Sensible Heat Balance and Heat-Pulse Method Applicability to In Situ Soil-Water Evaporation

A combined heat-pulse and sensible heat balance method can be used to determine evaporation using temperature measurements and thermal property estimations. The objective of this study was to investigate the applicability of the combined heat-pulse and sensible heat balance method by comparing laboratory experimental data to both an analytical and a multiphase heat and mass transfer model. A bench-scale laboratory experiment was performed to measure soil thermal and hydraulic properties at fine spatial and temporal resolutions. Comparisons of experimental and numerical results confirmed the applicability of the heat-pulse and sensible heat balance methods to determine evaporation rates. Results showed close agreement with experimental water loss measurements. This study demonstrated the ability and versatility of using the heat-pulse and sensible heat balance methods in numerical heat and mass transfer models to determine evaporation rates. Calculated soil thermal properties were in 93.4 and 97.5% agreement with experimental results for water content values > 0.05. Deviations were observed at low water contents due to sensor sensitivity. The calculated evaporation rates yielded cumulative water losses that were 96.8 and 97.7% in agreement with experimentally measured weight loss data. Late Stage 1 evaporation was overestimated due to observed temperature rises by two of the heat-pulse probes. Despite this, the combined heat-pulse and sensible heat balance method is a powerful tool that can be used to determine evaporation rates in situ.