The effect of interfacial evaporation on heat and mass transfer of falling liquid film

Analysis of experimental data and estimation of the order of magnitude for interfacial mass diffusion have demonstrated that considerable excess evaporation exists on the free interface of falling liquid film, and that the capillary pressure caused by surface tension is the driving force of this excess interfacial evaporation, which we called the "capillarity-induced interfacial evaporation". By correlating the experimental data, an empirical expression of the effective capillary radius, re, is obtained with which the evaporative rate formula we derived and reported previously has been modified to improve the prediction of the critical heat flux for film breakdown. Comparisons with the available predicting models show that our modified equation can predict the experimental results with much lower relative deviation.