An Investigation on Evaporation of Single Pure Water Droplet

Abstract

Analysing the droplet evaporation is significant in most applications, like spray drying, evaporative cooling, fuel-burning, etc. To analyse the complex process, a single droplet is considered among the spray and the study is carried out. This study focuses on the heat and mass transfer of the single pure droplet, suspended in the air. The effects of inlet temperature of feed on evaporation rate, change in size, heat transfer coefficient, Spalding heat and mass transfer number were studied numerically and validated with experimental results. An Eulerian-Lagrangian approach was adopted to produce pure water droplets and analyse its evaporation in the still air. The study was conducted for three different droplet injection temperatures 25°C, 50°C and 75°C, respectively. The study results revealed that the temperature of feed significantly influences the droplet's drying kinetics. The validation of the study results confirms the Eulerian-Lagrangian approach's validity in predicting the single droplet evaporation modelling. The model approach will further be implemented in the slurry, dissolved, or multi-component droplet evaporation models to apply spray drying systems.