The purpose of this work was to investigate the evaporation rates of various brines and to compare them to the evaporation rates of pure water under the same environmental conditions in the laboratory. NaCl, MgCl 2 and KCl were the salts used in the experiments, at three densities. Mixtures of the salts were also used. One set of experiments was conducted under free convection while the other was conducted under forced convection, both over pans. Temperature was relatively constant for the experiments but relative humidity was not controlled. Wind profiles were measured during the forced convection experiments and an aerodynamic equation used to calculate evaporation for comparison with the observed evaporation rates. Surface temperatures were also measured. Water activities of all the brine and brine mixtures were also measured and compared to predictions by Raoult's law. In general, it was found the evaporation rate of brines was lower than that of pure water and that the water activities and evaporation rates were density-dependent to a certain extent. More precisely, they were dependent on the actual constituents in the brine due to the different molecular weights, and the number of ions dissolving from a given weight of salt or salt mixture. Evaporation rates can better be estimated on this basis than on the basis of density alone, as one would expect from Raoult's Law.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:QMM.21600 |
| Date | January 1999 |
| Creators | Mao, Yasin Sufi, 1963- |
| Contributors | Bonnell, Robert (advisor) |
| Publisher | McGill University |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Coverage | Master of Science (Department of Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering.) |
| Rights | All items in eScholarship@McGill are protected by copyright with all rights reserved unless otherwise indicated. |
| Relation | alephsysno: 001657812, proquestno: MQ50827, Theses scanned by UMI/ProQuest. |
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