Prisciandaro M., Lancia A., Mazziotti Di Celso G., Musmarra D., 2013, Antiscalants for Gypsum Precipitation in Industrial Equipments: Comparison among Different Additives, Chemical Engineering Transactions, 32, 2137-2142.
The aim of the paper is to measure the antiscalant effect of different additives on gypsum precipitation by evaluating the induction period for nucleation. Different additives (NTMP, PBTC, citric acid, NaCl) are added to a supersaturated solution, and through a well-assessed laser light scattering technique previously devised, the induction times have been measured, and then used to estimate the activation energy for gypsum nucleation for a fixed additive concentration (0.05 g/l), with the temperature varying in the range 15 - 45°C. A comparison among different additives allowed to confirm which is the most active in retarding gypsum scale formation, and a comparison among the estimated activation energies allowed an insight in the induction time nucleation mechanisms.
