A practical engineering calculation method has been formulated for commercial multicomponent fuel stagnant droplet evaporation with variable finite mass and thermal diffusivity. Instead of solving the transient liquid phase mass and heat transfer partial differential equation set, a totally different approach is used. With zero or infinite mass diffusion resistance in liquid phase, it is possible to obtain vapor pressure and vapor molecular mass based on the distillation curve of these turbine fuels. It is determined that Peclet number (Pef) is a suitable parameter to represent the mass diffusion resistance in liquid phase. The vapor pressure and vapor molecular mass at constant finite Pef is expressed as a function of finite Pef, vapor pressure, and molecular mass at zero Pef and infinite Pef. At any time step, with variable finite Pef, the above equation is still valid, and PFsPef=∞, PFsPef=0, MfvPef=∞, MfvPef=0 are calculated from PFsPef≡∞, PFsPef≡0, MfvPef≡∞, MfvPef≡0, thus PFs and Mfv can be determined in a global way which eventually is based on the distillation curve of fuel.
The explicit solution of transient heat transfer equation is used to have droplet surface temperature and droplet average temperature as a function of surface Nusselt number and non-dimensional time. The effect of varying com position of multi-component fuel evaporation is taken into account by expressing the properties as a function of molecular mass, acentric factor, critical temperature, and critical pressure. A specific calculation method is developed for liquid fuel diffusion coefficient, also special care is taken to calculate the binary diffusion coefficient of fuel vapor-air in gaseous phase. The effect of Stefan flow and natural convection has been included. The predictions from the present evaporation model for different turbine fuels under very wide temperature ranges have been compared with experimental data with good agreement.
