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ISSN Online: 2377-424X

ISBN Print: 978-1-56700-421-2

International Heat Transfer Conference 15
August, 10-15, 2014, Kyoto, Japan

Thermal-Hydraulic Experiments with Sodium Chloride Aqueous Solution

Get access (open in a dialog) DOI: 10.1615/IHTC15.min.009800
pages 4907-4917

Sinopsis

Seawater was injected into the reactors to cool down the nuclear fuels in the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster. To remove molten fuels from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plants, it is necessary to know the current status of the reactors. The current status of the reactors may be affected by the thermal and hydraulic performance of the coolant. The injection of the seawater may change the heat transfer characteristics in the reactor pressure vessels (RPV) due to the changes of the physical properties of the coolant. Therefore, thermal and hydraulic characteristics of seawater must be evaluated. However, there is little information about thermal and hydraulic characteristics of seawater. Then, in this paper, we measured the basic thermal-hydraulic data of the salt solutions, which includes the heat transfer rate and the pressure drop, using both the sodium chloride aqueous solutions and the synthetic seawater as working fluids. The test section is a 1 meter long annular tube which contains a glass pipe and a co-axial heater. Its equivalent hydraulic diameter is 12.2 mm with the same size as that of the 9????9 fuel assembly in a boiling water reactor (BWR). The experiments were performed under atmospheric pressure, with the salinity, the fluid mass flux, the inlet temperature and the heat flux as the parameters. Its results and analyses are reported in this paper. Basing on the experimental results and analysis, it is proposed that salt solution owns similar heat transfer ability of water except the influence of the fluid property difference. In boiling cases, fast development of the boiling process was observed in the salt solutions flow comparing to the pure water flow. Boiling process is a very complex process and needs more studies in future. No obvious changes of the hydraulic characters were found except the influence of the fluid density and viscosity due to the appearance of the salt in the flow and the changes of the fluid temperature at different flow conditions.