Boiling in particle beds in a two dimensional configuration

Abstract

The work presented here concentrates on the boiling heat transfer from a porous bed with internal heat sources. This configuration can occur, when in the progress of a hypothetical accident the core melt relocates to the lower plenum of a nuclear reactor pressure vessel and gets partially fragmented. The coolability and the boiling heat transfer are experimentally investigated for two- dimensional particle beds. Experiments are discussed with particles of an uniform diameter of 2 mm as well as mixtures of 4 mm and 1 mm particles. The bed was placed in a glass container with an inclined bottom to represent a section of the lower plenum of a reactor pressure vessel. The refrigerant R134a was used for tests with a pressure up to 1.8 MPa. The particle bed was equipped with thermocouples and capacitive local void fraction probes to map the temperatures and the distribution of liquid and steam. In the following the basic effects and the parameters influencing the coolability of such a configuration will be discussed.