A figure of merit to characterize the efficacy of evaporation from porous microstructured surfaces

Evaporation from porous structured surfaces is encountered in a variety of applications including electronics cooling, desalination, and solar energy generation. Of major interest the design thermal systems for such prediction heat mass transfer rates during evaporation these surfaces. The present study develops figure merit (FOM) that characterizes efficacy evaporative microstructured Geometric quantities as contact line length per unit area, porosity, angle are independent details surface structure utilized to develop FOM, allowing flexibility its application This metric calibrated against an model further benchmarked with data literature. FOM successfully captures variation coefficient across different structures well optimum dimensions given structure, therefore can serve tool survey available also optimize their enhancement.