Evaporation and wetting of droplets are a phenomena present in everyday life and in many industrial, biological or medical applications; thus controlling and understanding the underlying mechanisms governing this phenomena becomes of paramount importance. More recently, breakthroughs in the fabrication of new materials and nanomaterials have led to the synthesis of novel nanoscale particulates that dispersed into a base fluid modify the properties of this latter. Enhancement in heat transfer or the self-assembly of the particles in suspension during evaporation, are some of the areas in which nanofluids excel. Since it is a relatively new area of study, the interplay particle-particle, particle-fluid or particle-substrate at the macro-, micro-, and nanoscale is yet poorly understood. This work is an essay to elucidate the fundamental physics and mechanisms of these fluids during free evaporation, of great importance for the manipulation and precise control of the deposits. The evaporative behaviour of pure fluids on substrates varying in hydrophobicity has been studied and an unbalance Young’s force is proposed to explain the effect of substrate hydrophilicity on the pinning and the depinning forces involved during droplet evaporation. On other hand, the addition of nanoparticles to a base fluid modifies the evaporative behaviour of the latter and: a more marked “stick-slip” behaviour is observed when increasing concentration on hydrophobic substrates, besides the longer pinning of the contact line reported on hydrophilic ones when adding nanoparticles. A deposition theory to explain the final deposits observed, for the outermost ring, after the complete vanishing of a 0.1% TiO2-ethanol nanofluid droplet has also been developed. In addition, the evaporation of pinned nanofluid droplets on rough substrates at reduced pressures has been systematically studied. A revisited Young-Lippmann equation is proposed as one of the main findings to explain the enhancement on electrowetting performance of nanoparticle laden fluid droplets when compared to the pure fluid case. On the other hand, of relevant importance is the absence of “stick-slip” behaviour and the more homogeneous deposits found after the complete evaporation of a nanofluid droplet under an external electric field applied when compared to free evaporation of these fluids.

Evaporators separate liquids from solutions. For maximum efficiency, designers reduce the temperature difference between the heating and heated media using multiple-stage evaporators. This efficiency requires increased size and bulk. A vendor claimed its thermal compression evaporator achieved high efficiency with only two stages. It did not function as claimed. This project investigated the evaporator's design to identify its problems and propose an alternative design with a minimized footprint. The analysis showed theoretical flaws and design weaknesses in the evaporator, including violation of the first law of thermodynamics. An alternative thermal compressor design was created through computational fluid dynamics using spreadsheet methods developed in house, aided by the software product FLUENT. Detailed component sizing was done using the software product HYSYS. The proposed redesign achieved four to one efficiency with two stage thermal compression, using one half of the space of a traditional system of similar performance.

Les matériaux vitreux en couches minces sont des candidats prometteurs comme revêtements de protection pour des applications à haute température. Toutefois, en raison de sollicitations thermiques et/ou mécaniques dans les conditions d’utilisation, ces matériaux peuvent se fissurer. Des études antérieures ont montré que des verres auto-cicatrisants sous forme massive peuvent être élaborés par incorporation de particules actives. Celles-ci, lors de l’endommagement du matériau, s’oxydent à haute température pour former des oxydes fluides qui s’écoulent dans la fissure et forment un "nouveau" verre par réaction avec la matrice environnante. En nous appuyant sur ces résultats, nos travaux ont eu pour objectif de transposer ce concept vers des matériaux vitreux déposés en couches minces, et ainsi d’envisager des applications en tant que revêtement. Nous avons montré la faisabilité de mise en forme de ces revêtements innovants, par alternance de couches vitreuses et d’agent cicatrisant, aux moyens de l’ablation par laser pulsé et de l’évaporation par bombardement électronique. Une première étude a consisté en l’optimisation des paramètres de dépôt et leur influence sur l’homogénéité, l’épaisseur et la composition des films minces. L’efficacité du procédé d’auto-cicatrisation de ces matériaux a été mise en évidence in situ à 700°C par Microscopie Électronique à Balayage Environnementale à Haute Température (MEBE-HT).La tenue de ces revêtements lors de cycles thermiques ainsi que les modifications structurales engendrées par la cristallisation du verre sous forme de couche mince ont également été étudiées. / Glassy thin films are promising candidates as protective coating for high temperature applications. However, due to thermal and/or mechanical stresses under operating conditions, these materials may crack. Previous studies have shown that self-healing glasses in bulk form can be prepared by incorporating active particles. These latter, when damages occur in the material, oxidize at high temperature to form oxides that flow into the crack and form a “new” glass by reaction with surrounding matrix.Based on these results, our work aimed at transposing this concept to glass materials deposited as thin layers, and so to envisage coating applications. We have shown the feasibility of forming these innovative coatings composed of alternating vitreous and healing agent layers. They have been prepared by Pulsed Laser Deposition (PLD) and Electron Beam-Physical Vapor Deposition (EB-PVD). A first part of our work was devoted to the optimization of the deposition parameters and their influence on homogeneity, thickness and composition of thin films. The efficiency of the self-healing process of these composite materials was demonstrated in situ at 700°C by High Temperature Environmental Scanning Electronic Microscopy (HT-ESEM). Finally, we studied the behavior of these coatings when they were submitted to thermal cycles as well as the structural changes generated by their crystallization.

The increase in irrigated agriculture in Saudi Arabia is having a large impact on its limited groundwater resources. While large-scale water storage changes can be estimated using satellite data, monitoring groundwater abstraction rates is largely non-existent at either farm or regional level, so water management decisions remain ill-informed. Although determining water use from space at high spatiotemporal resolutions remains challenging, a number of approaches have shown promise, particularly in the retrieval of crop water use via evaporation. Apart from satellite-based estimates, land surface models offer a continuous spatial-temporal evolution of full land-atmosphere water and energy exchanges. In this study, we first examine recent trends in terrestrial water storage depletion within the Arabian Peninsula and explore its relation to increased agricultural activity in the region using satellite data. Next, we evaluate a number of large-scale remote sensing-based evaporation models, giving insight into the challenges of evaporation retrieval in arid environments. Finally, we present a novel method aimed to retrieve groundwater abstraction rates used in irrigated fields by constraining a land surface model with remote sensing-based evaporation observations. The approach is used to reproduce reported irrigation rates over 41 center-pivot irrigation fields presenting a range of crop dynamics over the course of one year. The results of this application are promising, with mean absolute errors below 3 mm:day-1, bias of -1.6 mm:day-1, and a first rough estimate of total annual abstractions of 65.8 Mm3 (close to the estimated value using reported farm data, 69.42 Mm3). However, further efforts to address the overestimation of bare soil evaporation in the model are required. The uneven coverage of satellite data within the study site allowed us to evaluate its impact on the optimization, with a better match between observed and obtained irrigation rates on fields with higher frequency of available data. The inclusion of novel remote sensing sources (e.g. CubeSats) that offer higher frequencies and higher resolution can also be explored to improve the methodology, although further validation of these systems is needed. The developed framework has the potential to be used as a water management tool to monitor groundwater losses over large remote regions.

Reliable evaporation data are an essential requirement in any water and/or energy budget studies. This includes operation and management of both urban and agricultural water resources. Evaporation from large, open water surfaces such as lakes and reservoirs may influence many agricultural and irrigation decisions. In this study evaporation from Bear Lake in the states of Idaho and Utah was measured using advanced research instruments (Bowen Ratio and Eddy Correlation). Actual over-lake evaporation and weather data measurements were used to understand the mechanism of evaporation in the lake, determine lake-related parameters (such as roughness lengths, heat storage, net radiation, etc.), and examine and evaluate existing lake evaporation methods. This enabled the development of a modified and flexible model incorporating the tested methods for hourly and daily best estimates of lake evaporation using nearby simple land-based weather data and, if available, remotely sensed data. Average evaporation from Bear Lake was about 2 mm/day during the summer season (March-October) of this two-year (1993-1994) study. This value reflects the large amount of energy consumed in heating the water body of the lake. Moreover, evaporation from the lake was not directly related to solar radiation. This observation was clear during nighttime when the evaporation continued with almost the same rate as daytime evaporation. This explains the vital role of heat storage in the lake as the main driving energy for evaporation during nighttime and daytime cloudy sky conditions. When comparing over-lake and nearby land-based weather parameters, land-based wind speed was the only weather parameter that had a significant difference of about 50% lower than over-lake measurements. other weather parameters were quite similar. The study showed that evaporation from the lake can be accurately estimated using Penman-type equations if related parameters such as net radiation, heat storage, and aerodynamic effect are evaluated properly to reflect conditions over the lake. Using other methods may lead to unacceptable errors.

The objective of this thesis is to develop a new experimental method to characterize the diffusion of water in polymer resins, based on the evolution in the volume of water droplets as a function of time. A finite element model is established to model the mass transport of water droplet through evaporation and diffusion processes. Diffusivity of water into polymer resins is then extracted by matching the volume variation of the simulated water droplet to the experimental results. Capability of this method is demonstrated by determining the diffusivity of water into void-free epoxy and epoxy samples with voids. Diffusion coefficient value obtained from this method agrees with data from conventional water immersion method. The significantly small scale of the water droplet (less than 10 microliter) allows rapid characterization of diffusivity in hours instead of months as typically required by the conventional immersion method. The method developed here provides a useful tool for rapid and effective characterization of diffusivity of water in polymer substrates and can be extended to other substances as well. / Includes bibliography. / Thesis (M.S.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2019. / FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection

A mathematical model is developed to describe the micro/nano-scale fluid flow and heat/mass transfer phenomena in an evaporating extended meniscus, focusing on the transition film region under nonisothermal interfacial conditions. The model incorporates thermocapillary stresses at the liquid-vapor interface, a slip boundary condition on the solid wall, polarity contributions to the working fluid field, and binary mixture evaporation. The analytical results show that the adsorbed film thickness and the thin film length decrease with increasing superheat by the thermocapillary stresses, which influences detrimentally the evaporation process by degrading the wettability of the evaporating liquid film. In contrast, the slip effect and the binary mixture enhance the stability of thin film evaporation. The slip effect at the wall makes the liquid in the transition region flow with smaller flow resistance and thus the length of the transition region increases. In addition, the total evaporative heat flow rate increases due to the slip boundary condition. The mixture of pentane and decane increases the length of the thin film by counteracting the thermocapillary stress, which enhances the stability of the thin film evaporation. The polarity effect of water significantly elongates the thin film length due to the strong adhesion force of intermolecular interaction. The strong interaction force restrains the liquid from evaporation for a polar liquid compared to a non-polar liquid. In the experimental part, laser induced fluorescence (LIF) thermometry has been used to measure the microscale temperature field of a heated capillary tube with a 1 mm by 1 mm square cross section. For the temperature measurement, the calibration curve between the temperature and the fluorescent intensity ratio of Rhodamine-B and Rhodamine-110 has been successfully obtained. The fluorescent intensity ratio provides microscale spatial resolution and good temperature dependency without any possible bias error caused by illuminating light and background noise usually encountered in conventional LIF techniques. For the validation of the calibration curve obtained, thermally stratified fields established inside a glass cuvette of 10 mm width were measured. The measurement result showed a good agreement with the linear prediction. The temperature measurement in a 1 mm capillary tube could provide the feasible method of temperature measurement for the thin film region in the future.

Colloidal suspensions of disk-like particles have been of interest in both colloidal and liquid crystal studies because they exhibit unique liquid crystalline phases different from those of rod-like molecules. Disk-like particles, such as asphaltenes in heavy oil industry, clay particles in agriculture, and red blood cells in biology, are of great interest in a variety of industries and scientific areas. However, to fabricate monodisperse microdisks, uniform in structure or composition with precise control of particle size and shape has not yet succeeded. In this thesis, we show an experimental strategy of using microfluidic technique to fabricate homogeneous α-eicosene microemulsions with chloroform in an aqueous solution of sodium dedecyl sulfate (SDS). The monodisperse chloroform emulsions, generated by the glass-based microfluidic devices, ensure the precise control on microdisk particle size and shape. A systematic investigation was performed to study the relation between the resulted microdisk size and the initial concentration of α-eicosene in chloroform before evaporation. The smectic liquid crystalline phase inside the wax particles controls the coin-like disk shape below the melting temperature of wax’s rotator phase. The kinetics of the disk formation is observed using a polarized light microscope. Dynamic light scattering is used to characterize the Brownian motion of the microdisks, and the rotational diffusion is estimated from the image sequences taken by the charge-coupled device (CCD) camera. Effort has been put into collecting a large quantity of microdisks to investigate the discotic liquid crystalline phases, which can be readily probed by light scattering and microscope. In comparison, X-ray and neutron have to be used for the atomic liquid crystalline phase investigation.

The growth of energy demand in the world requires addressing the increasing power requirements of industrial and residential consumers. Optimizing the design of new and existing large power producing systems can efficiently increase energy supply to meet the growing demand. Hydrogen as an energy carrier is a promising sustainable way to meet the growing energy demand, while protecting the environment. This thesis investigates the efficient production of hydrogen from the electrolysis of copper chloride, by predicting entropy production as a result of diffusive mass transfer. Also, this thesis investigates the possibility of producing electrical energy from waste heat produced by industrial or other sources. The thermocapillary motion of fluid droplet in a closed rectangular microchannel is used to generate electrical energy from waste heat in a piezoelectric membrane by inducing mechanical deformation as a result of the droplet motion. Modeling, fabrication, and experimental measurement of a micro heat engine (MHE) are investigated in this study. Analytical and experimental results are reported for both circular and rectangular microchannels. A novel fabrication technique using lead zirconate titanate (PZT) as substrate in microfluidic application is presented in this study. This thesis develops a predictive model of the entropy production due to thermal and fluid irreversibilities in the microchannel. Thermocapillary pressure and friction forces are modelled within the droplet, as well as surface tension hysteresis during start-up of the droplet motion. A new analytical model is presented to predict the effect of transient velocity on the voltage production in the MHE. In order to predict the effect of the applied stress on voltage, the different layers of deposition are considered for thin film laminates. The highest efficiency of the system from simulated taking into iv account the electromechanical coupling factor is about 1.6% with a maximum voltage of 1.25mV for the range of displacement considered in this study. In addition, new experimental and analytical results are presented for evaporation and de-pinning of deionised water and toluene droplets in rectangular microchannels fabricated from Su-8 2025 and 2075. / UOIT

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