The liquid evaporation model is a model for particles with heat and mass transfer. The model uses two mass transfer correlations depending on whether the droplet is above or below the boiling point.
The boiling point is determined through an Antoine equation (vapor pressure equation that describes the relation between vapor pressure and temperature for pure components, see Antoine Equation in the CFX-Solver Modeling Guide) that is given by
(6–46) |
where ,
and
are user-supplied
coefficients. The particle is boiling if the vapor pressure,
, is greater than the ambient gas pressure,
.
When the particle is above the boiling point, the mass transfer is determined by:
(6–47) |
where is the latent heat of evaporation
of the particle component and where
and
are the convective and radiative heat transfers,
respectively.
When the particle is below the boiling point, the mass transfer is given by:
(6–48) |
where is the droplet diameter,
is the dynamic diffusivity of the component in the
continuum and
is the Sherwood number (see Equation 6–44).
and
are the molecular weights
of the vapor and the mixture in the continuous phase,
is the equilibrium
vapor mole fraction of the evaporating component at the droplet surface,
and
is the mole fraction of the evaporating
component in the gas phase.
The mass source to the continuous fluid is obtained from:
(6–49) |
The Liquid Evaporation model described in the previous section is limited to being applied to a single component of a particle. Under the following assumptions, the Liquid Evaporation model can be extended to multi-component evaporation:
Particle liquids are entirely miscible in all proportions
Intermolecular forces between different particle components are of equal strength
These assumptions imply that the liquids in a multi-component particle form an ideal mixture. By definition an ideal mixture is one which obeys Raoult's law (where the vapor pressure of an ideal mixture is dependent on the vapor pressure of each chemical component and the mole fraction of the component present in the mixture).
There is actually no such thing as an ideal mixture. However, some liquid mixtures get fairly close to being ideal. These are mixtures of closely similar substances.
Commonly quoted examples include:
hexane and heptane
benzene and methylbenzene
The more dissimilar the nature of the substances, the more strongly the solution is expected to deviate from ideality.
Based on the assumption of an ideal mixture, the total vapor
pressure, , can be calculated
based on the assumption of Raoult’s law
(6–50) |
where is the vapor pressure of a pure component
and
is the mole fraction of component
in the liquid phase. The
vapor pressure of a pure component,
is determined from an Antoine
equation. This equation has the following form:
(6–51) |
where ,
and
are the Antoine coefficients of binary mixture i.
Inserting Equation 6–51 into Equation 6–50 allows the calculation of the total vapor pressure of the mixture as follows:
(6–52) |
It can be seen that the total vapor pressure is a function of the material properties of the components, the particle temperature, as well as the instantaneous composition of the evaporating droplet.
A particle is assumed to be boiling if the total vapor pressure, ,
of all evaporating components is equal to or larger than the ambient
gas pressure,
:
If the total vapor pressure is below the ambient gas pressure, the particle is assumed to not boil.
The particle evaporates in the diffusion regime if the particle is below the boiling point.
The mass transfer of a single particle component can be derived from the mass conservation equation and can be written in the following form (see, for example, Abramzon and Sirignano [201] and Sazhin [202])
(6–53) |
where is the droplet diameter,
is the dynamic
diffusivity of the component
in the continuum,
is the Sherwood
number, and where
and
are the molecular weights of
the vapor of component
and the mixture in the continuous phase.
is the mole fraction of the vapor of component
in the continuum,
is the equilibrium vapor mole fraction of component
at the droplet surface.
For the calculation of the molar concentration of component on the particle surface,
, again the assumption of Raoult’s law is
applied:
(6–54) |
The total mass flow rate is computed as the sum of the mass flow rates of all evaporating components:
(6–55) |
A particle is boiling if the total vapor pressure, ,
is greater than or equal to the ambient gas pressure
.
When the particle reaches the boiling point, the mass transfer is determined by the convective and radiative heat transfer:
(6–56) |
where is the latent heat of evaporation
of component
, and where
and
are the convective
and radiative heat transfer, respectively.
In order to determine the evaporation rate of a particular particle component, an additional assumption is required. It is assumed that the evaporation rate of each component is proportional to the ratio of the vapor pressure of this component to the total vapor pressure:
(6–57) |
The component vapor pressure is computed from Raoult’s law:
(6–58) |
Rearranging Equation 6–57:
(6–59) |
and substituting it into Equation 6–56 gives the total mass transfer rate:
(6–60) |
Using Equation 6–59 and Equation 6–60 the following equation
for the mass transfer of component can be derived:
(6–61) |
with the modified latent heat (averaged with the molar concentration):
(6–62) |
Note that this modified latent heat is only used for the computation of the mass transfer rates in Equation 6–61.