Evaporation of droplet with and without laser excitation

Abstract

The evaporation of water and ethanol droplets is investigated experimentally. The evaporation rate of the hanging droplets on a thermocouple with and without laser excitation is demonstrated in the study. In the absence of laser excitation, the ethanol droplets are subjected to have a fast evaporation than the water droplets under the open environmental conditions. As the droplets are then exposed to the pulsed laser excitation at different power rating under the frequency of 1 Hz, 3 Hz or 5 Hz. The present of laser excitation leads to a significant temperature increase in the droplets. The evaporation rates are higher than those without laser excitation. It is observed that as the laser frequency and intensity increases, the rate of evaporation and temperature increases generally. The explosive vaporization happens at a higher power at a higher laser frequency for both water and ethanol droplets. However, this phenomenon is much more significant for water as compared to ethanol. The evaporation rate tendency is opposite to the experiments carried out without laser excitation.