Stability of respiratory-like droplets under evaporation

Seyfert, Carola; Rodríguez-Rodríguez, Javier; Lohse, Detlef; Marin, Alvaro

doi:10.1103/PhysRevFluids.7.023603

Item

ITEM ACTIONSEXPORT

Add to Basket

Local TagsRelease HistoryDetailsSummary

Released

Journal Article

Stability of respiratory-like droplets under evaporation

MPS-Authors

/persons/resource/persons192998

Lohse, Detlef
Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization, Max Planck Society;

External Resource

No external resources are shared

Fulltext (restricted access)

There are currently no full texts shared for your IP range.

Fulltext (public)

There are no public fulltexts stored in PuRe

Supplementary Material (public)

There is no public supplementary material available

Citation

Seyfert, C., Rodríguez-Rodríguez, J., Lohse, D., & Marin, A. (2022). Stability of respiratory-like droplets under evaporation. Physical Review Fluids, 7: 023603. doi:10.1103/PhysRevFluids.7.023603.

Cite as: https://hdl.handle.net/21.11116/0000-000A-2557-B

Abstract

Recent studies have shown that enveloped viruses contained in airborne respiratory
droplets lose infectability fastest at intermediate ambient relative humidities Hr. However,
the precise physicochemical mechanisms that generate such least-favorable conditions for
the virus are not fully understood yet. Studying the evaporation dynamics of respiratorylike droplets in air experimentally and analytically, we reveal that at high Hr, the salt
dissolved in respiratory drops inhibits their evaporation indefinitely. Conversely, at low
Hr the drop evaporates leaving a porous solid residue, inside which virions may remain
dormant for long times. We conclude that the optimal relative humidity for minimal
infectability should coincide with droplets containing the maximum concentration of salt
for longest periods of time.