A comparison and analysis of results from multicomponent droplet vaporization simulations at low temperatures using well-mixed and diffusion-limited models are presented. An approach combining elements of continuous and discrete multicomponent mixture description is proposed to model mixtures such as gasoline-ethanol blends, where a pure substance is mixed with a continuous mixture. The rates of heat and mass transfer between the droplet and its environment are evaluated under the assumption that the fluid properties are constant in the gas film surrounding the droplet. The liquid phase is modelled according to three different assumptions: a well-mixed model where temperature and composition are uniform, a combined model where mass transfer is limited by diffusion, but temperature is uniform and a fully diffusion-limited model with respect to both composition and temperature. Results show that the difference between the predictions of a fully diffusion-limited model and that of the combined model increases as temperature is reduced. It is shown that diffusion-limited heat transfer has an appreciable impact on droplet lifetime. The application of an electronic database of experimentally determined fluid properties allowed a partial validation of the accuracy of the chosen empirical correlations. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.