An experimental and theoretical study of the effect of suspended thermocouple on the single droplet evaporation

The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of thermocouple on the evaporation characteristics of a single droplet experimentally and theoretically. Experimentally, a binary droplet of n-Dodecane and n-Hexadecane with an initial diameter of ∼900 μm is suspended at the welding point of a thermocouple wire or at the tip of a quartz fiber to evaporate. A conduction-diffusion limit multi-component evaporation model for a single droplet is built, taking into account the effect of fiber conduction. The calculations agree well with the experiments. At low ambient temperature (473 K), fiber conduction mainly affects the early evaporation stage. While at high temperature (773 K), it affects the whole evaporation process. Also, the effect of the fiber diameter on droplet evaporation is investigated. The result shows that droplet evaporation rate changes non-linearly with the increasing fiber diameter.