A unified relationship for evaporation kinetics at low Mach numbers
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...
| Main Authors: | , , , |
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| Other Authors: | |
| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Springer Science and Business Media LLC
2020
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| Online Access: | https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/125179 |
| _version_ | 1826198127763259392 |
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| author | Lu, Zhengmao Wilke, Kyle L. Vaartstra, Geoffrey Wang, Evelyn N. |
| author2 | Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Mechanical Engineering |
| author_facet | Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Mechanical Engineering Lu, Zhengmao Wilke, Kyle L. Vaartstra, Geoffrey Wang, Evelyn N. |
| author_sort | Lu, Zhengmao |
| collection | MIT |
| description | 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. |
| first_indexed | 2024-09-23T10:59:26Z |
| format | Article |
| id | mit-1721.1/125179 |
| institution | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-09-23T10:59:26Z |
| publishDate | 2020 |
| publisher | Springer Science and Business Media LLC |
| record_format | dspace |
| spelling | mit-1721.1/1251792022-10-01T00:26:41Z A unified relationship for evaporation kinetics at low Mach numbers Lu, Zhengmao Wilke, Kyle L. Vaartstra, Geoffrey Wang, Evelyn N. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Mechanical Engineering 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. National Science Foundation (U.S.) (Award ECS-0335765) 2020-05-12T15:17:25Z 2020-05-12T15:17:25Z 2019-05 2020-01-23T13:57:45Z Article http://purl.org/eprint/type/JournalArticle 2041-1723 https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/125179 Lu, Zhengmao et al. “A unified relationship for evaporation kinetics at low Mach numbers.” Nature Communications 10 (2019): 2368 © 2019 The Author(s) en 10.1038/S41467-019-10209-W Nature Communications Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ application/pdf Springer Science and Business Media LLC Nature |
| spellingShingle | Lu, Zhengmao Wilke, Kyle L. Vaartstra, Geoffrey Wang, Evelyn N. A unified relationship for evaporation kinetics at low Mach numbers |
| title | A unified relationship for evaporation kinetics at low Mach numbers |
| title_full | A unified relationship for evaporation kinetics at low Mach numbers |
| title_fullStr | A unified relationship for evaporation kinetics at low Mach numbers |
| title_full_unstemmed | A unified relationship for evaporation kinetics at low Mach numbers |
| title_short | A unified relationship for evaporation kinetics at low Mach numbers |
| title_sort | unified relationship for evaporation kinetics at low mach numbers |
| url | https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/125179 |
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