Method of producing crystalline D-sorbitol

A continuous process for making crystalline D-sorbitol, said process comprising the steps of:

• a) providing a melt crystallizer consisting of a cooled container and a horizontally arranged rotatable shaft equipped with disk elements and mixing parts, said disk elements and/or mixing bars being arranged on said shaft to form a worm;
• b) evaporating an aqueous D-sorbitol solution at 5 to 200 mbar and at a temperature of 130.degree. to 170.degree. C. in vacuum to obtain a D-sorbitol melt containing less than 0.5% by weight water;
• c) cooling said D-sorbitol melt to a temperature of 5 to 15.degree. C. above a solidification point of said D-sorbitol melt;
• d) melt crystallizing said D-sorbitol melt obtained during said evaporating of step b) in said melt crystallizer with an average dwell time of 1 to 5 hours to form D-sorbitol crystals;
• and
• e) grinding and sieving said D-sorbitol crystals formed during the melt crystallizing of step d) to form a D-sorbitol end product containing more than 90 % by weight of a .gamma. modification of crystalline D-sorbitol;
• wherein no solid D-sorbitol is added to said D-sorbitol melt in order to form initial crystallization nuclei for crystallization and no subsequent maturation steps of the end product are included in the process.