Theoretical analysis of the three-stage phase transition process of alkane droplet under supercritical conditions

With the development of heavy-duty diesel engines, the in-cylinder ambient conditions of the diesel engine are well above critical points of the main components of the diesel fuel. Therefore, significant changes arise in the phase transition process of the liquid fuels. However, the entire phase transition process of the liquid fuels in such supercritical environments is not well understood compared with that under subcritical conditions. In this work, A high-pressure transient droplet evaporation model was presented for the theoretical analysis of phase transition processes of the heptane/dodecane/hexadecane-nitrogen binary system under supercritical conditions. Analysis of the thermodynamic pseudo-trajectories reveals that the alkane droplets will undergo a three-stage phase transition process when the ambient condition is much higher than the critical point of alkanes, including classical two-phase mode, transitional two-phase mode, and supercritical single-phase mode. The evaporation dominates the phase transition process in the classical two-phase mode, and the transition from classical two-phase modes to transitional two-phase modes occurs when gas-liquid interfaces deviate from the global thermal equilibrium. In transitional two-phase modes, a gas-liquid interface still exists and separates the liquid phase and vapor phase, but with a questionable adoption of vapor-liquid equilibrium. The transition from the transitional two-phase mode to the supercritical single-phase mode occurs when the thermodynamic state of the binary mixture in the interface reaches the critical mixing state. We distinguished the phase states for the whole phase transition process according to the thermodynamic analysis of binary systems. Analogous to the immiscible interface in classical two-phase mode, a miscible boundary layer containing supercritical fluids exits between the liquid core and gas in the initial period of the supercritical single-phase mode. The pseudo-boiling phenomenon occurs in this boundary layer.