Experimental investigation on evaporation interface temperature and evaporation rate of water in its own vapor at low pressures

Evaporative phase transitions are widely present in industrial production and daily life such as thin film processes and crystal growth. The evaporation of the liquid layer and the thermocapillary convection affect each other and restrict each other, making the energy transfer mechanism of the evaporation interface very complicated. To understand the evaporation characteristics of water in its low-pressure pure vapor environment, a series of experimental studies were carried out on the temperature distributions and evaporating rate of water evaporation in the annular pool. The cylinder temperature of the annular liquid pool is controlled between 3℃ and 15℃, and the evaporation environment pressure ranges from 394 Pa to 1467 Pa, when the temperature measurement starts, the depth of water is 10 mm. The results show that the temperature of the vapor side on the liquid-vapor interface is higher than that of the liquid side and there is an obvious temperature jump across the vapor-liquid interface. With the decrease of the pressure ratio, the evaporation rate increases, and the interface temperature jump is enlarged. Meanwhile, with the increase of the distance from the cylinder, the local evaporation rate decreases, thus, the temperature jump decreases. At the same pressure ratio, as the cylinder temperature increases, the heat flux from vapor side decreases, the temperature jump decreases at all measurement points. Within the experimental controlled parameters, the maximum temperature jump obtained in the measurements is 2.56℃. Due to the coupling effect of evaporation cooling and thermocapillary convection, there is a uniform temperature layer with a thickness of about 2 mm under the evaporation interface. The thickness of the uniform temperature layer near the cylinder is always larger than that in the middle of the evaporation interface. In the uniform temperature layer, the thermocapillary convection induced by radial temperature gradient transfers heat from the cylinder to the liquid-vapor interface to compensate for the latent heat of evaporation. Below the uniform temperature layer, the temperature rises rapidly due to heat conduction and buoyancy convection. © 2020, Editorial Board of CIESC Journal. All right reserved.