International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer 55 (2012) 68976907

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International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ijhmt

A discrete multicomponent fuel evaporation model with liquid turbulence effects

O. Samimi Abianeh, C. P. Chen
Department of Chemical and Materials Engineering, University of Alabama in Huntsville, Huntsville, AL 35899, United States

a r t i c l e

i n f o

Article history:
Received 27 January 2012
Received in revised form 27 June 2012
Accepted 2 July 2012
Available online 2 August 2012
Keywords:
Spray droplet evaporation
Turbulent atomization
Multi component fuel

a b s t r a c t
A new approach to simultaneously account for nite thermal conductivity, nite mass diffusivity and turbulence effects within atomizing multicomponent liquid fuel sprays has been developed in this study.
The main contribution of this paper is to incorporate the liquid turbulence effect in modeling the boundary layer heat and mass resistance during multi-component droplet evaporation. The nite conductivity
model is based on an existing two-layer lm theory, where the turbulence characteristics of the droplet
are used to estimate the effective thermal conductivity. The present paper extends the two-layer lm theory formulation to include multi-component mass diffusivities within the droplet liquid phase. In this
model four regions are considered: the interior region of the droplet, droplet-side interface, gas-side
interface, and the surrounding gas phase. Approximate solutions to the quasi-steady energy and mass
transfer equations were used to derive an explicit expression for the heat and mass ux from the surrounding gas to the dropletgas interface, and within the multi-component droplet. Extension of the
model to high pressures using the PengRobinson equation of state is also considered. The validation
study was carried out for a bi-component decane/hexadecane fuel, followed by application studies of
complex gasolineethanol blended fuels evaporating in hot gas environments.
2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
In liquid fueled combustion systems such as gasoline direct
injection and diesel engines, combustion performance depends
strongly on the fuel type, liquid atomization, spray vaporization,
and the mixing process. The droplet size history during evaporation in the combustion chamber inuences the dynamic behavior
of the droplets, whereas the variation of the composition determines the distribution of the fuel compounds within the combustion chamber. The fundamental understanding of these processes
is essential for the modeling of evaporating fuel sprays. A comprehensive overview of droplet evaporation can be reference in [1].
Commercial fuels are typically composed of hundreds of complex
compounds with different physical properties. Especially for fuels
derived from bio-mass, the range of relative volatility is very large.
The highly volatile (light) components, such as water and simple
acids, evaporate relatively fast at the liquidvapor interface compared to the internal diffusion, leading to non-uniform concentration distributions and a build-up of lighter components in the
center of the fuel droplet [2]. Thus, the evaporation of multi component droplets is a complex process. To efciently predict the real
fuel evaporating sprays, surrogate fuels involving a small number
of components matching distillation curves are usually used to

Corresponding author. Tel.: +1 (256) 824 6194; fax: +1 (256) 824 6839.
E-mail address: chenc@uah.edu (C. P. Chen).
0017-9310/$ - see front matter 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ijheatmasstransfer.2012.07.003

represent the real fuels. In [3], a seven-component surrogate was

used as gasoline simulant, and a four-component surrogate was
proposed for simulating kerosene fuel [4].
Numerous theoretical and modeling studies have been carried
out for describing droplet evaporation [111], and these studies
can be classied into general categories such as: discrete or continues thermodynamic modeling [28], and how the nite thermal/
mass transfers within droplets was modeled [25,911]. The Discrete Multi-Component (DMC) approach has high computational
overhead because additional transport equations are to be solved
for each species in order to track the fuel composition and the
vaporization behavior. On the other hand, the Continuous Multicomponent Model (CMC) represents the fuel composition as a continuous distribution function of molecular weight or other appropriate parameters; however, modeling the consumption of each
species is complicated, when using this model in combustion simulation [3].
Rapid Mixing Model (RMM), Thin Skin Model (TSM) and Diffusion Limit Model (DLM) are different approaches for heat/mass rate
description within fuel droplet [1]. The heat/mass diffusion resistance within the droplet is zero for the RMM approach. This model
has reasonable results for slow evaporation processes, when droplet internal heat conduction and diffusion do not have major effect
on the internal temperature and concentration proles [12]. In the
TSM approach, only a thin layer on the droplet surface is heated
and evaporated. Hence the transient heat transport within the
droplet is completely neglected. It is assumed that the droplet

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O. Samimi Abianeh, C. P. Chen / International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer 55 (2012) 68976907

Nomenclature
a
A
ca
cD
cp
D
h
J
k
Kc
Ke
L
Lin
Lt
Lw
_
m
M
Nu
P
Pr
Q
r
rp
rt
rw
R
Re
Sc
s
Sh
t
T
v

radius of blob or parent drop

droplet surface area
constant (=0.0163)
discharge coefcient of injection nozzle
specic heat at constant pressure
binary diffusion coefcient
heat transfer coefcient
mass transfer coefcient
thermal conductivity
loss coefcient due to nozzle inlet geometry
turbulence model constant (=0.27)
latent heat of evaporation
length of injection nozzle
characteristic length scale associated with turbulence
characteristic length scale associated with surface wave
motion
mass transfer rate
molecular weight
Nusselt number
pressure
Prandtl number
heat transfer rate
instantaneous drop radius
radius of parent drop used in the secondary break up
formulation
radial length scale associated with surface wave motion
instantaneous drop radius
universal gas constant
Reynolds number
Schmidt number
nozzle contraction area ratio
Sherwood number
time
temperature
velocity

surface adapts instantaneously to the changes of ambient conditions [13]. The validity of the model is limited to cases in which
the droplet reaches its boiling temperature immediately after the
start of the evaporation process [12].
Using DLM approach, the temperature and concentrations vary
temporally as well as spatially within the liquid droplet. The temperature and concentration distributions inside the droplet can be
determined either by theoretical/modeling approaches or using a
numerical discretization scheme [14] to solve the equations of heat
conduction and mass diffusion. The major disadvantage of discretized DLM model is the enormous computational effort involved
[11,14].
In this study, a new nite thermal-conductivity/mass-diffusivity
model for heat and mass transfer within a multicomponent liquid
fuel droplet was developed. The nite heat and mass effects are
phenomenologically modeled through a thermal boundary layer
and mass diffusion boundary layer within the droplet. The current
model was based on the hybrid primary/secondary atomization
model, the T-blob/T-TAB model, of [15,20]. In this model, the liquid
droplets were assumed to carry turbulence from issuing liquid
injector ow eld. The importance of liquid turbulence within
atomizing droplets was described in [16,17]. This liquid turbulence
was used to model a thermal resistance layer for single component
fuel as described in [5]. In [5], both one-way and two-way coupled
single component evaporating spray studies were carried out to
validate the two-layer lm theory model. The current study extents
this two-temperature model for multicomponent fuels.

We
x
y

Weber number
mole fraction
mass fraction

Greek letters
density
surface tension
turbulence kinetic energy in je model
e
dissipation rate of kinetic energy in je model
s
time associated with surface wave motion
sw
characteristic time scale associated with surface wave
motion
st
caracteristic time scale associated with liquid turbulence
d
thermal layer or mass transfer layer thickness
l
viscosity

q
r
j

Superscripts
g
gas phase
l
liquid phase
o
initial condition
p
at the constant pressure
s
at the droplet surface
t
parameter associated with turbulence
1
free stream condition
Subscripts
b
associated with boiling condition
c
associated with critical condition
d
associated with droplet
E
associated with properties of ethanol
G
associated with properties of gasoline
i
the ith species
m
associated with mixture

rst derivative with respect to time

The inherent turbulence in the injected fuel spray affects the

heat and mass transfer rates of the vaporization process. The effects
of these changes in the rates have to be accounted for in the numerical models for spray evaporation. Detailed model description and
validations can be found in [5,15,18,20], and it is sufce to state
that within each numerical droplet, turbulence characteristics such
as uctuating velocity level, length and time scales are supplied by
the model. Effective mass and thermal liquid diffusivities are
implemented in this model to account for internal circulation within the liquid caused by relative motion between the liquid and the
gas and also inherent turbulence in the injected fuel drop. Contrary
to [11], detailed temperature and concentration proles (described
by partial differential equations) within the droplet are not solved;
thus the current modeling approach is much more efcient. The
effective turbulent mass diffusion coefcient proposed in this
research encompasses the method of laminar binary diffusion coefcient of Sazhin et al. [19] for calculating mass transfer inside the
drop. The current model provides new contribution in modeling
nite-conductivity, nite-mass-transfer and liquid turbulence
simultaneously for multicomponent fuel evaporation. The model
development will be described in the following sections.

2. Theoretical formulations
For the multi-component fuel droplet, four regions as shown in
Fig. 1 are considered: droplet interior region (or droplet core),

O. Samimi Abianeh, C. P. Chen / International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer 55 (2012) 68976907

"

Fig. 1. Schematic of the modeled four regions of an evaporating droplet: droplet

interior region, droplet-side interface, gas-side interface, and surrounding gas.

U
1
 K c  1  s2 ;
8L=Dnozzle C 2D

"
#
U3 1
2
Ke
 K c  1  s :
2Linj C 2D

6899

U is the liquid velocity at the injection nozzle, which has length Linj,
and diameter Dnozzle. The discharge coefcient, the loss coefcient
due to the nozzle entrance sharpness and the down stream-to-upstream contraction area ratio of the injection nozzle are presented
by CD, Kc, and s, respectively. After the rst blob is issued at the
injector exit, the ke model was used to predict turbulence level
within each droplet. This was achieved by calculating the k and e
within the droplet in Lagrangian tracking method. These k and e values supply the required turbulent characteristic length and time
scales within the droplet. The mean droplet size after the rst primary breakup is [20]:

liquid-side interface of the droplet, gas-side interface, and the surrounding gas phase (innity). An approximate solution to the quasi-steady energy equation was used to derive an explicit
expression for the heat ux from the surrounding gas to the dropletgas interface, with inter-diffusion of fuel vapor and the surrounding gas taken into account. Normal evaporation is
considered in this study. In the normal evaporation regime, the toP
tal mass fraction of fuel vapor at the surface ( Y g;s
i ) is less than
unity and the Spaldings mass transfer number is used [1]. In this
study, the fuel droplets were assumed to have originated from an
atomization/process. A short overview of the specic atomization
model will be provided here both for convenience and to highlight
the different treatment of the equations.

rw, associated with the wave motion generated droplet radius, can
be determined from the Reitz model [21]. The value of rt is estimated from turbulence related breakup droplet radius [20]. ct is a
weighting coefcient and is determined by the kinetic energy ratio
of the turbulent motion and wave perturbation. The detailed T-blob
breakup model can be found in Trinh and Chen [20]. Eq. (3) is used
for predicting the initial droplet radius at the beginning of the evaporation calculation or after the breakup.

2.1. Turbulent model within droplet

2.2. Heat transfer formulation

The atomization model used in this study is the T-blob/T-TAB

model [20] that extended two widely used models, the Kelvin
Helmholtz (KH) instability of Reitz (the blob model) [21] and
the Taylor-Analogy Breakup (TAB) secondary droplet breakup of
ORourke and Amsden [22] to include liquid turbulence effects.
Fig. 2 schematically depicts the droplet breakup process. Based
on integral analysis of a straight injector, initial liquid turbulent kinetic energy and its dissipation rate at the injector nozzle exit are
[18,20]:

A spherical liquid droplet with multi-component vaporizing

without chemical reaction in a gaseous environment is considered.
Conservation of energy at the droplet surface requires:

rd

rw rt
;
1  ct r t ct rw

_
Q g Q r  Q l mL;
g

where Q is the heat transfer rate from the external gas to the droplet, Ql is the rate of heat transfer within the liquid droplet. The radiative heat transfer Qr may be obtained from a relevant radiation
model for a given combustor. In the following analysis, its assumed

Fig. 2. Schematic of injection, breakup and evaporation modeling of the fuel droplet.

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O. Samimi Abianeh, C. P. Chen / International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer 55 (2012) 68976907

to be negligible. The heat transfer to the droplet is expressed in

terms of heat transfer coefcient, as follows:
g

Q g h AT 1  T s Nug k AT 1  T s =2r d :

Different correlations have been proposed for estimation of gas

side Nusselt number [1,11,2325]. In this study, two different correlations (model I and II) were used. The more recent Nusselt number correlation that is widely used (e.g. [1]) for spray calculation is:
0:33
Nug 2 0:454Re0:5
ln1 BH =BH :
d Pr

The second correlation (model II) is taken from Haywood et al.

[27] as given below:
0:33
Nug 2 0:57Re0:5
 1 BH 0:7 ;
d Pr
! 

l
p;g
Q
C T 1  T s
:
BH 1  g 
L
Q

2.3. Mass transfer formulation

For multi-component droplets, vaporization is governed not
only by the volatility of each component but also by the rate of species diffusion, droplet surface regression, and the nature of the
uid motion within the droplet. The general continuity equation
for species i with Fickian diffusion is written in the form:



@Y i
v  rY i r  qDi rY i si ;
@t

where v is convective reference velocity. si is a source term or rate of

production or rate of dissipation of mass of i per unit volume. For a
control volume centered around the interface of the droplet with no
species accumulation (si = 0):

ZZZ
7

14

@Y i
dV d 0:
@t

15

By integrating the equation of continuity over the control volume:

The second model (Eq. (7)) was mainly used in this study for
comparison with the detailed numerical method of [28].
The mixture latent heat of evaporation is:

Lmixture

yl;s
i Li :

Latent heat of evaporation, as a function of temperature, for

each component (Li) was employed and was updated in each time
step.
Heating of the liquid droplet is treated by considering effective
convection effect inside the droplet [5]:
l

keff

Q h AT  T

dthermal

AT  T :

The averaged temperature of the interior region of the droplet is

determined from the conservation of energy applied to the droplet,
which is:

dT
Q l:
dt

10

The thermal boundary layer thickness is calculated based on the

effective thermal diffusivity (see [5]):

dthermal

v is velocity. Because of the no accumulation condition:

_ ql v l;s  r_ qg v g;s  r_ ;
m

17

and for spherical symmetric droplet [29]:

g;s
g;1
g;1
g g
qg Dgi rY g;s
 Y g;s
 Y g;s
i J i Y i
i Shi q Di Y i
i =2r d :

18

The species mass transfer within the liquid droplet, by analogy, is:
l;s
l
l;s
ql Dli rY l;s
i J i Y i  Y i :

19

Mass transfer rate between the surface and inside of the droplet is
modeled following the analogous heat transfer rate formulation [5]:
l
J l;s
i q

Deff
:
ddiffusion

20

11

This is a resistance layer characterization for accounting the nite conductivity effect [5]. Internal recirculation effect was not
considered in the present model, but can be added as additional
resistance. In the current model, both turbulent and molecular
thermal diffusivity are taken into account for evaluating the effective thermal diffusivity:
l

ql C

Deff Dl Dt ;

21

in which, D is the molecular diffusivity coefcient [30]; and the turbulent diffusivity is modeled by:
2

paeff st :

aeff al at

where

16

The effective mass transfer coefcient is calculated as:

mC p;l

g;s
l;s
l l
g
g;s
g g
ql v l;s  r_ Y l;s
 r_ Y g;s
i  q Di rY i q v
i  q Di rY i ;

p;l

Cl

k2
;
ePrt

12

Dt C l

k
;
eSct

22

here Sct is the turbulent Schmidt number. It should be noted the

second term on the right hand side of Eq. (21) would vanish when
the turbulence is low at the end of the droplet lifetime. The effective
diffusivity gradually transitions to laminar diffusivity at the end of
the droplet lifetime. The individual species mass transfer rate thus
becomes (see also [11,29]):
g;s
g;s
l;s
l
l;s
1
_ l;s
_ g;s
_ i mY
m
i J i Y i  Y i mY i J i Y i  Y i :

23

Due to the high turbulent diffusivity with respect to the laminar diffusivity, the mass transfer coefcient can be estimated by simplifying Eq. (20):

where Cl = 0.09. Prt is the turbulent Prandtl number and is set to be

0.9 according to a previous study [5]. It should be noted that the
second term on the right hand side equation (12) would vanish
when the turbulence is low at the end of the droplet lifetime. The
effective diffusivity gradually transition to molecular (laminar) diffusivity at the end of the droplet lifetime. The effective thermal conductivity is calculated by the effective thermal diffusivity:

Following the lm resistance approach as described in [5], the mass

transfer boundary layer thickness is calculated by:

keff aeff ql C p;l :

ddiffusion

13

The liquid droplet turbulence quantities k and e are obtained from

the T-blob/T-TAB atomization spray model of Ref. [20] as discussed
in Section 2.1.

l
Deff  Dt ! J l;s
i q

q
pDeff st :

Dt
ddiffusion

ql C l

k
:
eSc ddiffusion
t

24

25

st in Eqs. (11) and (25) is the turbulence characteristic time scale

and can be estimated based on the analytical transient solution of
the ke turbulence model [20]. It should be noted that both k and

O. Samimi Abianeh, C. P. Chen / International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer 55 (2012) 68976907

e are time dependent, thus the mass transfer boundary layer thickness is also time dependent.
Assuming air is insoluble in the liquid phase and summing Eq.
(23) over all fuel species results in:

PN

g;s
g;s
g;1

i1 J i Y i  Y i
:
PN g;s
1  i1 Y i

_
m

26

The instantaneous droplet radius during the evaporation process is

calculated from:

r2


1=3 
1=3
_
m2 ql1
m1  mdt
ql
 l

 1l
r1 ;
m1
m1 q2
q2

27

where the subscripts 1 and 2 denote the beginning and ending

states of the droplet, respectively. The average species mass fraction
in the interior region of the droplet is calculated from:

Y li;2

_ i dt
mi;2 mi;1  m

:
_
m1  mdt
m2

28

Mass transfer from the droplet surface into the gas environment occurs by the bulk motion and diffusion, and is modeled by:
g

g;s g
J g;s
i Shi q Di =2r d ;

29

For model I, Sherwood number is taken from [26]:

g

0:33
Shi 2 0:39Re0:5
ln1 Bm =Bm ;
d Sc i

30

where

l1
Sci 1 g :
q Di

31

Again, for model II, Sherwood number is taken from Haywood et al.
[27]:
g

0:33
Shi 2 0:87Re0:5
 1 Bm 0:7 :
d Sc i

32

Drag coefcient is also taken from Haywood et al. [27]:


Cd


24
1 0:63
 1 BH 0:2 :
1 1 0:2Red
Red

33

To characterize turbulence within the droplets, the T-blob/TTAB atomization model as described in [20] will be used in this
study. The liquid turbulent kinetic energy and its dissipation rate
at the injector nozzle exit were specied as the initial conditions
for Lagrangian tracking of the droplet. A set of ODEs were derived
to track the evaluation of k and e within the droplet according to
the T-blob/T-TAB model. The values obtained from the evolution
of k and e are used in the estimate of thermal and mass boundary
layer thickness to facilitate ne-rate heat and mass transfer within
the liquid droplet for calculating the droplet evaporation. In this
study, one-way coupled methodology was used for spray calculation with a prescribed gas environment.

6901

formulations can be found in [36,37]. For a multicomponent mixture, the latent heat of vaporization of each species is dened as
the difference between the partial molar enthalpy of that species
in the vapor and liquid phases. The following thermodynamic relation then gives the partial molar enthalpy of i species [31]:
0

hi  hi RT 2

@
ln /i ;
@T

35

where the superscript 0 denotes the quantity in an ideal state. The

fugacity concept will be used for the binary component mixture of
the decane and hexadecane at high pressure in this study (Section
3.1).
If the vapor phase is assumed to be an ideal gas mixture, the gas
side surface mole fraction of the fuel vapor can be determined
using the modied Raoults law [31]:
v ap
ci X l;s
X g;s
i Pi
i P system ;

36

where ci is the activity coefcient. The modied Raoults law is valid

for low to moderate pressure [31].
For a given set of free stream conditions, the global conservation
equations can be solved for mass transfer and heat transfer. However, all these equations are nonlinear and strongly coupled. It is
therefore necessary to adopt an iterative procedure at each time
step to nd the desired solution. The solution algorithm used in
this study is given below:
1. Calculate the droplet diameter after the break up at time
step from Eq. (3).
2. Calculate the thermal and mass transfer boundary layer
thickness from Eqs. (11) and (25).
3. Guess surface temperature Ts.
4. Guess surface mass fraction Y l;s
i :
5. Evaluate fuel vapor mole fraction at gas-side interface X g;s
i
from Eqs. (34) or (36) and convert it to the mass basis Y g;s
i .
_ from Eq. (26).
6. Evaluate the total mass transfer m
_ i from right
7. Evaluate mass transfer for each component m
hand side of Eq. (23).
8. Solve left hand side of Eq. (23) to nd new Y l;s
i :
9. If change of Y l;s
relative
to
the
previous
iteration
is within
i
specied tolerance proceed to the step 10. Otherwise, return
to the step 4.
10. Evaluate the droplet radius from Eq. (27).
11. Evaluate droplet mass fraction at interior region Y li from Eq.
(28).
12. Evaluate Qg from Eq. (5).
13. Evaluate Ql from Eq. (4).
14. Evaluate Ts from Eq. (9).
15. Calculate Td from Eq. (10). Proceed to next time step.
16. If changes of Ts and Td relative to the previous iteration
are within specied tolerance proceed to the next time step.
Otherwise, return to the step 3.

2.4. Models at the dropletgas interface

At the liquid droplet/vapor interface, multi-component phase
equilibrium is established to account for the jump conditions [1].
The chemical potential of the liquid phase and the vapor phase
at the interface of the droplet are equal for each species at the equilibrium condition, and can be written as [31]:

X gi /gi X Li /Li ;

34

where /i represents fugacity coefcients. For a high-pressure environment, the thermodynamics model needs to consider real gas and
liquid behaviors, and the effect of pressure on thermo-transport
properties. The real gas and liquid behavior is determined by the
PengRobinson equation of state [31] in this study. Further detailed

Drag coefcient and thermal properties are updated in each

time step.
3. Results and discussion
3.1. Model validation
The present phenomenological model introduces a model coefcient, turbulent Schmidt number Sct, which requires tuning. Due
to the lack of detailed benchmark experimental data, the multidimensional direct numerical simulation results of [28] were used
for determining Sct and for model validation. In their work [28],
multi-dimensional transport equations for temperature and con-

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O. Samimi Abianeh, C. P. Chen / International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer 55 (2012) 68976907

centrations in gas-phase and within the liquid droplet were discretized and numerically solved. A bi-component decane/hexadecane fuel with homogeneous species concentration of 50% decane
and 50% hexadecane by mass was used. The ambient air temperature and pressure are specied to be 1000 K and 10 bar. The initial
droplet radius and temperature are 31.8 lm, and 300 K. To be consistent, the same heat and mass transfer coefcient correlations as
used in [28,29] (the model II described in Sections 2.2 and 2.3)
were used for the gas-side heat and mass convective transport in
the validation study. All the thermal properties at the gas side were
evaluated based on the free stream ambient temperature and pressure. Within the liquid side, all of the properties are updated at the
start of each time step using the database from [30]. Latent heat of
evaporation and fuel vapor pressure were calculated based on the
droplet surface temperature and the other droplet properties such
as thermal conductivity and density were calculated based on
droplet interior temperature. Eq. (34) and the PengRobinson
equation of state were used to account for high pressure (10 bar)
effects. Initially the liquid droplet is at 300 K and the initial Reynolds number, based on the free stream condition, droplet diameter and initial relative velocity between droplet and surrounding
gas, is 100. The nal turbulent Schmidt number for present model
is tuned to 0.1, which produced the most favorable comparisons. It
should be noted that in the simulation of [28] the Reynolds number range may not coincide with fully turbulent regimes. For the
purpose of tuning, the current turbulent Schmidt number may
not be optimal. In general, increasing turbulent Schmidt number
would decrease the rate of mass transfer between surface and interior region of the droplet due to reduction of the mass transfer
coefcient (Eq. (22)). Further effects of different turbulent Schmidt
numbers on droplet mass transfer rates can be found in [36]. The
turbulent Prandtl number was set at 0.9 as previously determined
[5]. For this bi-component fuel, the volatilities of both decane and
hexadecane are low; the evaporation rate at the beginning of the
evaporation is low. Thus, more energy is transferred into the droplet interior to heat up the droplet, which leads to a decrease in the
fuel droplet density, resulting in noticeable swelling of the droplet.
This is seen from the prole of the normalized droplet radius that
exceeds one as shown in Fig. 3. Also shown is the comparison of
the present model predictions with the detailed multi-dimensional
numerical results of [28]. Droplet size varies in the manner of the
well-known d2-law after the initial swelling period. The averaged
evaporation constant for this case is 0.0375117 mm2/s. Maximum
differences between the present model and the benchmark numerical results in determining the droplet radius and remaining mass

Fig. 3. Droplet radius and remaining mass history for a decanehexadecane

bi-component droplet; ambient temperature 1000 K and pressure 10 bar.

Fig. 4. Temporal history of the Reynolds number; ambient temperature 1000 K and
pressure 10 bar.

are within 2.5% and 4% respectively. The discrepancy is attributed

to the difference used in evaluating thermo-physical properties.
The temporal history of Reynolds number, which is a combined effect of droplet acceleration and shrinking, is shown in Fig. 4. The
predicted results shown in Figs. 3 and 4 are in close agreement
with detailed numerical data.

3.2. Multi-component fuel evaporating spray

Next we apply the current multi-component model within
evaporating spray. The ethanolgasoline blend evaporating spray
within a quiescent nitrogen environment at temperature of 600 K
and pressure of 1 bar was considered. Development of the alternative energy resources to replace fossil fuels has great importance at
present. A possible alternate fuel is ethanol since it can be made
from biomass. In the past few decades, 10% ethanol by volume
has been added to automotive gasoline due to its ability to boost
the fuels octane rating. However, with the increased focus on
reducing dependence on fossil fuels, auto manufacturers have been
manufacturing cars that are capable of running on gasoline containing 85% ethanol; this fuel known as E85. In this study, different
gasolineethanol blended fuels, E5 (95% gasoline and 5% of ethanol
by volume), E15, E40, E60, and E85, were considered. Typical commercial gasoline composed of hundreds of hydrocarbon species. To
be practical in numerical modeling, surrogate fuels with evaporation target is required to mimic real gasoline fuel. Surrogate mixtures are designed with the purpose of numerical simulation of
complex mixtures using a small number of components. In this
study, surrogate mixtures are chosen to reproduce distillation
curves of the gasoline. Here we used the seven-component surrogate proposed by Ra and Reitz [3]. Other choices involving less
component number are possible (see [41]). The averaged molecular weight of this gasoline surrogate fuel is 108.5 g/mol, and Ra
and Reitz [3] had veried that these seven components can predict
the distillation curve of gasoline fuel. Ethanol as a new component
is added to the gasoline surrogate. The mole fractions of E5, E15,
E40, E60, E85, and gasoline are plotted in Fig. 5. Although the components used in the model may not characterize all of the actual
chemical components found in practical pump gasolineethanol
blended fuels, the selected parafn fuels were considered adequate
to demonstrate the performance of the present multi-component
evaporation model.

O. Samimi Abianeh, C. P. Chen / International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer 55 (2012) 68976907

6903

Fig. 5. Composition of surrogate ethanolgasoline blend fuel.

Ethanol has a highly polar nature and when around 20% ethanol
is mixed with gasoline, it forms a positive azeotrope having a higher vapor pressure than either pure gasoline or ethanol [32]. To account for this behavior, the activity coefcients are calculated
using the Wilson equation formulation [30]:

lncE

 lnX l;s
E

l;s
EG X G

X l;s
G

!
Keg
Kge
 l;s
;
l;s
X l;s
X G KGE X l;s
E KEG X G
E
37

l;s
l;s
lncG  lnX l;s
G KGE X E  X E

!
KEG
KGE
:

l;s
l;s
X l;s
X l;s
E KEG X G
G KGE X E
38

The parameters KEG and KGE have values of 0.1665 and 0.3527
respectively for mixture of ethanol and gasoline [32,33]. The gasoline fuel was treated as a single pseudo-component with respect to
ethanol; therefore, the activity coefcients for individual components within gasoline group (seven components) are represented
by one. The activity coefcients in Eqs. (37) and (38) were used between the group of seven components in gasoline, or one pseudo
component, and ethanol. The modied Raoults law (Eq. (36))
was used for multicomponent mixture of ethanol and gasoline
due to the lower pressure environment.
During the course of the study, it was found that after secondary breakup regime, the droplet diameter is very small and it heats
up rapidly. Thus, the current model was only implemented within
the T-blob (i.e. the primary breakup) model. Initial droplet diameter is equal to the injector nozzle and after the rst break up the
radius is equal to 16.81 lm and the Reynolds number, based on
the free stream condition, droplet diameter and initial relative
velocity between droplet and surrounding gas, is 78. Latent heat
of evaporation and fuel vapor pressure were calculated based on
droplet surface temperature and the other droplet properties like
thermal conductivity and density were calculated based on droplet
interior region temperature. Initially droplet temperature is equal
to 300 K. Thermal and transport properties of the liquid phase
are calculated as described by Reid et al. [30] and updated at each
time step. Again, turbulent Schmidt number is set to 0.1 following
the validation study described in Section 3.1, and the turbulent
Prandtl number is set to 0.9 following [5].
Fig. 6 shows the behavior under normal evaporation conditions
of a multi-component gasolineethanol, 15% by volume of ethanol
or E15, droplet in terms of its variation of droplet mass and droplet
surface area. One of the important results of the atmospheric drop-

Fig. 6. Normalized droplet radius and remaining mass versus time; ambient
temperature 600 K and pressure 1 bar.

let evaporation theory is that K (derivative of droplet surface area

with respect to time) is constant and independent of droplet size,
being function mainly of the fuel properties [1,34]. This result is
based on the quasi-steady state theory yielding the well-known
d2 law; the droplet size varies in the manner of this law. The averaged evaporation constant for this case is 0.1191 mm2/s. The K value for a gasoline surrogate with seven components is 0.1315.
Therefore the evaporation rate of E15 ethanolgasoline blend decreases when compared with gasoline.
Due to the nite-conductivity of the droplet heating [3,5], the
temperature difference between the surface and interior region
of the droplet increases with time initially and nally start to decrease as seen in Fig. 7 for E15 fuel. For the single component fuel,
the temperature deference between the droplet surface and interior monotonously decreased after the initial periods. For multicomponent fuel, this temperature difference persists until 20% of
the mass remains (see Fig. 6). At this point, the mass transfer rate
_ and droplet side mass transfer coefcient (J l;s
(m),
i ) in Eq. (23) are
_ i mY
_ l;s
the same, and left hand side of this equation (m
i
l;s
l
l;s
J i Y i  Y i ) could not be solved for nding an implicit equation
for component mass fraction at droplet-side interface (Y l;s
i ). At this
time the droplet size and turbulence level inside of droplet is small
l
and can be considered as perfectly mixed (Y l;s
i Y i ). The innite
conductivity/diffusivity model [1] can be utilized, or the secondary
break up could happen at this time based on the modeling methodologies of [20,21]. In these models, some smaller droplets will be
generated and innite conductivity/diffusivity model could be uti-

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O. Samimi Abianeh, C. P. Chen / International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer 55 (2012) 68976907

transfer causes the droplet to evaporate lighter components instead of heating up. The droplet interior may have the same temperature as the surface temperature depending on the rate of the
heat transfer, evaporated mass and diameter of the droplet. For
the present case, the surface and interior temperature are the same
and droplet encounters mostly evaporation during the initial time
period because the boiling temperature of pentane is near the drop
initial temperature (time = 0 in Fig. 7). Following this time period,
part of the heat transfer causes evaporation of more components
on the surface of the droplet, and part of it causes heating up of
the droplet interior as shown in Fig. 7. With passing time, the density and specic heat of droplet will increase due to the decrease in
more volatile components within the droplet. The temperature difference between droplet bulk and the surface would increase as a
result. After 0.5 ms, most ethanol evaporates from surface of the

Fig. 7. History of mixture boiling temperature, temperature of surface and interior

region of the droplet, and temperature difference between droplet surface and
interior region; ambient temperature 600 K and pressure 1 bar.

lized as a result of very small droplets size and consequently very

quick droplet evaporation. As shown in Figs. 9 and 10, the mass
fraction at the droplet-side interface and droplet interior region
are not the same at this point (20% remaining mass) for some components (e.g. C9H20 and C10H22). Therefore considering droplet
breakup after this point (20% remaining mass) and utilizing the
innite conductivity/diffusivity model for these smaller droplets
would be acceptable in this case.
Typical droplet thermal dynamics encounters both heat up and
evaporation process. During the rst phase of the droplet life time,
the droplet may encounter heating up without signicant evaporation. It depends on the difference between boiling temperatures of
components and initial temperature of the droplet. At initial evaporation phase the more volatile components with boiling temperature near the droplet initial condition temperature (such as
pentane) evaporate faster than other components and the heat

 
 l
_
Fig. 8. Normalized Mass transfer rate mm
and relative heat transfer rate QQg vs.
_o
time; ambient temperature 600 K and pressure 1 bar.

Fig. 9. E15 fuel component mass fraction at droplet-side interface; ambient

temperature600 K and pressure 1 bar.

Fig. 10. E15 fuel component mass fraction at interior region of the droplet; ambient
temperature 600 K and pressure 1 bar.

O. Samimi Abianeh, C. P. Chen / International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer 55 (2012) 68976907

6905

presence of ethanol at the surface of the droplet. As shown in

Fig. 9, the mass fraction of ethanol at the surface of the droplet is
almost zero at about 0.50 ms. Therefore, less energy is needed for
evaporation and more energy will be transferred to the droplet
 l
interior after 0.50 ms. As a result, the rate of heat transfer QQg in-

Fig. 11. E15 fuel vapor mass fraction at gas-side interface; ambient temperature
600 K and pressure 1 bar.

droplet (see Fig. 9, this point will be explained later). Therefore,

after this time, the temperature of the droplet (surface and interior
region of the droplet) and mixture boiling temperature increase
with higher rate as shown in Fig. 7. This phenomenon was also observed experimentally and numerically by Hallett and BeauchampKiss [40]. The surface temperature of the droplet is always less
than the boiling temperature of the mixture during droplet life
time. Therefore, the droplet never experienced
boiling condition.
 
_
The normalized mass transfer rate mm
and comparative heat
_o
 l
transfer rate QQg are shown in Fig. 8. The ratio of heat transfer
 l
Q
increases until 0.1 ms. In this period, most of the energy is
Qg
transferred to the surface for heating up the droplet. The ratio of
 l
heat transfer QQg decreases between 0.1 and 0.5 ms due to the

creases at this time as shown in Fig. 8. Mass transfer rate also increases after evaporation of ethanol from the surface of the
droplet as shown in Fig. 8. This increase of evaporation rate is
due to the strong effects of droplet density variation. Droplet density is a function of temperature and composition and those two
factors have opposite effects as time goes under the conditions
considered (see Figs. 68). Preferential evaporation of lighter component tends to increase the droplet density while droplet heat up
tends to decrease the liquid density. The overall droplet evaporation rate increase with time, as seen in Fig. 8, indicates the droplet
density increases much rapidly than the decreasing rate of drop
size, since the K (derivative of droplet surface area with respect
to time) value is almost constant (from Fig. 6). This phenomenon
is in contrast to single-component (no composition change) evaporation [5], in which the droplet density decreases with time, and
thus evaporation rate is likely to decrease with time.
As shown in Figs. 9 and 10, due to the preferential vaporization
of the more volatile components, the composition of the droplet
changes continuously, thus E15 gasoline droplets do not reach an
equilibrium state. Surface and interior mass fractions of the more
volatile components are high at the early period of the droplet lifetime and are much lower near the end of the droplet lifetime as expected. The resulting trends compared favorably with existing
models in the literature (see, e.g. [38]). The total mass fraction of
the vapor fuel components at the gas-side interface is less than
unity during the droplet lifetime as shown in Fig. 11, which validates that vaporization occurs in the normal evaporation regime.
At specic temperature and pressure, fuel vapor pressure of each
component in the mixture is a strong function of component latent
heat of evaporation and also activity coefcient of the component
with respect to the other components. Ethanol in discrete mixture
of gasolineethanol blend has higher latent heat of evaporation
(energy/mol) than the rst four more volatile components:
iC5H12, iC6H14, iC7H16, and iC8H18. However, ethanol life time in

Fig. 12. Droplet radius squared, r 2d , history for different fuels; ambient temperature 600 K and pressure 1 bar.

6906

O. Samimi Abianeh, C. P. Chen / International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer 55 (2012) 68976907

Fig. 13. Total fuel vapor mass fraction at gas-side interface for different blended fuels; ambient temperature 600 K and pressure 1 bar.

Fig. 14. Evaporation of ethanol for different fuels at droplet-side interface; ambient temperature 600 K and pressure 1 bar.

the mixture is shorter than iC7H16 and iC8H18 as shown in Figs. 9

and 10. This is due to the non-ideal thermodynamic behavior of
the mixture and the individual component does not evaporate just
based on the volatility. This phenomenon is modeled by using the
activity coefcient (see Eqs. (37), (38), and (36)). Due to this nonideality correction, ethanol has higher vapor mass fraction at the
gas-side interface and reaches its peak of vapor pressure faster
than iC7H16, and iC8H18 as shown in Fig. 11. Surface mass fraction
of the light component (iC5H12) is high during the early period of
the evaporation and then it rapidly decreases as the vaporization
continues. In the later stage of evaporation mostly the heavy-end
component (dodecane, C12H26) remains in the droplet, as shown
in Fig. 11. Time history change of droplet radius squared (r2d ) for
different blends are shown in Fig. 12. The rate of droplet radius
change for pure gasoline is larger than the other blends. Moreover,
by adding more ethanol to the mixture this rate decreases further.
This phenomenon is in agreement with experimental observation
of Saha [35] and Basu et al. [39].
Total fuel vapor mass fractions at gas-side interface for different
blended fuels are shown in Fig. 13. As can be seen in this gure,
increasing the amount of ethanol in blended fuel from 5% to 85%
by volume reduces total fuel vapor mass fraction at gas-side interface. Fig. 14 shows the evaporation history of ethanol at the droplet-side interface for different blended fuels. Comparison between

Figs. 13 and 14 shows that adding more ethanol to the mixture is

the source of increasing the latent heat of evaporation and decreasing the total fuel vapor mass fraction at gas-side interface with respect to gasoline. From the transient droplet evaporation history, it
is also observed that after evaporation of ethanol from the surface
of the droplet (Fig. 13), the total fuel vapor mass fraction at gasside interface starts to increase as shown in Fig. 12. In gasoline
ethanol blends, pure gasoline is more volatile than pure ethanol
as shown in Figs. 11 and 12.

4. Conclusions
A new model for unsteady vaporization of multicomponent
sprays using the discrete multicomponent approach was
developed. Explicit equations for thermal lm thickness and
mass-transfer lm thickness within the droplet based on liquid
turbulence characteristics were derived in this paper. The model
was validated against direct numerical simulation results of a
decane/hexadecane fuel within high pressure environment with
very good comparisons. The only tunable model coefcient, the
turbulent Schmidt number liquid phase species, was also determined based on the validation study. Due to the low volatilities
of the bi-component decane/hexadecane fuel, noticeable swelling

O. Samimi Abianeh, C. P. Chen / International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer 55 (2012) 68976907

of the droplet during the initial stage of droplet heat-up was

correctly predicted.
For application, this model was applied to simulate the evaporation process of complex multi-component blended fuels at atmospheric pressure. Four different ethanol/gasoline blended fuels (E5,
E15, E40, E60, and E85) were modeled and their evaporation characteristics were compared with gasoline fuel. Pure gasoline is more
volatile than gasoline ethanol blend fuel. In this study, the transient behaviors are present during the entire droplet lifetime of
multicomponent fuels. Liquid and gas-phase properties change
considerably during the droplet lifetime. Consequently, an accurate calculation of the thermo-transport properties should be an
essential part of spray computations. The present model is shown
to be capable of taking into account many important physical effects including variable thermophysical properties, turbulence
and transient heat and mass transfer inside the droplet.
Compared to the discretization method [11] used within droplet to account for nite heat/mass transfer effects, only a small
fraction (about 10%) of CPU time was required for the present modeling approach. Hence, this model is suitable for two-way coupled
spray codes in which a large amount of droplets with changing
ambient conditions need to be tracked trough the spray eld.
Acknowledgements
The nancial support of the BP is gratefully acknowledged. This
research was partially funded by Grant DISL T2-008-UAH from BP/
Gulf of Mexico Initiative.
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