Temperature and chemical composition of droplets by optical measurement techniques: a state-of-the-art review

The measurement of the sizes and the velocities of droplets relies upon widespread and well-established techniques, but characterizing their temperature and their composition remains challenging. The lack of standard methods is particularly detrimental, given the importance of these parameters for validating models and numerical simulations of many spray processes. Heat and mass transfers are dominant aspects in applications such as spray combustion in IC engines, spray cooling, spray drying, wet scrubbers in which liquid sprays capture gas pollutants and also the preparation of nanoparticles via spray route. This paper provides a review of the main techniques available to optically measure the temperature and chemical compositions of single droplets and sprays. Most of these techniques are based on phenomena related to light interaction with matter. Photoluminescence processes like fluorescence and phosphorescence have temperature and composition dependences which can be exploited, while other methods rely on light scattering by the droplets. In particular, the angular position of the rainbow is very sensitive to the refractive index and then to both the temperature and composition. Less widely used diagnostic methods include Raman scattering, thermochromic liquid crystals, thermographic phosphors, infrared thermography, morphology-dependent resonances and their subsequent effects on the stimulated emission of dye molecules. In this review, the emphasis is mainly placed on two groups of techniques-methods based on laser-induced fluorescence and those based on light scattering-but details about alternative methods will be also provided. The potential of combining fluorescence-based techniques or rainbow refractometry with a droplet sizing measurement technique to derive temperature and composition per size class will be also discussed.