A novel vaporisation model for a single-component drop in high temperature air streams

• A new drop evaporation model has been proposed, accounting for gas density effect on vapour concentration and temperature.
• The model has been compared with well established experimental data sets available in the open literature.
• The results confirm the good agreement between model predictions and experiments, particularly at high gas temperatures.
• The model relieves some of the inconsistencies of commonly used drop evaporation models.
• The present model can be rather simply implemented in single drop and/or spray CFD codes.

A new model for drop evaporation has been developed, including the effect of gas convection according to the film theory, by relating the thermal and diffusional film thicknesses to the gas stream Reynolds number. The model solves the species, momentum and energy conservation equations in a radial coordinate system, accounting explicitly for the gas density dependence on temperature and vapour concentration. The model has been tested under a wide range of gas temperatures, Reynolds numbers and liquid species and the results have been compared against experimental data available in the scientific literature and with the predictions from the classical extended film model. The present model, together with relieving some of the physical inconsistencies of the classical models, which become not negligible at high gas temperature, also shows a rather good agreement with the experimental data for the selected operating conditions.