Experimental Investigation on Rapid Evaporation of High-Pressure Liquids due to Depressurization

Abstract

This paper reports an experimental investigation of rapid evaporation process of high-pressure ethanol liquid during depressurization. The study focused on pressure and temperature transients with the influence of different initial conditions, and the shape variation was recorded via a high speed camera. During an experiment, the ethanol liquid was contained in a small round tube with a diameter 10mm in the test vessel, and a thermocouple was put within the fluid which was used to measure the fluid temperature during the depressurization. The predetermined pressure was provided by the high-pressure nitrogen gas, and the process of quick depressurization was started by opening the magnetic valve, which was connected with the test vessel. The transitions of the pressure and the fluid temperature were recorded by the NI data collection system. According to the experimental results, during the fast pressure drop, with the same initial temperature and other test conditions, the higher the initial pressure is, the faster the liquid temperature decreases, and the lower the minimum temperature reaches. In addition, the effect of initial fluid conditions, initial environmental pressure on temperature transition and so on are summed up and are experimentally analyzed on the fluid temperature change under the same test equipment. Also, the variation characteristics of kerosene fluid were compared with ethanol liquid under the same experiment conditions.