Technical Note: Lifetime of evaporating droplets in a closed volume

Abstract

The numerical modeling of heat and mass transfer of droplets within a closed volume containing gas heated in relation to the droplets was conducted. The droplet lifetime at variation of initial values of gas and droplet temperatures and droplet mass fraction has been determined. It was found that droplet lifetime exhibits a weak dependence on the initial droplet temperature and a pronounced dependence on the initial gas temperature. Moreover, it was demonstrated that the droplet lifetime in a closed volume is longer than in infinite space. This is due to the fact that the cooling of the surrounding gas by droplets results in a decrease in the evaporation rate of the droplets. A parameter is proposed which allows for the consideration of the effect of evaporating droplets on the thermal regime of the gas-drop mixture, and which enables the generalization of the results of numerical simulation to obtain an expression for the droplet lifetime in a closed volume. The error in the use of the obtained expression is estimated. It was determined that the margin of error for the calculation results is less than ten percent.