Study of super-hydrophilic nanoscale bilayer assembly surface modification and its application to enhance evaporation

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to manufacture super-hydrophilic surface on stainless steel flat plates using nanoscale bilayer assembly surface modification. Visual and quantitative evaporation experiments were conducted on the most hydrophilic surface using water as working fluid, proposing a super-hydrophilic surface that could reduce the evaporation time by about one order of magnitude.In this study, super-hydrophilic surfaces were manufacture using environmentally friendly nanoscale bilayer assembly method. During evaporation experiments, different liquid film areas and mean thicknesses on the surfaces were observed; subsequent analysis of the evaporation enhancements were made and contributing factors discussed. The most hydrophilic surface manufactured in this study resulted in contact angle of <4⁰ during the experiments. Compared to a normal clean surface, this modified surface’s evaporation effectiveness was enhanced by 850%; the evaporation time of the best super-hydrophilic surface was only one tenth that of the clean surface, showing an improvement in evaporation speed by almost one order of magnitude.