Process of Evaporation

The process of evaporation involves the vaporization of a liquid. However, it should be noted that a key distinction for evaporation is that it only happens at the surface of the liquid. For example, this is different from boiling because boiling affects the whole volume of liquid instead of just the top surface. It should also be noted that evaporation is a naturally occurring part of the earth’s water cycle.

Additionally, evaporation is considered to be part of a phase transition. This phase transition refers to how molecules in a liquid or water state suddenly become gaseous or suddenly turn to water vapor. This phase transition is notable as a gradual reduction of a liquid from matter due to the exposure of a considerable amount of gas.

Generally, the molecules of water in a glass do not naturally possess a sufficient amount of energy in the form of heat to escape or remove themselves from the liquid. That is why complex systems have been developed by manufacturers in virtually every industry to assist in speeding up the evaporation process to assist with the removal of contaminants and byproducts for example.

When a significant amount of heat is added to the body of water, the water then has enough heat energy to quickly phase to a vapor (with the help of the boiling point being reached. This occurs because as more heat energy is added, the faster the molecules in the water move around. This faster and more active movement causes the molecules to collide. And when these water molecules collide, they take the heat energy that they have absorbed and then either transfer that energy to each other in different amounts. When an energy transfer heavily favors one molecule near the top of the liquid surface (where one molecule absorbs a majority of the heat or all of it) because of the angle of collision, the transfer of energy can be significant enough to cause that molecule to escape the main body of liquid.

It should also be noted that evaporation is not necessarily always visible. Sometimes these molecules do not feature enough of a heat transfer to create a sufficient enough transition to vapor. However, evaporation is still taking place during this process but at a significantly slower rate than high energy molecule evaporation processes.

Understanding the process of evaporation has been helping countless industries and municipalities counter evaporation of limited water supplies, improve manufacturing efficiency and maintain more cost effective means of doing business.