27.02.2014 Views

INAUGURAL–DISSERTATION zur Erlangung der Doktorwürde der ...

INAUGURAL–DISSERTATION zur Erlangung der Doktorwürde der ...

INAUGURAL–DISSERTATION zur Erlangung der Doktorwürde der ...

SHOW MORE
SHOW LESS

Create successful ePaper yourself

Turn your PDF publications into a flip-book with our unique Google optimized e-Paper software.

34 2. Mathematical Modeling<br />

Fig. 2.5: Schematic diagram of stages in single droplet evaporation and drying.<br />

model, achieving fairly good agreement. The droplet generators used in these studies<br />

produce a chain of closely spaced droplets, which leads to droplet–droplet interactions<br />

in processes that are limited by gas phase transport processes.<br />

The aim of the present work is to develop a mathematical model, which can be<br />

applied to predict the evaporation and drying characteristics of droplets of the polymer<br />

PVP dissolved in water and mannitol dissolved in water solution. Prerequisites<br />

of the method are, (1) accounting for the solid layer resistance in mass evaporation<br />

rate and energy calculation, and (2) treatment of the liquid mixture as non-ideal by<br />

computing the activity coefficient of the evaporating component.<br />

The problem un<strong>der</strong> consi<strong>der</strong>ation is the evaporation and drying of an isolated single<br />

spherical droplet consisting of a binary mixture of a liquid and a dissolved solid material<br />

with low or zero vapor pressure.<br />

During the evaporation and drying of the bi-component droplet, the droplet un<strong>der</strong>goes<br />

four stages as explained by Nesic and Vodnik [151], which are depicted in Fig. 2.5.<br />

In the initial stage, the droplet temperature quickly rises to an equilibrium temperature,<br />

which is most often near to the wet bulb temperature for surrounding gas and<br />

humidity, with some solvent evaporation.<br />

In the second stage, the droplet starts to shrink as solvent evaporates causing the<br />

solute mass fraction to increase at the droplet surface; this leads to a slight raise in<br />

the droplet temperature (see Fig. 2.5). The increase in solute mass fraction at the<br />

droplet surface hin<strong>der</strong>s further evaporation as the vapor pressure of the solvent at<br />

the surface drops. The third stage of drying starts when the solute mass fraction at<br />

the surface raises to a threshold value, which most often is equal to the saturation<br />

solubility of the solute in the solvent, whereupon the crust formation starts for salts,<br />

sugar and colloidal material. In the case of polymers, molecular entanglement and

Hooray! Your file is uploaded and ready to be published.

Saved successfully!

Ooh no, something went wrong!