Chemical Engineering Science, Vol.59, No.11, 2231-2239, 2004
Direct simulation Monte Carlo for simultaneous nucleation, coagulation, and surface growth in dispersed systems
A Monte Carlo simulation technique is developed to describe dispersed phase systems. The method is formulated for simultaneous coagulation, nucleation and surface growth, but can be extended to include other processes. These processes are considered in an initially constant simulation volume. The changes in the particle ensemble are determined by a random choice procedure, while the particle number in the simulation volume changes according to the chosen events. Every time, when the particle number in the simulation volume increases or decreases by a factor of two of its initial value, the simulation volume is halved or doubled, respectively. Therefore, this method is called a stepwise constant-volume Monte Carlo simulation. It allows to use only several thousands simulation particles, even if the particle number concentration experiences changes of several orders of magnitude. The simulations are validated through a comparison with the exact mathematical solutions for several simple cases. An example of simultaneous nucleation and coagulation in the free-molecular region demonstrates, that the stepwise constant-volume Monte Carlo simulations lead to more accurate results than the constant-number Monte Carlo simulations. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.