Direct contact evaporation of a single two-phase bubble in a flowing immiscible liquid medium. Part I: two-phase bubble size

Abstract

The evaporation of a single n-pentane drop in another warm flowing liquid (water) medium has been studied experimentally. A Perspex column with an internal diameter of 10 cm and height of 150 cm was used throughout the experiments. N-pentane liquid at its saturation temperature and warm flowing water with flow rate of 10, 20, 30 and 40 L/h were employed as the dispersed and continuous phases, respectively. The active height of the continuous phase in the column (i.e. the level of the continuous phase in the column) covered only 100 cm of the column’s height. A Photron FASTCAM high-speed camera (~ 65,000 f/s) was used to film the evaporation of the drop, while AutoCAD was used to analyse the images from the camera. The diameter ratio (diameter of growing two-phase bubble to initial drop diameter) of the two-phase bubble formed because of the evaporation of the pentane drop in direct contact with the water was measured. Also, the vaporisation ratio (x), the open angle of vapour (β), the total height for complete evaporation and the total evaporation time were measured. The effects of the continuous phase flow rate and the temperature difference between the contacting phases, in terms of Jakob number (Ja), on the measured parameters were investigated. Furthermore, a statistical model to fit the experimental data was developed. The experimental results showed that the diameter of the two-phase bubble is strongly influenced by varying the continuous phase flow rate. The final size of the evaporated vapour bubble was unaffected by the flow rate of the continuous phase, while both the total height required for complete evaporation and hence the time required was significantly influenced. A similar impact was observed for the vaporisation ratio and the open angle of vapour.