Binary nucleation kinetics: A matrix method

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Abstract
The kinetics of binary nucleation is investigated and an exact method to evaluate the nucleation rate is developed. The exact method accounts for all flows to the stable clusters, and thus the nucleation rate is obtained independently of determining the location of the saddle point in the Gibbs free energy surface. The exact method is based on determination of cluster concentrations, which can be obtained after solving a set of linear equations. The values of the nucleation rate and the direction of flow at the saddle point are calculated for water–sulphuric acid and water–ammonia systems. The results are compared to the results obtained by Stauffer’s saddle point integration method for binary nucleation kinetics. The saddle point integration method is found to give a reasonably accurate estimation of nucleation rate in the water–sulphuric acid system. However, in the water–ammonia system the difference is found to be as high as three orders of magnitude.