On modeling evaporation

We develop a theoretical model for evaporation of a pure liquid drop on a thermally conductive solid substrate. We discuss a variety of effects regarding evaporation regime, the state of the liquid/gas interface and the content of gas phase. Then, we further consider two models: the one resulting from the one-sided non-equilibrium assumption and the other that assumes diffusion-limited regime and equilibrium at the liquid/gas interface. A single governing equation for the evolution of drop thickness is derived for both models. We show that although the model predicts qualitatively different temperature along liquid/gas and liquid/solid interface, the dynamics of the drops is almost the same.