Critical heat flux prediction for water boiling in vertical tubes of a steam generator

Abstract

This paper presents a methodology for the prediction of the critical heat flux (CHF) for the boiling of water in vertical tubes operating under typical conditions found in steam generators. At the furnace, the water flows through long vertical tubes under an axially non-uniform heat flux and with relatively low mass fluxes. This fact causes that the recent theories and correlations, which have been developed for conditions typically found in nuclear reactors, cannot be directly applied for the prediction of the CHF in the furnace tubes. In this context, the mechanistic theories focused into the CHF prediction have proved their usefulness to predict CHF avoiding the use of correlations and experimental constants. Hence, in order to assist the CHF problem in steam generators, the sublayer dryout theory, initially formulated for CHF in vertical tubes uniformly heated, is extended by combining it with the shape factor method ( F-factor), to account for the effects of the axially non-uniform heat flux distribution. The critical wall temperature (CWT) of the tubes is calculated from CHF data. The reliability of the modified theory for the CHF prediction is tested by comparing CWT results against measured data from a steam generator of a power plant. Good consistency and approximation is found between predicted and measured data.