Enhanced Evaporation of Ternary Mixtures in Porous Medium with Microcolumn Configuration.

The high surface area of porous media enhances its efficacy for evaporative cooling, however, the evaporation of pure substances often encounters issues including local overheating and unstable heat transfer. To address these challenges, a volume of fluid (VOF) model integrated with a species transport model was developed to predict the evaporation processes of ternary mixtures (water, glycerol, and 1,2-propylene glycol) in porous ceramics in this study. It reveals that the synergistic effects of thermal conduction and convective heat transfer significantly influence the mixtures evaporation, causing the fluctuations in evaporation rates. The obtained result shows a significant increase in water evaporation rates with decreasing the microcolumn size. At a pore size of 30 μm and a porosity of 30%, an optimal balance between capillary forces and flow resistance yields a peak water release rate of 96.0%. Furthermore, decreasing the glycerol content from 70% to 60% enhances water release by 10.6%. The findings in this work propose the approaches to optimize evaporative cooling technologies by controlling the evaporation of mixtures in porous media. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]