Evaporation of single droplets of ethanol-fuel oil mixtures

Measurements of droplet evaporation behaviour are reported for mixtures of pure and denatured ethanol with No. 2 fuel oil. A model for the evaporation of droplets of these mixtures is presented which uses continuous thermodynamics to describe the fuel oil fraction. Activity coefficients were used to describe non-ideal phase equilibrium behaviour. Distribution function parameters for the fuel oil were fitted from a continuous thermodynamics simulation of the ASTM distillation test; this simulation was also used to test the accuracy of the phase equilibrium model. The model is shown to give very good agreement with the measurements. Internal boiling of the liquid is seen to take place during evaporation of the alcohol, but is not sufficiently violent to eject mass from the droplet.