Modeling Study on Heat Transfer in Marangoni Dropwise Condensation for Ethanol-Water Mixture Vapors

In this paper, a model was developed to predict the heat transfer characteristics of Marangoni dropwise condensation. In accordance with the feature of Marangoni condensation, condensation was treated as dropwise condensation of mixture vapors. The condensation space was divided into two parts: the vapor diffusion layer and the condensate layer. For the condensate layer, the classical heat transfer calculation method of dropwise condensation was imitated to obtain the heat transfer characteristics. For the vapor diffusion layer, the heat transfer characteristics were achieved by solving the conservation equations. These heat transfer characteristics were coupled through the conjunct boundary, which was the vapor-liquid interface. The model was applied to the condensation of water-ethanol mixture vapors. A comparison with the existing experimental data showed that the developed model could basically reflect the influences of vapor-to-surface temperature difference, vapor concentration, vapor pressure, and vapor velocity on heat transfer characteristic of Marangoni condensation. Results showed that some differences existed between the calculation results and experimental results, but the prediction deviation of the model could be acceptable in the range of vapor-to-surface temperature difference where the condensation heat transfer coefficients reached peak values.