Evaporation Rates and Lifetimes of Clouds and Sprays in Air. II. The Continuum Model

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Abstract
An alternate mathematical model is proposed for the prediction of the evaporation rates and lifetimes of clouds and sprays in air. It is based on the continuum approach which considers a droplet system as a uniform spherical source of vapor with a strength equal to the amount of vapor evaporated from the droplets per unit volume. The cloud equations derived from this model are expressed in terms of either the vapor concentration or the droplet mass. Further approximation leads to a linearized cloud equation which can be reduced to a simple diffusion equation to be solved by standard methods. Numerical results show that the continuum model describes the behavior of a saturated droplet system much more satisfactorily than the cellular model which has been recently proposed. For an unsaturated system, however, the cellular model remains adequate. By combining both of these models, a general model is obtained, which should be of general validity for all droplet systems evaporating into a fixed atmosphere.

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