Evaporation from arbitrary nanoporous membrane configurations: An effective evaporation coefficient approach

Thin-film evaporation from nanoporous membranes is a promising cooling technology employed for the thermal management of modern electronic devices. We propose an effective one-dimensional analytical approach that can accurately predict the temperature and density jump relations, and evaporation rates, for arbitrary nanoporous membrane configurations. This is accomplished through the specification of an effective evaporation coefficient that encompasses the influence of different system parameters, such as porosity, meniscus shape, evaporation coefficient, and receding height. Our proposed approach can accurately predict all the typical output evaporation parameters of interest like mass flux, and temperature and density jumps, without the need to carry out computationally demanding numerical simulations. Several exemplar cases comprising of nanoporous configurations with a wide range of parameters have been considered to demonstrate the feasibility and accuracy of this analytic approach. This work thus enables a quick, efficient, and accurate means of aiding the design and engineering analysis of nanoporous membrane-based cooling devices.