Evaporative refrigeration effect in evaporation and condensation between two parallel plates

Abstract

It is well-known that evaporation can lead to cooling. However, little is known that evaporation can actually create a refrigeration effect, i.e., the vapor phase temperature can drop below the temperature of the cooling wall. This possibility was recently pointed out via modeling based on an approximate quasi-continuum approach. This work examines this effect rigorously by studying evaporation and condensation between two parallel plates by coupling the solution of the Boltzmann transport equation in the vapor phase with the continuum treatments in both liquid films. Numerical results show that the vapor phase temperature at the evaporating side can be much lower than the coldest wall temperature at the condensing surface, reaffirming the evaporative refrigeration effect. The present work further reveals that this effect is caused by two mechanisms. While the dominant mechanism is the asymmetry in the molecular distribution between the outgoing and the incoming molecules at the interface, additional cooling occurs within the Knudsen layer due to the sudden expansion, similar to the Joule–Thomson effect, although with subtle differences in that the interfacial expansion is not an isenthalpic process. The impacts of key parameters, including liquid thickness, Knudsen number, and accommodation coefficient, are investigated. The numerical simulation shows that with a thicker vapor, a thinner liquid film, and a larger accommodation coefficient, leads to stronger evaporative refrigeration effect. This work will motivate future experiments to further confirm this prediction and explore its potential applications in air-conditioning, refrigeration, and membrane distillation.