title: Comment on "The effect of evaporation on the wicking of liquids into a metallic weave" by N. Fries, K. Odic, M. Conrath and M. Dreyer.
abstract: A recent paper reported capillary rise and evaporation experiments in metallic wicks, as well as a mathematical model. The authors found a consistent discrepancy between the model predictions and data: The model over-predicted the capillary height rise by about 20%. The model used assumes that the porous medium is either fully wet or dry, an assumption that is particularly unsuited to evaporation from the wick surface. An alternative variable-saturation model is proposed that provides a possible explanation for the 20% discrepancy reported by the authors.
authors.affiliation: Laboratoire de technologie écologique, Institut d'ingénierie de l'environnement, Station 2, Ecole polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne, CH-1015 Lausanne, Switzerland. andrew.barry@epfl.ch
authors.forename: D A
authors.initials: DA
authors.lastname: Barry
authors.forename: J-Y
authors.initials: JY
authors.lastname: Parlange
authors.forename: D A
authors.initials: DA
authors.lastname: Lockington
authors.forename: L
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Wissmeier