Evaporation of ethanol-water sessile droplet of different compositions at an elevated substrate temperature

We experimentally investigate the evaporation dynamics of sessile droplets with different compositions of ethanol-water binary mixture at different substrate temperatures. At room temperature, a binary droplet undergoes two distinct evaporation stages unlike only the pinned stage evaporation for pure droplets. In the binary droplets, the more volatile ethanol evaporates faster leading to a nonlinear trend in the evaporation process. At elevated substrate temperature, we observed an early spreading stage, an intermediate pinned stage and a late receding stage of evaporation. Increasing the substrate temperature decreases the lifetime of binary droplets rapidly. At high substrate temperature, we found that the lifetime of the droplet exhibits a non-monotonic trend with the increase in ethanol concentration in the binary mixture, which can be attributed to the non-ideal behaviour of water-ethanol binary mixtures. Interestingly, the evaporation dynamics for different compositions at high substrate temperature exhibits a self-similar trend showing a constant normalised volumetric evaporation rate for the entire evaporation process. This indicates that the evaporation dynamics of a binary droplet of a given composition at high substrate temperature is equivalent to that of another pure fluid with a higher volatility at room temperature. The evaporation rates of pure and binary droplets at different substrate temperatures are compared against a theoretical model developed for pure and binary mixture droplets. The model predictions are found to be quite satisfactory for the steady evaporation phase of the droplet lifetimes. (C) 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.