Experimental characterization of the spreading and break-up of liquid flat-fan sheets discharging in a low-density atmosphere and application to BrLi solutions

This work presents and characterizes the existence of two different regimes in the spreading and break-up of liquid flat-fan sheets when discharging in low-density atmospheres. The motivation of the study is the improvement on the absorption phenomena of lithium bromide aqueous solution when discharging in a 600–1,500 Pa water vapor environment. This corresponds to the absorber conditions in current absorption closed-cycle cooling machines. Despite this, the dimensionless characterization obtained has universal validity. The conditions that define the change in the break-up regime, the dimensionless sheet break-up length and the break-up time are given as a function of the parameters involved. Digital particle tracking velocimetry (PTV) has been applied to measure the velocity field and additional visualization techniques have been used to further characterize the break-up process. The experiments verify the existence of critical gas-to-liquid density and viscosity ratios below which gas to liquid interaction becomes negligible. The article also offers expressions that define their values as a function of the other dimensionless parameters.