Effect of nanofluids on thin film evaporation in microchannels

A thin film evaporation model based on the augmented Young–Laplace equation and kinetic theories was developed to describe the nanofluid effects on the extended evaporating meniscus in a microchannel. The nanofluid effects include the structural disjoining pressure, a thin porous coating layer at the surface formed by the nanoparticle deposition and the thermophysical property variations compared with the base fluid. The results show that the nanofluid thermal conductivity enhancement mainly due to the Brownian motion tends to greatly increase the liquid film thickness and the thin film heat transfer. The structural disjoining pressure effect tends to enhance the nanofluid spreading capability and the thin film evaporation. The nanoparticle-deposited porous coating layer improves the surface wettability while significantly reducing the thin film evaporation with increasing layer thickness due to the thermal resistance across this layer. The nanofluid thermal conductivity enhancement together with the structural disjoining pressure effect can not counteract the thermal resistance effects of the porous coating layer when the coating layer thickness is sufficiently large.