Unsteady droplet vaporization experiments and modeling at intermediate Reynolds numbers

Measurements have been performed on single- and bicomponet droplets vaporizing freely in hot convective environments. The modeling of previously reported work has been generalized and extended to include two semiempirical gas phase correlations and two transient liquid phase models representing limiting cases of mixing in the droplet interior and compared with the data. Model comparisons with droplet composition data of high Reynolds number multicomponent vaporization experiments indicate that the droplet interior is not stagnant but probably not completely mixed. Single component experiments have been extended to lower Reynolds ranges of practical interest (10-100). In this range, the gas phase correlations, which are based on captured droplet data, significantly overpredict the vaporization rates of this free droplet data. Droplet acceleration was slightly overpredicted at all Reynolds number ranges by the drag coefficient used.