[masterp2]

I started down the road to verify your numbers and it suddenly occured to me... I'll get to that. First, nice quantifiable arguments, as always. What I say in no way detracts from your well explained facts, but something is left out. Nowhere really do you represent where there is a reason for the liquid to evaporate. There is no "driving force" equation representing the change of state. You could have a billion droplets at -500 C and all the exposure in the world will still require an ice-age of time to evaporate (sublime) them.

Yes we have heard of 30-60 F drops, but not with ambient air, heated air (that is also dry). Ambient air at 80F will evaporate water at 80F, and if the air is 60% RH, it may take minutes, not milliseconds, to change state of a fraction of it. Perry's or the CRC might be worth looking at. See in an environment where compressed heated air (post-IC) is plentiful at 5% RH, there is a much greater force evaporating the liquid. But what you said, about the wall exposure was brilliant, and maybe breakthrough.

Here in Sunny Phoenix, I can lose 1/2" of water out of my 90 degree pool on a windy 115 F DAY. Yet not notice any loss, after a week of calm winter weather, with 50 degree air and water temps. Naturally if the water was at boiling, air at 100C, I could evaporate the whole pool in hours.

What quickly became obvious to me is this: a lightweight droplet, entrained in a moving column of moist cool air, is going nowhere (except through the compressor). Ah hah! The moisture on the wall has nowhere to go but to humidify. (the assumption that the entire conduit wall is wet is optomistic without a system settup to make it wet, one nozzle isn't up to the task, agree?) Without some nice dry hot air blowing past the drop, it quickly retires to a fate of drift, until it is exposed the hot, dry, dynamic conditions that are waiting downstream.

Keeping clear that anything that increases the apparent restriction in the plumbing is not going to work. It WILL kill the performance sought in the form of pressure drop. Screens and such in the column will not be a solution, without drasticly changing the conduit dimensions. 176 ft/s is not the place to add any kind of change, since as we know, most hood ornaments will be cast off at that speed, certainly flies don't survive it.

FWIW, I grant some evaporation can occur post filter, but this must be so miniscule as to be negligible. Swamp cooling that much air, done in a conventional way requires square meters of wicking material, and a puller fan that will wreak hovoc on your alternator. The pressure drop across swamp cooler pads is significant, and the process is not an on-off process. It takes minutes to wet the pads befor they start providing the desired result, etc.

What does come to mind, is along what he have discussed, with a twist. A 1/8" perforated SS tube that runs the much of the length of the conduit, concentrically. Ever seen a soaker hose? each .008" perforation a pseudo-nozzle, maybe 10-20 of them depending on flow requirements. You could even put a nozzle on the end of it, pointed into the blades.

What it might do for you is keep the wall lightly wetted, and still provide for airborne mist, and a direct inject nozzle. Manufacturing it, without significant restriction, will have to be a different book.