Simulation of the Crystallization Process based on Cellular Automata --- Snowflake Formation from Pure Water System

Abstract Crystallization is an important unit operation process in chemical industry production. Generally, there are a variety of morphology in most crystals and different crystal morphology varies greatly in physicochemical properties. As different crystal morphology may be obtained by changing its ambient conditions surrounding the crystal. In previous studies, the research for crystallization are usually conducted by experiments, which could be very time-consuming and resource-intensive. A cellular automata, CA, is a method by simulating the interaction among subsystems to obtain the description of the patterned system behavior. CA not only provides a description of the physical properties of the material but can also predict changes on the micro-level. Using the cellular automaton to simulate the crystallization process will be more efficient in terms of both time and computation load. In this paper, the crystallization process is simulated by the method of cellular automata. By changing the model parameters, the effects of the parameters on the crystal morphology are studied.