroneous results even for evaluating the mean behavior of such systems. A comparison between the predictions made through stochastic simulations and deterministic population balance involving small droplets has been made for two simple systems, one involving crystallizaiton and the other a single-component precipitation. The two approaches have been found to yield quite different results under a variety of conditions. Contrary to expectation, the smallness of the population alone does not cause these deviations. Thus, if fluctuation in supersaturation is negligible, the population balance and simulation predictions concur. However, for large fluctuations in supersaturation, the predictions differ significantly, indicating the need to take the stochastic nature of the phenomenon into account. This paper describes the stochastic treatment of populations, which involves a sequence of so-called product density equations and forms an appropriate framework for handling small systems.