Modelling biodiesel droplet evaporation using continuous thermodynamics

A model for the evaporation of droplets of biodiesel fuels based on continuous mixture theory is presented. The fuel is represented by three chemical groups – two fatty acid methyl ester (FAME) fractions and one monoglyceride fraction – and the parameters for each distribution function are derived by conducting a numerical simulation of a distillation test. Properties correlations are presented for saturated and unsaturated FAME’s and for monoglycerides, and it is demonstrated that the evaporation behaviour of saturated and unsaturated FAME’s is essentially identical. The model is tested against experiments on single suspended droplets and found to agree with the measurements to within 3% in d2.