Evaporation rate as a function of water salinity Original Research Article

Water evaporation is an important physical phenomenon that occurs in nature and in several industrial applications. Many researchers are working in this area to establish a good correlation that can be used to measure evaporation rates precisely. In this article, we review previous experience by describing the instrument used, method of measurement, conditions of experimentation and correlations resulting from these experiments. Then, an experimental test that was constructed to measure the evaporation rates of distilled water, seawater (34,000 ppm) and two brine solutions with different salinities (56,000 and 69,000 ppm) is presented. A new correlation for measuring evaporation rate was established taking into account the effect of salinity on evaporation rate, which was not done by any other investigator before. Finally, a comparison is made between our correlation and a previous one for distilled water. The results show a decrease in the evaporation rate with an increase of the water salinity because of the reduction in the water vapor pressure at the water surface.