Dry patch formed boiling and burnout in potassium pool boiling

Abstract

Experimental results are presented on dry patch formed boiling and burnout in saturated potassium pool boiling on a horizontal plane heater for system pressures from 30 to 760 torr and liquid levels from 5 to 50 mm. The dry patch formed boiling is a peculiar boiling state where the dry patch formation and the rewetting are alternately repeated in intermittent boiling at a heat flux smaller than burnout heat flux of continuous nucleate boiling and is considered to be a local phenomenon in transient transition boiling from the observations of the wall and liquid temperature fluctuations. The dry patch formation occurs in the intermittent boiling which is often encountered when liquid alkali metals are used under relatively low pressure conditions. Burnout is caused from both continuous nucleate and dry patch formed boiling. The burnout heat flux together with nucleate boiling heat transfer coefficients are empirically correlated with system pressures. A model is also proposed to predict the minimum heat flux to form the dry patch.