CFD-Based Numerical Simulation of Water Film Flash Evaporation with a New Flash Evaporation Model

In this study, a new mass model involving superheat, initial temperature, liquid height, evaporator diameter, and flashing time is established to describe the flash evaporation process of water film. Of 469 sets of flash experimental data from three previous researches, 305 sets were applied to optimize parameters, and the other 164 sets were used to verify the practicability of the model. The results showed that the mean relative error between the literature data and the model values was less than 16.3%, and the model statistics proved that the model was well-posed. Then, the kinetic model was obtained using the time derivative of the new mass model. Computational fluid dynamics simulation of water film flash evaporation was studied based on a user-defined function program of the new evaporation kinetic model. The new kinetic model shows more consistency with the experimental phenomena in terms of evaporated mass and temperature compared with the evaporation–condensation model in Fluent software and Gopalakrishna’s model. This new kinetic model can be extended to describe the flash process of water solution under other conditions.