A unified relationship for evaporation kinetics at low Mach numbers
Name
s41467-019-10209-w.pdf
Description
Published version
Size
1.56 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
342139081a919a4710808a004a7ab57e
Author(s)
Lu, Zhengmao
Wilke, Kyle L.
Vaartstra, Geoffrey
Wang, Evelyn N.
Date Issued
May 2019
Journal
Nature Communications
Publisher
Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Citation
Lu, Zhengmao et al. “A unified relationship for evaporation kinetics at low Mach numbers.” Nature Communications 10 (2019): 2368 © 2019 The Author(s)
Version
Final published version
Abstract
We experimentally realized and elucidated kinetically limited evaporation where the molecular gas dynamics close to the liquid–vapour interface dominates the overall transport. This process fundamentally dictates the performance of various evaporative systems and has received significant theoretical interest. However, experimental studies have been limited due to the difficulty of isolating the interfacial thermal resistance. Here, we overcome this challenge using an ultrathin nanoporous membrane in a pure vapour ambient. We demonstrate a fundamental relationship between the evaporation flux and driving potential in a dimensionless form, which unifies kinetically limited evaporation under different working conditions. We model the nonequilibrium gas kinetics and show good agreement between experiments and theory. Our work provides a general figure of merit for evaporative heat transfer as well as design guidelines for achieving efficient evaporation in applications such as water purification, steam generation, and thermal management.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Mechanical Engineering
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1038/S41467-019-10209-W
