Second Law Analysis of Spray Evaporation

Abstract

A second law analysis has been developed for an evaporative atomized spray in a uniform parallel stream of hot gas. Using a discrete droplet evaporation model, an equation for entropy balance of a drop has been formulated to determine numerically the entropy generation histories of the evaporative spray. For the exergy analysis of the process, the rate of heat transfer and that of associated irreversibilities for complete evaporation of the spray have been calculated. A second law efficiency (η II ), defined as the ratio of the total exergy transferred to the sum of the total exergy transferred and exergy destroyed, is finally evaluated for various values of pertinent input parameters, namely, the initial Reynolds number (Rei = 2ρg V i x i /μ g ) and the ratio of ambient to initial drop temperature (Θ ∞ ′/Θ i ′).