Classical Nucleation Theory in Multicomponent Systems

Nucleation is the initial step of every first order phase transition and phase transitions we meet in everyday life and in industrial processes are most often of the first order. An elegant classical theory based on thermodynamics and kinetics exists for describing nucleation. This book provides a fully detailed picture of multicomponent classical nucleation theory. Many of the issues concerning multicomponent nucleation theory have been solved during the last 10-15 years and therefore this book contains a lot material that has been published quite recently in scientific journals. Thermodynamics and statistical physics necessary for following the theory are revised at the beginning of the book. The book explains how to model a molecular cluster as a spherical liquid droplet and describes in detail the assumptions and approximations used when building this model. It is explained how the size and composition of the nucleation clusters can be predicted and which systems agree with the classical description. The book describes the kinetic model for cluster growth and decay and shows, again in detail, how the key observable quantity, the nucleation rate, can be predicted. The material also includes the derivation and application of powerful nucleation theorems that can be used to extract cluster properties from nucleation rate measurements.