Effect of whey components on the process of nucleation in the crystallization of lactose

We have studied the crystallization of lactose in supersaturated aqueous solutions, which are multi-component systems consisting of dry demineralized whey (DDW) and sucrose. To reveal the mechanism of the effect of sucrose on the DDW nucleation process the model, based on the current understanding of chemical kinetics, according to which the particles of the new phase are formed by the enlargement of pre-nucleus associates to the size of the critical nuclei has been used. This model calculation results showed a satisfactory agreement with the experiment.