Modelling of evaporation from free water surface

The process of evaporation from free water surface was simulated in a large scale environmental chamber under various controlled atmospheric conditions and also was modelled by a new mass transfer model. Six evaporation tests were conducted with increasing wind speed and air temperature in the environmental chamber, and hence the effect of atmosphere parameters on the evaporation process and the corresponding response of water were investigated. Furthermore, based on the experiment results, seven general types of mass transfer models were evaluated firstly, and then a new model consisted of wind speed function and air relative humidity function was proposed and validated. The results show that the free water evaporation is mainly affected by the atmospheric parameters and the evaporation rate increases with the increasing air temperature and wind speed. Both the air and soil temperatures are affected by the energy transformation during water evaporation. The new model can satisfactorily describe the evaporation process from free water surface under different atmospheric conditions.