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Droplet evaporation plays a critical role in nature, science, and industrial applications. The electric field is usually regarded as an effective method to enhance heat and mass transfer. In this work, the evaporation of sessile droplets in the uniform electric field has been numerically studied coupling the mass, momentum, energy, and Poisson equations solved by a lattice Boltzmann method. The results indicate that the heat transfer is affected by the electric field, wettability, and liquid physical properties. The deformation direction of the droplet in the electric field depends on the liquid physical properties, where the prolate deformation occurs with RσSε and the oblate deformation occurs with RσSε. When the contact angle is 90°, for a prolate droplet, the evaporation is first enhanced and then hindered in the presence of an electric field, while for an oblate droplet, the evaporation is constantly improved. When the droplet is placed on the hydrophilic (θ0=40°) surface or hydrophobic (θ0=140°) surface, the influence of the electric field gets complicated. The synergistic effect of the electric field and wettability on droplet evaporation strongly depends on the completion of heat convection between the gas and liquid, and heat conduction between the liquid and substrate.
Ouyang et al. (Wed,) studied this question.