Dynamics of variations in size and composition of supercritical droplet at binary condensation

Abstract

A general analytical solution is found in quadratures for the radius and concentration of a solution droplet, which isothermally grows or evaporates in a diffusion or free-molecular regime in a binary mixture of vapors. The obtained solution describes the dynamics of variations in the size and composition of a super-critical droplet during the binary condensation in mixed vapors at an arbitrary initial droplet composition. It is shown that, at small (linear) deviations of the growth regime and droplet composition from the stationarity, these quadratures lead to the results that were recently obtained for the composition relaxation in a growing droplet. Moreover, it is demonstrated that, in terms of the nonlinear theory, when the deviation of solution concentration in a droplet from its stationary value is not small, it is invalid to use the law of stationary variations in the size of a droplet with time to describe the relaxation process for its chemical composition.