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.
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.
Barry
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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
Parlange
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Lockington
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Wissmeier
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