Theoretical and experimental studies on a solid containing water droplet

Heat and mass transfer to and from a single solution droplet is studied in this work. A new theoretical model to predict the evaporation behaviour of solid containing water droplets is presented. The model, implemented in MATLAB, is used to predict the process of droplet evaporation with prediction results successfully validated against data from the literature. Also, an experimental study was performed to study the evaporation of a single droplet containing NaCl and water. To investigate the influence of concentration, tests were performed with droplet having initial radiuses of approximately 0.5 mm and initial mass concentrations of 3% and 5%. Results obtained from the developed model were found to be in good agreement with our experimental data. Finally, it was shown that the current model, allowing for a smooth transition from surface evaporation to crystallisation, is able to simulate the process more accurately compared to existing models in the literature which lead to a, less realistic, sharp transition. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.