Coherent description of transport across the water interface: From nanodroplets to climate models.

Abstract

Transport of mass and energy across the vapor-liquid interface of water is of central importance in a variety of contexts such as climate models, weather forecasts, and power plants. We provide a complete description of the transport properties of the vapor-liquid interface of water with the framework of nonequilibrium thermodynamics. Transport across the planar interface is then described by 3 interface transfer coefficients where 9 more coefficients extend the description to curved interfaces. We obtain all coefficients in the range 260-560 K by taking advantage of water evaporation experiments at low temperatures, nonequilibrium molecular dynamics with the TIP4P/2005 rigid-water-molecule model at high temperatures, and square gradient theory to represent the whole range. Square gradient theory is used to link the region where experiments are possible (low vapor pressures) to the region where nonequilibrium molecular dynamics can be done (high vapor pressures). This enables a description of transport across the planar water interface, interfaces of bubbles, and droplets, as well as interfaces of water structures with complex geometries. The results are likely to improve the description of evaporation and condensation of water at widely different scales; they open a route to improve the understanding of nanodroplets on a small scale and the precision of climate models on a large scale.