La cristalización: pasado, presente y futuro

• Autores: J.G. Morales, Rafael Rodríguez Clemente, C. Domingo Pascual
• Localización: Boletín de la Real Sociedad Española de Historia Natural. Sección geológica, ISSN 0583-7510, Tomo 97, Nº 1-4, 2002, págs. 17-25
• Idioma: español
• Texto completo no disponible (Saber más ...)
• Resumen
  • español

    La cristalización, arte y ciencia de la transición de fase de la materia al estado sólido, ha sido y es una actividad motivada por la curiosidad y/o el beneficio. La curiosidad por los cristales y su formación se remonta a los primeros estudios en Mineralogía, donde se sentaron las bases científicas de esta actividad, mientras que la búsqueda del beneficio está estrechamente ligada a la obtención de materias primas tales como el azúcar, la sal o el salitre, ligados a las primeras actividades industriales conocidas, como la alimentación o el soporte a la guerra, que aún son algunas de las fuentes de demanda más interesantes de la Ingeniería Química, una de las disciplinas refugio de los practicantes de este arte. En nuestro país este arte nació en los laboratorios de Cristalografía y Mineralogía, gracias al impulso, entre otros, pero muy especialmente, de José Luis Amorós. Este trabajo constituye una revisión del arte y la práctica de la cristalización y de las oportunidades que se le ofrecen en el momento actual.

  • English

    The crystallization, art and science of the phase transition of the matter to the solid state, has been and it is nowadays an activity motivated by the curiosity and/or the benefit. The curiosity for the crystals and their formation goes back to the first studies in Mineralogy, where there sat down the scientific bases of this activity. On the other hand the search of the benefit has been narrowly joined to the obtaining of prime matters such as sugar, salt or saltpeter, this is, the first industrial known activities. Among them, it can be emphasized the food industry and the support to the war industry, which nowadays are some of the more interesting sources of demand of the Chemical Engineering, one of the shelter disciplines of the users of this art. In our country this art was born in the laboratories of Crystallography and Mineralogy, thanks to the impulse, among others, but very specially, of Jose Luis Amorós. This work constitutes a review of the art and practice of the crystallization and, of the opportunities that are offered in the current moment. In the course of the XIX century were produced a series of spectacular industrial and scientific developments (http://pafko.com/history/h_time.html) such as the discovery of the Solvay Method in 1863 to produce sodium bicarbonate, or the crystallization of the first protein, this is the hemoglobin, by Ernst Seyler en 1864, as well as the recovery of the ideas of thermodynamic chemistry of J. Willard Gibbs, which marked a decisive point in the future development of the Chemical Engineering, understood as the practice of transforming ideas into valuable products (http: // www.cefic.org/allcheme/text/summary.htm).

    The creation of schools of Chemical Engineering in the MIT (USA) in 1880 as well as in the University of Manchester (UK) and Nancy (France) in 1887, together with the spectacular development of the chemical industry in Germany in the same dates, mark the start point of the current Chemical Engineering, which for one century has marked as aims the creation of new products, such as fertilizers, dyes or drugs, in response to the demands of the society and consumers. The challenges were to produce more substances, in major quantities and minor costs, which implied to change of a form of production in shifts (Batch) to another one more continuous, which was obtained analysing the production process as a whole to determine which were the basic operations (¿Unit operation ¿) that formed it, being the crystallization one of them, and optimizing the yields of each one of them. The concept of unitary operation represented a decisive point in the development of the process engineering, in such a way that at the end of the XX century, the number of synthetic products created by the man comes closer to 6 millions (ALLOWAY and AYRES, 1997), the majority synthesized in this century.

    Nowadays, the chemical European industry includes 30.000 companies (98 % of SMES) resulting 1,65 million of direct employments and much more of indirect ones. Six of the more important ten chemical companies are European. The European chemical industry contributes with more than 30 billion of Euros to the european payment balance, invoicing 300 billion of Euros and investing in investigation every year 20 billion of Euros, 5 times more than the European Commission Framework Programme, which represents 5 % of the invoicing of the chemical industry and 22 % of the invoicing of the pharmaceutical industry (http:// www.cefic.org/allcheme/text/summary.htm).

    Nevertheless, the increasing impact of the chemical, synthetic or natural products (i.e. mining residues) on the environment is producing a negative perception on the part of very wide sectors of the public opinion on the balance of benefits and social costs of the activity of the chemical industry, or activities related to this industry. A new paradigm illustrates the strategies of the political, economic and scientific world: the sustainability, which we will try to define later. This concept, in spite of its relative newness and ambiguity, is influencing of decisive way the criteria of production and the normative frame of the industrial and postindustrial societies, maybe with the showy exception of USA. The search of the sustainability is influencing strongly the chemical industry specially because, at present, the instruments of the society of the information and the communication allow to improve notably the yields of all the productive processes, with the consequent savings of prime matters and energy.