APPLIED

ENERGY

Applied Energy 84 (2007) 404412

www.elsevier.com/locate/apenergy

Droplet evaporation with reference to the

eectiveness of water-mist cooling
H. Barrow a, C.W. Pope
a

b,*

Department of Engineering, The University of Liverpool, Brownlow Hill, Liverpool, L69 3GH, United Kingdom
b
Mott MacDonald, Prole House, Sir Frank Whittle Way, Derby, DE21 4XE, United Kingdom
Accepted 4 September 2006
Available online 20 November 2006

Abstract
A simple theoretical analysis of heat-and-mass transfer to a spherical water-droplet moving in
humid air has been made, in connection with the possible use of spray or mist cooling in railway
tunnels and other systems. In particular, the histories of the temperature and diameter of the droplet,
and the dependence of the time of complete evaporation (or life-time) on the initial size have been
studied. The relationships between life-time and the maximum time the droplet may be air borne
in the particular environment, (such as a tunnel), has been investigated using the settling time of
a freely-falling droplet as a basis of measurement.
 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
This paper has its origin in an earlier investigation [1] of cooling methods in railway
tunnels. In that work, a number of possible methods of cooling were discussed in detail,
and it was concluded that spray cooling, in particular, would be eective for local overheating problems. Suggestions were then made for its operation in the tunnel situation.
In Ref. [1], the underlying thermodynamic principles for this method were investigated,
and calculations were made to show that a signicant reduction in dry-bulb temperature could be achieved with relatively small amounts of added water. These preliminary

Corresponding author. Tel.: +44 1332 511 528.

E-mail address: clivewpope@yahoo.co.uk (C.W. Pope).

0306-2619/$ - see front matter  2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.apenergy.2006.09.007

H. Barrow, C.W. Pope / Applied Energy 84 (2007) 404412

405

Nomenclature
A
surface area of droplet
c
specic heat
d
diameter of droplet
D
diusion coecient
E
energy of control volume (i.e. droplet)
g
acceleration due to gravity
h, hm heat and mass transfer coecients
i
specic enthalpy
k
thermal conductivity
L
specic latent-heat
m_
mass-ow rate at droplets surface
Nu (=hd/k) Nusselt number
Pr
Prandtl number
r
radius of droplet
Re (=qUd/l) Reynolds number
Sc
Schmidt number
Sh (= hmd/D) Sherwood number
t
time
T
absolute temperature
U
velocity of droplet (absolute)
v
velocity at surface of droplet (relative)
V
volume of droplet
l
viscosity
q
density
Suxes
a
air
cv
control volume
o
environment (vapour constituent)
s
surface of droplet
w
liquid water

calculations, which were based on energy-and-mass conservation equations alone, were

intended to determine the overall eects, and the details of the ow mass-and-heat
transfer mechanisms involved were not explored. That is, parameters such as droplet
size, time of evaporation, etc. were not involved, since the conservation equations did
not require such information in their implementation.
In recent times, there has been an increasing demand for the solution of the overheating
problem in the railway-tunnel situation. To provide further data and insight for the purpose of designing a spray or mist cooling plant, the investigation referred to in [1] has been
extended in the present work. Here, the mass, momentum and energy-transfer processes
for the coolant drop are considered in detail, and the important life-time of the droplet
in relation to its initial size is determined.

406

H. Barrow, C.W. Pope / Applied Energy 84 (2007) 404412

Now this area of study has many parallel situations in the various branches of engineering. Typical examples are the investigation of the vaporization of fuel droplets in
the combustors of jet engines on the one hand, (see Ref. [2]), to the water-mist suppression of res on the other. Of course, the underlying physical processes involved in all
these applications are identical, and so there is considerable common ground in their
investigation.
However, the distinctive feature of the present problem of spray cooling in railway tunnels is perhaps the temperature range involved in the evaporation process. This is relatively small and typical of air-conditioning processes. Intuitively, small droplets (or socalled mist) provide a larger area for the heat-and-mass transfer, thereby shortening
the time for complete evaporation. The longer the droplets are air borne, the more likely
are they to impinge on solid boundaries such as tunnel walls, thereby reducing the cooling
eectiveness. A short life-time is therefore essential. The relative velocity of the droplets in
the parent air is also important as this dictates the heat-and-mass transfer rates: these may
vary considerably from the time of creation of the droplets at the atomiser to their eventual annihilation in ight.
Other complexities include the inuence of surface tension in the droplets of very small
size, the interaction between adjacent droplets, and internal circulation.
Clearly the cooling eect, that is the decrease in dry-bulb temperature, is accompanied
by an increase in relative humidity in the environment.
From the point of view of human comfort, where this is appropriate, a balance between
dry-bulb temperature and relative humidity must be achieved.
With this general assessment of the problem in mind, a theoretical analysis of waterdroplet evaporation for the conditions pertaining to the railway tunnel is made. At the
outset, it is necessary to model the droplet and then to analyse the mass, momentum
and heat transfers using the appropriate thermodynamic relationships. This is done in
the following sections. An important feature of the theoretical analysis is the concept of
the moving control-volume which is used in conjunction with the First Law of Thermodynamics for an open system, a procedure which is outlined in Ref. [3]. Likewise, the
momentum equation in a form taking cognizance of the momentum ux across the moving control-volume boundary is required for the calculation of the velocity and distance
travelled by the vaporizing droplet.
2. Thermodynamic model for an evaporating water droplet
In the thermodynamic modelling of an evaporating liquid-water droplet, use may be
made of the transient form of the First Law of Thermodynamics applied to a control volume with a moving boundary. The surface of the control volume coincides with the surface
of the droplet, which is assumed to be spherical, and while evaporation takes place, there
are heat-and-mass transfers at the moving surface with thermal-energy storage within the
droplet. The heat transfer at the surface may be due to both radiation and forced convection, and the mass transfer with its associated enthalpy-ux occurs as evaporation takes
place at the interface. The energy storage within the droplet is by sensible heating as the
result of heat conduction. Since the internal thermal-resistance of the droplet is small compared with the external thermal-resistance, (i.e. The Biot number is small and less than
approximately 0.1), the lumped heat-capacity approach to the calculation of the energy
storage in the droplet is appropriate. That is, the temperature in the droplet may be

H. Barrow, C.W. Pope / Applied Energy 84 (2007) 404412

407

assumed to be uniform during the evaporation process. This considerably simplies the
analysis of the overall calculation procedure, since it avoids the need for a conjugate
heat-conduction analysis for the internal transient temperature-distribution inside the
droplet.
The heat-and-mass transfers at the interface are determined in the usual manner. However, during the evaporation, both the diameter and the surface concentration of the droplet must be adjusted for the changing conditions at the interface. In connection with the
surface concentration, an analytical relationship between the vapour density and the saturation pressure may be derived from data in the tables in the standard texts, which
include the thermodynamic properties of water (see, for example, Ref. [4]). The droplet
is assumed to be spherical at all times with uniform heat-and-mass transfer rates at its
surface.
2.1. Theoretical relationships
Assuming a predominantly forced-convective heat transfer from the environment to the
droplet in ight, the averaged heat-and-mass transfer coecients are determined from the
following relationships according to Ref. [5].
For heat transfer:
Nu 2 0:6 Re1=2 Pr1=3

and, for mass transfer,

Sh 2 0:6 Re1=2 Sc1=3 :

Both these equations have forms appropriate for the present heat-and-mass transfer case.
Because, as the velocity (and hence Reynolds number) decreases to zero, the transfer coefcients Nu and Sh are then those for molecular diusion and equal to 2. The mass-transfer
rate by evaporation at the surface is
m_ hm Aqs  qo

where qs is the surface density determined by the relationship referred to earlier. The product m_ and the specic vapour enthalpy, i, is then the rate of energy leaving the control-volume surface, i.e. the droplet surface or interface.
As mentioned earlier, the assumption of uniform temperature within the droplet is warranted in view of the relatively small internal thermal-resistance. Accordingly, the heat
storage rate in the droplet is given by
 
dE
d
q cw VT :
4
dt cv dt w
When this is introduced into the transient energy-equation together with the enthalpy ux
rates at the surface, the result is:
_
hAT o  T mi

d
q cw VT :
dt w

Remembering that both V and T are time dependent, and that the enthalpy, i, is equal to
cw(T  273) + L, Eq. (5) may be expanded to give:

408

H. Barrow, C.W. Pope / Applied Energy 84 (2007) 404412

hT o  T hm Lqs  qo qw cw

 r  dT
3 dt

This equation serves as the starting point for the computation of the temperature and the
radius of the droplet using a time-marching procedure, as explained in a later section.
As the droplet decreases in size, surface tension eects play an increasingly more important role in the energy-transfer process. Evidently [6], when a droplet of water has a diameter of approximately 1.2 104 lm, then the surface energy is sucient to cause
spontaneous evaporation. However, such a phenomenon is of little consequence in the
context of the present investigation, which is concerned primarily with the time of evaporation of water mist with an initial droplet size of 50 lm or possibly more. In addition, in
the present study, the eect of the curvature of the liquid surface on vapour pressure will
be ignored1 when deriving the temperaturedensity relationship in the mass-transfer
calculation.
With all the components now available for the prediction, the computation for the principal variables for an evaporating water-droplet in free-fall may be undertaken as outlined
in the following section.
3. Computational procedure
The determination of the history of the

temperature and diameter of the evaporating
droplet is eected using Eq. (6), with dT
written in nite-dierence form.
dt
Initially, the droplet size and temperature and the external conditions, together with all
the relevant thermal properties are specied. Also included in the program are the correlations for heat-and-mass transfers, the temperaturevapour density relationship, and the
momentum equation as derived in Appendix 2. The sequence in the calculation is as
follows.
After selecting a suitable time step, the change in temperature of the droplet is determined using Eq. (6). The mass transferred in the interval is then evaluated, and the corresponding decrease in diameter obtained by continuity. The velocity after the time step is
calculated with the momentum Eq. (A.6), (see Appendix 2), in its nite-dierence form
assuming that the droplet starts from rest, and the distance fallen in that time is obtained
using the average velocity.
At the end of the time interval, the new surface vapour-density, as well as the heat-andmass transfer coecients are the used in the following time step, and the whole calculation
repeated until the diameter of the droplet reaches a specied lower limit, typically 1 lm.
The output from the program, which was written in Q-basic, may include the histories
of the temperature, diameter, velocity and distance travelled by the droplet.
In the present work, environmental conditions appropriate to the tunnel cooling problem were chosen. These were: (i) dry-bulb temperature = 301 K; (ii) relative humidity = 40%; and (iii) initial droplet temperature = 288.5 K.
Calculations were carried out for a range of droplet sizes, from 25 to 200 lm diameter,
encompassing the mist spectrum.

According to Ref. [6], the droplet diameter must be 100 lm or less for surface tension eects on vapour
pressure to become appreciable.

H. Barrow, C.W. Pope / Applied Energy 84 (2007) 404412

409

Other aspects of the calculation include the trends of the Nusselt and Sherwood numbers. As indicated earlier, these must be asymptotic to the value 2 when thermal and mass
diusions alone prevail. This trend, together with a brief initial increase in velocity followed by a progressive decay in velocity lends condence to the calculation method.
From the results, it can then be decided whether or not droplets are evaporated after
their creation before they settle on the boundary of the enclosure, and the eectiveness
of the mist-cooling assessed.
4. Results and discussion
A typical set of results is shown in Table 1, where the time of evaporation and distance
travelled by a range of droplets of dierent sizes are displayed. These results refer to the
conditions listed.
The terminal temperature of the droplet in all cases is 291.1 K, which is very close to the
thermodynamic wet-bulb temperature. This temperature is achieved rapidly, indicating
that energy storage within the droplet is only eective in the early stages of the evaporation
process. This observation is in accord with the balance between convective-heat transfer
and latent-heat removal, viz:
hT o  T hm Lqs  qo

at the later stages. Not surprisingly, the largest droplets have the longest evaporation times
and travel the greatest distances. Interestingly, droplets as large as about 150 lm would
evaporate completely in falling from the tunnel roof. Clearly larger sprays would be least
eective from the point of view of cooling, as reference to the results for 200 lm diameter
droplets will reveal.
Of course, the results in Table 1 are for freely-falling droplets with an initial velocity of
zero. In reality, there will be some air movement in the case of the tunnel, giving rise to
larger relative velocities and hence greater heat-and-mass transfer rates. This results in
shorter evaporation times and has been veried in the computational procedure by
over-riding the gravity-induced velocity with an arbitrary larger constant velocity.
A further test of the reliability of the method of calculation is exhibited in the results for
the ctitious case of a dry environment. Here both the time of evaporation and the distance travelled are about half of those listed in Table 1 for the case when d = 50 lm. This
Table 1
Evaporation time and distance travelled by a droplet in free-fall
Droplet diameter (lm)

Time (s)

Distance (m)

25
50
75
100
125
150
200

0.66
2.54
5.39
9.00
13.17
17.84
28.00

0.006
0.097
0.457
1.337
3.0
5.79
15.70

Terminal temperature = 291.1 K.

Initial temperature = 288.5 K.
Environment temperature = 301 K.
Environment relative humidity = 40%.

410

H. Barrow, C.W. Pope / Applied Energy 84 (2007) 404412

is to be expected, since the mass-transfer driving potential is signicantly larger when the
atmosphere is dry.
A useful by-product of the computation is the droplet velocity, which, as anticipated,
increases rapidly from zero to a maximum, and then decreases monotonically to zero
towards the end of the life-time of the evaporating droplet. This, together with all the
other results is in accord with intuition, and gives condence in the modelling, analysis,
and calculation methods used.
5. Conclusions
Using the mass, momentum and energy-conservation equations for a control volume
with a moving boundary, a theoretical analysis of an evaporating-liquid droplet has been
made. In particular, for the case of a freely-falling droplet, the histories of the temperature
and diameter are predicted using a time marching numerical procedure. While the analysis and calculation method are completely general, conditions pertaining to rail tunnels
have been chosen, with the possibility of the use of water mist cooling in mind. The eectiveness of such a system depends, amongst, other things, on ensuring that the evaporation
of the injected liquid takes place before impingement on the surrounding surfaces. Accordingly, attention has been focussed on the life-time of droplets of various sizes and the distances travelled in free fall. The total amount of liquid water to be injected into a tunnel to
provide a specied degree of cooling has been investigated earlier, [1], so that the present
investigation complements that study.
It has been found that both the life-time and the distance fallen increase rapidly with
increase in droplet diameter. If a distance of 6 m is set as a limit in the present area of interest, then droplets of diameters up to about 150 lm will be completely evaporated for the
particular conditions chosen. This is, of course, for the ideal situation of free-fall in a stagnant atmosphere, and it can be expected that droplets of somewhat larger diameter will
satisfy the evaporation criterion when there is additional ventilation.
Finally, it is concluded on the basis of this study and the earlier work, [1], that a mistcooling system shows distinct promise as a possible method for combating local over-heating in railway tunnels. Provided that careful consideration is given to the design and installation of the water-atomisation nozzle or mist-producing device, very eective lowering of
the dry-bulb temperature may be achieved with relatively small amounts of water. Furthermore, plant manufacture and installation costs are competitive when compared with
other cooling systems incorporating conventional air-to-water heat-exchangers. As suggested both here and in the earlier study, [1], a mist or spray-cooling system might be combined with a re suppression system serving a dual purpose.
Acknowledgement
The authors thank the directors of Mott MacDonald for permission to publish this
paper.
Appendix 1. Velocity of a free falling droplet of constant diameter
For a droplet, of constant diameter, falling freely under gravity, the equation of motion
is:

H. Barrow, C.W. Pope / Applied Energy 84 (2007) 404412



 
4 3
4 3
dU
pr qw g  6prlU pr qw
3
3
dt
This equation may be integrated to give:
g 
9l
U
f1  exp Ptg where P 2
P
2r qw
Typically, when r = 25 lm, the velocity is:
 g 
U
f1  exp 126tg
126

411

A:1

A:2

A:3

and, when t is innite, the velocity is the terminal velocity, which is equal to 0.07786 m/s.
Now the velocity of the droplet approaches the terminal velocity of (g/P) in a relatively
short time. Accordingly, the time of ight of a droplet of say 50 lm falling freely through
5 m is (5/0.07786) s which equals 64 s. It is to be noted then, that the time for a constantdiameter droplet to settle is inversely proportional to the diameter of the droplet provided
of course that the droplet is relatively small, it is not evaporating, and the vertical distance
is relatively large.
Appendix 2. The momentum equation for an evaporating droplet in free fall
In order to determine the time for an evaporating droplet to settle, it is necessary to
extend the simple analysis of Appendix 1 to include the momentum ux associated with
the vapour crossing the boundary of the control volume, viz. the droplet. That is, the
momentum equation must be modied to read the body force (or weight) minus the drag
equals the time rate of change of the momentum of the control volume plus the net
momentum ux crossing the c.v. boundary downwards. The rate of change of momentum
of the contracting droplet (the c.v.) is simply dtd qw VU  with V 43 pr3 , while the net
momentum ux is obtained by integration of the vertical component of the elemental
momentum uxes over the spherical surface. The derivation of this last component of
the momentum equation entails some considerable algebra, but results in the very simple
expression:Net Momentum flux # 4pr2 qs vs U :
The nal-momentum equation is then


4 3
d 4 3
pr qw g  6prlU
pr qw U 4pr2 qs vs U :
3
dt 3

A:4

A:5

It is important to remember that, in the case of a moving control-volume surface, the mass
crossing the surface is calculated using relative velocity, while the corresponding momentum and kinetic energy where appropriate depend on the absolute velocity. The integration of the momentum ux over the surface has been eected analytically by
considering the upper and lower hemispheres of the droplet separately.
With regard to the drag on the surface, it is assumed that this is unaected by the
vapour mass-transfer at the interface.
Now after rearrangement of the modied momentum Eq. (A.5), the rate of change of
the settling velocity, U, may be written:

412

H. Barrow, C.W. Pope / Applied Energy 84 (2007) 404412

dU
dt

9lU
g
2r2 qw

 
 
3 qs
3U dr

vs U 
r qw
r dt

A:6

Unlike Eq. (A.1), for a constant-diameter droplet, discussed in Appendix 1, Eq. (A.6) cannot be solved analytically for the velocity U, and resort must be made to numerical
methods.
References
[1] Barrow H, Pope CW. Cooling methods for railway tunnels. Proc Inst Mech Engrs 1995;209:10512.
[2] El. Wakil MM, Uyehara OA, Myers PS, A theoretical investigation of the heating-up period of injected fuel
droplets vaporizing in air, N.A.C.A.,Washington: TN 3179; 1953.
[3] Reynolds WC. Thermodynamics. McGraw-Hill Book Co.; 1968.
[4] ASHRAE Handbook 1985 Fundamentals, American Soc. of Htg., Refrig., and Air Conditioning Engrs., Inc.,
1985.
[5] Ranz WE, Marshall Jr WR. Evaporation from drops. Chem Eng Progress 1952;48:1416. pp. 17380.
[6] Temperley HNV. Properties of matter. University Tutorial Press Ltd.; 1965.