Numerical investigation of heat and mass transfer of an evaporating sessile drop on a horizontal surface

Abstract

A convection-diffusion model is developed to analyze the effect of buoyant convection in the surrounding air on the heat and mass transfer phenomena during the evaporation of a pinned water drop deposited on a horizontal substrate of large dimensions. The substrate is maintained at constant temperature which can be equal or higher than the temperature of the ambient air. The mathematical model accounts for the motion of the gas phase surrounding the drop due to thermal and solutal buoyancy effects, while only thermal diffusion is considered in the liquid phase. A quasisteady state regime is adopted because of the slow motion of the liquid-gas interface as well as the induced heat and mass transfer phenomena in both phases. The numerical results obtained with the diffusion model or the convection-diffusion model show that heat and mass transfer rates are important toward the contact line. The heat required for evaporation process is taken from the environment, both the liquid and the gas phase, and results in a small cold zone on both sides of the interface. The influence of the buoyancy in air is of greater importance in the lower part of the interface and beyond a distance of a contact radius above the droplet. A weak variation of the evaporation rate is observed on a wider range of contact angle for high wall temperatures. The diffusion model underestimates the overall evaporation rate by 8.5% for a wall temperature equal to an ambient temperature of 25 °C and by 27.3% for a wall temperature of 70 °C. Numerical calculations show that the length of the heated wall has very little effect on the evaporation process when it exceeds 25 times the contact radius.