Discipline: Technology and Engineering
Subcategory: Water
Nhicolas Aponte - Garden City Community College
Co-Author(s): Melanie Derby
Crop production requires a substantial amount of water. In the Great Plains region of the United States, water from the Ogallala Aquifer is used for irrigation to compensate for the lack of rainfall. Constant use combined with the lack of precipitation is draining the water table. If water evaporation rates in soil can be reduced, the demand for irrigation will be lowered, thus conserving water in the Ogallala Aquifer. Therefore, we are studying the effects of hydrophobicity on the evaporation rate of water through porous media. To simulate soil, three glass beads with a diameter of 2.37 millimeters are placed in a triangle to form a pore. Then, a droplet of 2.0 microliters of water stained with red dye was deposited in the middle of the pore to observe evaporation from a hydrophilic porous surface. To test the effects of hydrophobicity, a pore was coated in a Teflon solution and underwent the same procedure. Both of these types of pores were observed and recorded for the duration of the evaporation process of the water droplet. We observed that spacing between the beads was a factor of the evaporation rate and conducted experiments for hydrophilic and hydrophobic pores with a center-to-center distance of 2.37 millimeters and 2.62 millimeters. Evaporation rates on hydrophobic surfaces may be slowed by the alteration of capillary action. Future research includes experimentation of evaporation from these pores in simulated environmental conditions such as humidity and temperature.
Not SubmittedFunder Acknowledgement(s): The authors gratefully acknowledge the support of NSF KS-LSAMP under grant number 130505 and NSF grant number 1651451.
Faculty Advisor: Dr. Melanie Derby, derbym@ksu.edu
Role: My part in this research was the early stage experimentation and observation of water evaporation rates. I experimented with the effects of pore size and compared the evaporation rates from hydrophobic pores and hydrophilic pores.