Capillary evaporation is crucial for applications such as microfluidics, microchannel heat exchange, and inkjet printing. However, predicting the behavior of such systems becomes challenging due to the coupling of flow characteristics and heat and mass transfer under the influence of environmental conditions. Currently, the effects of ambient conditions on the evaporation mechanisms within capillaries remain unclear. To fill this gap, ethanol evaporation in capillary tubes under combined external airflow and radiation was investigated experimentally and theoretically. Airflow velocity, radiation source temperature, and placement distance were systematically varied to quantitatively analyze their synergistic effects on the evaporation characteristics, including the evaporation rate, temperature gradient distribution, and flow pattern evolution. The findings demonstrate that during the initial rapid evaporation stage with pinned meniscus at the capillary mouth, increased airflow velocity and radiation source temperature significantly promoted evaporation, with airflow exhibiting stronger influence. As the meniscus receded deeper at later stages, radiative effect gradually increases. A simplistic heat transfer model was developed for the environmentally sensitive initial stage to distinguish the relative influence proportions. The model provided predictions in agreement with the experimental results. We find that airflow's influence proportion increased with velocity (from 82% to 99.7%), while radiation's increased with temperature and reduced distance (from 0.3% to 18%). Notably, radiation's influence proportion growth accelerated with rising temperature, highlighting its significance for enhanced heat transfer in capillary-confined liquids beyond certain thresholds. We anticipate that our work might provide guidance for optimizing microchannel heat transfer systems, such as lab-on-a-chip devices.
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