Effects of gravity and ambient pressure on liquid fuel droplet evaporation

An axisymmetric numerical model has been developed to conduct a study of single droplet evaporation over a wide range of ambient pressures both under normal and microgravity conditions. Results for droplet lifetime as a function of ambient pressure and initial droplet diameter are presented. The enhancement in the droplet evaporation rate due to natural convection is predicted. This enhancement becomes more dominant with increasing ambient pressure due to the increase in the Grashof number. The higher the ambient pressure, the closer the Grashof number remains to its initial value throughout most of the droplet lifetime because of the droplet swelling and the heat-up of the droplet interior. Results should be particularly of interest to researchers conducting experiments on droplet evaporation at elevated pressures within a normal gravity environment. The model developed is in good agreement with experimental data at low pressures. Explanations have been provided for its deviation at high pressures.     

A discrete multicomponent droplet evaporation model; effects of O2-enrichment,steam injection,and EGR on evaporation of diesel droplet

A discrete multicomponent (DMC) model for droplet evaporation in convective ambient is developed. Three different sets of correlations for Nusselt and Sherwood number are examined. The model is compared with experimental data for single and multicomponent droplet evaporation at different conditions and the most suitable set of correlations is selected. Having validated model, the diesel droplet evaporation under different ambient conditions and compositions is investigated. Increasing of oxygen mass fraction in N₂–O₂ mixture ambient from 0 to 1 first decreases and then increases the lifetime. Steam addition enhances the evaporation rate and it affects evaporation more significantly at higher temperatures. Exhaust gas recirculation (EGR) results in slight variations in droplet lifetime and its heating period.     

Numerical study of Marangoni convection during transient evaporation of two-component droplet under forced convective environment

Numerical simulations of the evaporation of stationary, spherical, two-component liquid droplets in a laminar, atmospheric pressure, forced convective hot-air environment are presented. The transient two-phase numerical model includes multi-component diffusion, a comprehensive method to deal with the interface including the surface tension effects and variation of thermo-physical properties as a function of temperature and species concentration in both liquid- and vapor-phases. The model has been validated using the experimental data available in literature for suspended heptane–decane blended droplets evaporating under a forced convective air environment. The validated model is used to study the vaporization characteristics of heptane–decane droplets under different convective conditions. For an initial composition having 75% by volume of more volatile fuel component, the evaporation transients are presented in terms of variations in interface quantities. Flow, species and temperature fields are presented at several time instants to show the relative strengths of forced convection and Marangoni convection. Results show that at low initial Reynolds numbers, the solutal Marangoni effects induce a flow-field within the liquid droplet, which opposes the flow of the external convective field. The strength of this liquid-phase flow field increases with the consumption of the more volatile fuel component.     

基于大涡模拟的油滴群燃烧特性研究

利用Matlab随机生成不同尺寸、位置信息的油滴群,采用一步总包反应机理对其进行大涡模拟,分析了不同来流速度、环境温度工况下不同颗粒数密度油滴群的燃烧特性及燃烧模态,统计出油滴的平均阻力特性、蒸发率以及气体湍流变动。研究表明:油滴群平均阻力系数随来流速度的增加呈现先减小后增大最后趋于稳定的趋势,约为单燃烧油滴的阻力系数的1/2,随环境温度的升高而增大,与来流速度成反比;气相湍流变动随环境温度增大而加剧,随颗粒数密度增加而减小;在油滴群燃烧特性下,蒸发率随环境温度的升高而增大,随数密度的增加而减小,随来流速度的增加而增大。     

A spherical cell model for multi‐component droplet combustion in a dilute spray

A model for sphericosymmetric thin‐flame combustion of a multi‐component fuel droplet in a dilute spray has been developed using a unit cell approach. The gas‐phase transport has been modelled as convective–diffusive while the liquid‐phase processes as transient–diffusive. Convective heat and mass transfer condition has been used at the cell surface. The results indicate that evaporation and combustion characteristics of the droplet are strongly affected by the variation of both ambient conditions and convective transfer coefficients. Using the model, the effects of droplet spacing in spray, ambient oxidizer concentration, ambient temperature and pressure have been considered. Droplet life increases with decrease in droplet spacing, ambient temperature and ambient oxidizer concentration. However, droplet life has a weak dependence on ambient pressure. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Gas-phase entropy generation during transient methanol droplet combustion

A numerical model was used to investigate gas-phase entropy generation during transient methanol droplet combustion in a low-pressure, zero-gravity, air environment.A comprehensive formulation for the entropy generation in a multi-component reacting flow is derived. Stationary methanol droplet combustion in a low ambient temperature (300 K) and a nearly quiescent atmosphere was studied and the effect of surface tension on entropy generation is discussed. Results show that the average entropy generation rate over the droplet lifetime is higher for the case that neglects surface tension. Entropy generation during the combustion of methanol droplets moving in a high-temperature environment (1200 K), as seen in a typical spray combustion system, is also presented. Entropy generation due to chemical reaction increases and entropy generation due to heat and mass transfer decreases with an increase in initial Reynolds number over the range of initial Reynolds numbers (1–100) considered. Contributions due to heat transfer and chemical reaction to the total entropy generation are greater than the contribution due to mass transfer. Entropy generation due to coupling between heat and mass transfer is negligible. For moving droplets, the lifetime averaged entropy generation rate presents a minimum value at an initial Reynolds number of approximately 55.     

乙醇液滴在高温氮气环境下的运动蒸发特性

为达到新型燃料发动机高效工作的目的,基于质量、动量、能量方程,对单个乙醇液滴在高温氮气环境下的运动和蒸发过程建立数学模型,通过与实验数据对比,验证了模型的有效性。分析了不同环境压力下,液滴温度、速度、尺寸与时间和贯穿距离的关系。结果表明：环境压力越高,瞬态和平衡蒸发阶段时间越长,温度越高;液滴运动速度下降越快,贯穿距离越短;蒸发速度越慢,液滴寿命越长。在液滴速度连续变化的距离内,液滴温度逐渐上升,而尺寸略有膨胀。随环境压力升高,瞬态阶段的膨胀越显著。     

Evaporation model of a single hydrocarbon fuel droplet due to ambient turbulence at intermediate Reynolds numbers

A general evaporation model of a single liquid fuel droplet under various ambient turbulence conditions at intermediate droplet Reynolds numbers is proposed combining the current and previous experimental results. Extensive evaporation experiments of single fuel droplets are conducted at room temperature in quasi-laminar and turbulent environments at Reynolds numbers in the range of 72-333. Tested hydrocarbon fuels include by pentane, hexane, heptane, octane and decane. Flow fields, behind a perforated plate or a circular disk in a vertical low-speed wind tunnel, provide the required ambient turbulent environments for droplet evaporation experiments. The ambient turbulence intensities vary in the range of 1-60% and the integral length scales in the range of 0.5-20 times of the initial droplet diameter. Results show that normalized evaporation rate (K/K_L) decreases with increasing effective Damköhler number (0.0001<Da_v<0.1) and is approximately equal to unity with further increasing Damköhler number (0.1<Da_v<1).     

Subcritical and supercritical droplet evaporation within a zero-gravity environment: Low Weber number relative motion

A validated comprehensive axisymmetric numerical model, which includes the high pressure transient effects, variable thermo-physical properties and inert species solubility in the liquid phase, has been employed to study the evaporation of moving n-heptane droplets within a zero-gravity nitrogen environment, for a wide range of ambient pressures and initial freestream velocities. At the high ambient temperature considered (1000 K), the evaporation constant increases with the ambient pressure. At low ambient pressure, the evaporation constant becomes almost a constant during the end of the lifetime. At high ambient pressures, the transient behavior is present throughout the droplet lifetime. The final penetration distance of a moving droplet decreases exponentially with increasing ambient pressure. The average evaporation constant increases with ambient pressure. The variation is almost linear for reduced ambient pressures smaller than approximately 2. For higher values, depending on the initial freestream velocity, the average evaporation constant either becomes a constant (at low initial freestream velocities) or it non-linearly increases (at high initial freestream velocities) with the ambient pressure. Droplet lifetime decreases with increasing ambient pressure and/or increasing initial freestream velocity.     

Comparative Investigation on Droplet Evaporation Models for Modeling Spray in Cross-Flow

The coupling model of flow and heat and mass transfer for gas-spray droplet two-phase flow has been developed to simulate the evaporating spray in cross-flow. The correlations used for describing the droplet evaporation and motion in convective flow have been compared. The comparisons of calculated results show that the different correlations for determining Nusselt number and Sherwood number impose a significant influence on the lifetime of droplet. The modification of Nusselt number and Sherwood number with regard to the heat and mass boundary around the droplet is of great importance, while different mixing laws for mixture properties and different drag coefficient equations only demonstrate a slight effect on the evaporation characteristics of droplet. The characteristics of spray droplets and cross-flow in terms of both evaporation and motion are obtained. The secondary flow phenomenon is observed in the simulation results and contributes to achieving a more even distribution of temperature and an improved mixing effect of the vapor and cross-flow.     

The effect of internal diffusion on an evaporating bio-oil droplet – The chemistry free case

The chemical diversity of the components in bio-oil has a significant effect on its evaporation. The low boiling point compounds, such as simple acids and water, evaporate away from the surface at a faster rate than the internal diffusion. As a result a significant proportion still remains in the droplet core late in the evaporation process. As the droplet temperature increases, these trapped chemicals, in the centre of the droplet, can reach a sufficiently high temperature to cause them to vapourise resulting in rapid expansions, which can fracture the droplet. In this study a numerical model of a stationary, spherically symmetric evaporating bio-oil droplet, in a hot ambient atmosphere, is used to investigate the effect of the rate of diffusion on the evaporation process.     

基于混合热格子玻尔兹曼模型的液滴蒸发数值模拟

采用格子玻尔兹曼方法(LBM)的单组分伪势模型与有限差分耦合的混合热格子玻尔兹曼模型(TLBM)对液滴蒸发过程进行了研究。首先,通过对液滴在方腔内蒸发过程进行模拟,验证了所采用计算方法及程序的有效性。随后,模拟了液滴撞击高温壁面后的蒸发过程,研究了壁面温度、液滴邦德数和液滴雷诺数对蒸发过程的影响。结果表明,壁面温度、液滴邦德数和液滴雷诺数的增加均会造成液滴撞击高温壁面后蒸发速率的增大。     

An experimental study of convective heat transfer in silicon microchannels with different surface conditions

An experimental investigation has been performed on the laminar convective heat transfer and pressure drop of water in 13 different trapezoidal silicon microchannels. It is found that the values of Nusselt number and apparent friction constant depend greatly on different geometric parameters. The laminar Nusselt number and apparent friction constant increase with the increase of surface roughness and surface hydrophilic property. These increases become more obvious at larger Reynolds numbers. The experimental results also show that the Nusselt number increases almost linearly with the Reynolds number at low Reynolds numbers (Re<100), but increases slowly at a Reynolds number greater than 100. Based on 168 experimental data points, dimensionless correlations for the Nusselt number and the apparent friction constant are obtained for the flow of water in trapezoidal microchannels having different geometric parameters, surface roughnesses and surface hydrophilic properties. Finally, an evaluation of heat flux per pumping power and per temperature difference is given for the microchannels used in this experiment.     

Experimental study on evaporation characteristics of single and multiple fuel droplets

In this work, evaporation experiments of multiple droplets are carried out in a stagnant hot atmospheric environment (573, 673 and 773 K) using high-speed backlit image technique. Three fuel droplets with nearly same initial diameter are suspended at intersections of two 0.1 mm quartz fibers. The normalized droplet spacing (s/d₀) of three droplets is 2.25. The results show that the evaporation process of single, edge and central fuel droplet containing three stage: initial heating, unsteady evaporation and quasi-steady evaporation stage. Classical d² law is still suitable for edge and central droplet at quasi-steady evaporation stage. The third stage of edge and central droplet accounts for more than 60% of droplet lifetime at low temperatures and about 50% at high temperatures. The evaporation rate constant of edge and central droplet increases and droplet lifetime decreases with increasing ambient temperature. The evaporation time of edge and central droplet at first and third stage is higher than single droplet, but lower than single droplet in the second stage. More importantly, the evaporation interactions between droplets is significant at low temperature. Compared with single droplet, the lifetime of central droplet is increased by 31.8%, 18.6% and 25.9%, respectively.     

两组分液滴蒸发特性研究

建立两组分液滴蒸发理论模型,利用Matlab 6.5编程,模拟计算高温气流中液滴的蒸发过程,得出液滴的蒸发规律,而且计算结果与试验结果吻合很好.模拟结果和试验结果表明：在蒸发过程中,两组分液滴蒸发不满足D2定律,乙醇组分比水组分蒸发快,随着乙醇浓度降低,蒸发速率不断下降.乙醇浓度越大,液滴蒸发越快.气流温度越高、气流速度越大,液滴蒸发时间越短,液滴蒸发速度越快.     

乙烯急冷器内急冷油雾滴蒸发理论分析

先从对流传质基本理论出发得到了单雾滴的蒸发公式,并用氮气流中正庚烷雾滴的蒸发验证了其正确性。后将该公式应用到急冷油雾滴蒸发过程计算,用Matlab6.5编程,数值计算方法求解。计算过程中急冷油物性参数随温度变化的关系式经过数据拟合获得,然后输入计算程序。最后得到了急冷油雾滴蒸发直径、温度变化曲线和雾滴内部温度分布曲线。     

Transient burning of a convective fuel droplet

The transient burning of an n-octane fuel droplet in a hot gas stream at 20 atmosphere pressure is numerically studied, with considerations of droplet regression, deceleration due to the drag of the droplet, internal circulation inside the droplet, variable properties, non-uniform surface temperature, and the effect of surface tension. An initial envelope flame is found to remain envelope in time, and an initial wake flame is always transitioned into an envelope flame at a later time, with the normalized transition delay controlled by the initial Reynolds number and the initial Damkohler number. The initial flame shape is primarily determined by the initial Damkohler number, which has a critical value of Da₀=1.02. The burning rates are modified by the transition, and are influenced by the intensity of forced convection which is determined by initial Reynolds number. The influence of surface tension is also studied as the surface temperature is non-uniform. Surface tension affects the liquid motion at the droplet surface significantly and affects the change of surface temperature and burning rate modestly. The influence of surface tension generally increases with increasing initial Reynolds number within the range without droplet breakup. We also studied cases with constant relative velocity between the air stream and the droplet. The results show that in these cases the initial envelope flame still remains envelope, but the evolution from an initial wake flame to an envelope flame is inhibited. Validation of our analysis is made by comparing with a published porous-sphere experiment Raghavan et al. (2005) [6] which used methanol fuel.     

On the suppression of negative temperature coefficient (NTC) in autoignition of n-heptane droplets

Autoignition of n-heptane droplets under microgravity is investigated numerically. The comprehensive model, considering the transience in both the gas and liquid phases and non-ideal thermophysical properties, includes the 116-step reaction mechanism of Griffiths. Two-stage ignition manifests for ambient temperature less than 900 K at elevated pressures of 0.5 and 1.0 MPa. The predicted first delays and total delays agree well with the experimental data in the literature. The second delay decreases greatly with increasing pressure because a stronger Stefan flow supplies more fuel vapor for reaction as the cool flame shifts closer to the droplet to enhance evaporation. The Stefan flow effect, in combination with the inhomogeneous temperature and fuel vapor distributions, explains why the NTC (negative temperature coefficient) present in homogeneous mixtures is not observed in droplet ignition experiments. Near the minimum ignition diameter, the ignition delay increases for smaller droplets at T_∞ = 700 K, P_∞ = 1.0 MPa. For a droplet smaller than the minimum ignition diameter, only first ignition with cool flame is reached. The absence of ZTC (zero temperature coefficient) in our simulations may be attributed to the weaker inverse temperature dependence of the reaction mechanism adopted.     

Surface tension effects during low-Reynolds-number methanol droplet combustion

A numerical investigation of methanol droplet combustion in a zero-gravity, low-pressure, and low-temperature environment is presented. Simulations have been carried out using a predictive, transient, and axisymmetric model, which includes droplet heating, liquid-phase circulation, and water absorption. A low initial Reynolds number (Re₀=0.01) is used to impose a weak gas-phase convective flow, introducing a deviation from spherical symmetry. The resulting weak liquid-phase circulation is greatly enhanced due to surface tension effects, which create a complex, time-varying, multicellular flow pattern within the liquid droplet. The complex flow pattern, which results in nearly perfect mixing, causes increased water absorption within the droplet, leading to larger extinction diameters. It is shown that, for combustion of a 0.43-mm droplet in a nearly quiescent environment (Re₀=0.01) composed of dry air, the extinction diameter is 0.11 mm when surface tension effects are included, and 0.054 mm when surface tension effects are neglected. Experimental work available in the literature for a 0.43-mm droplet reported extinction diameters in the range of 0.16 to 0.19 mm. Results for combustion in a nearly quiescent environment (Re₀=0.01) with varying initial droplet diameters (0.16 to 1.72 mm) show that including the effect of surface tension results in approximately linear variation of the extinction diameter with the initial droplet diameter, which is in agreement with theoretical predictions and experimental measurements. In addition, surface tension effects are shown to be important even at initial Reynolds numbers as high as 5.     

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

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.