Chemical Engineering Communications, Vol.205, No.1, 110-121, 2018
Evaporation of oblate spheroidal droplets: A theoretical analysis
The time-dependent evaporation of an oblate spheroidal droplet that undergoes forced convection was numerically investigated by solving the governing equations of energy, mass, and momentum. The research results elucidate the effects of oblate spheroid shape on droplet evaporation. A quantitative evaluation of spheroidal geometrical parameters (i.e., equatorial diameter, surface area, and volume) reveals that the evaporation rate increases at a much higher rate for an oblate droplet that approaches a disk-like shape of the same equivalent volume as a sphere. The variation of local Sherwood number on the surface of an oblate spheroid was obtained for the Reynolds number (2Re150) and the droplet axis ratio (0.1A(xr)0.9).
Keywords:Evaporation;forced convection;laminar flow;mass transfer;mathematical modeling;oblate droplets