The effect of ambient pressure on the evaporation of a single droplet and a spray

Abstract

The effect of ambient pressure on the evaporation of a droplet and a spray of n-heptane was investigated using a model for evaporation at high pressure. This model considered phase equilibrium using the fugacities of the liquid and gas phases for the behavior of a gas being real, and its importance in the calculation of the evaporation of a droplet or spray at high pressures was demonstrated. For the evaporation of a single droplet, the fact that the droplet's lifetime increased with pressure at a low ambient temperature, but decreased at high temperatures, was explained with pressure and the droplet's temperature determining phase equilibrium. In this study, it was also found that the evaporation of a spray can be explained in terms of multiplex dependencies of the atomization and evaporation of a single droplet. The evaporation of a spray was enhanced by increasing the ambient pressure and this effect was more dominant at higher ambient temperatures.