Advection Diffusion Model for Particle Assisted Solar Water Evaporation
Abstract
Particle assisted solar water evaporation has attracted attention in the area of low temperature desalination as well as heating and power generation. Plasmon type and carbon-based nanoparticles have been used as absorbing medium due to their inherently good photo-thermal conversion properties. There are numerous experimental observations available, but a proper theoretical justification is hardly found. Here an advection-diffusion (Ad-Di) evaporation model is adopted to predict the evaporation rate of water with nanoparticle-assisted heating. Activated carbon (AC) is selected as the nanoparticle and a volume fraction of 0.1% is considered. The nanoparticle is assumed to be spherical at a uniform size of 80nm. Temperature of the particle -fluid system rises, and the Ad-Di model is used to predict the evaporation rate and the photo-thermal conversion rate.