Book Description

In this research, minimum film boiling temperature (Tmin) is quantitatively determined as a function of the initial substrate temperature, liquid subcooling, surface thermophysical properties and surface conditions. Since Tmin defines the boundary between the film and transition boiling regimes, its value is significant for the design of an emergency core cooling system following a hypothetical loss-of-coolant accident (LOCA) in a nuclear power plant. When a sufficiently heated surface is plunged in a water pool, a vapor blanket is generated around the test section acting as a heat transfer insulator due to the poor thermal conductivity of the vapor. At temperatures lower than Tmin, the heat transfer is dramatically enhanced owing the collapse of the vapor film allowing direct physical contact between the water and the heated surface. Therefore, it is very important to explore methods and techniques that increase this temperature in order to improve the safety of nuclear reactors. A test facility was designed and constructed to conduct quenching experiments using vertical rods. Seven cylindrical test samples were fabricated with embedded thermocouples inside the cladding material. The thermocouples were connected to a data acquisition system in order to measure the temperature history during the experiments. The temperature and heat flux at the surface were calculated using an inverse heat conduction code along with an advance image processing technique to quantitatively characterize the liquid-vapor interfacial waves, vapor layer thickness, Tmin, quenching temperature, quenching time, and quench front velocity in the film boiling heat transfer regime. Visualization of the boiling behavior was captured by a high-speed camera at a frame rate of 750 frames per second (fps). The thermocouple data and the captured videos were synchronized to couple the behavior of the vapor layer with the thermal behavior of the heated sample. Various characterization techniques including X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM) associated with Energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS), and field emission scanning electron were employed to identify the phases, chemical composition, and surface microstructure of the Inconel-600 before and after being used in a 7 x 7 rod bundle facility. Micro- and nanoparticles composed of nickel, chromium, and iron oxides were observed at the surface of the oxidized Inconel samples. It was found that the porous microstructure coupled with the increase in liquid spreading played a significant role in the enhancement of the film boiling heat transfer. Finally, the heat transfer behavior in the film boiling regime was investigated by calculating the heat transfer coefficient and Nusselt number for various cases. The novelty of this research is the coupling between the results of the quenching experiments and the surface characterization analyses that prompted the development of a new correlation for Tmin. This correlation adequately captures the effects of liquid subcooling, porosity of the oxide layer, and system pressure.