Kinetics of NaCl nucleation in supercritical water investigated by molecular dynamics simulations

Abstract

At system pressures between 17 MPa and 25 MPa the nucleation and growth of NaCl nanoparticles in water at supercritical conditions was investigated by molecular dynamics simulations at different system temperatures and system densities. Our results show that particle formation takes place within a few hundred picoseconds after the jump from ambient to supercritical conditions. After nucleation a phase of growth by adding monomers is followed by growth via cluster–cluster collisions. We present results on the time development of distributions of cluster sizes, cluster compositions, and cluster temperatures as well as radial distribution functions and nucleation rates.