Visualization on the behavior of inert gas jets impinging on a single glass tube submerged in liquid sodium

Abstract

In order to accurately model sodium–water reaction jets in steam generators of fast breeder reactors, knowledge of size distributions or mean diameters of liquid sodium droplets entrained into the reaction jets is prerequisite. In the present study, argon-gas jet behaviors, without chemical reaction, injected into liquid sodium were successfully visualized using an endoscope and a glass tube, and the size distributions and mean diameters of liquid sodium droplets entrained into the gas jet were also obtained in the bubbling regime. Most of the liquid sodium droplets were observed to be intermittently produced in the vicinity of a gas nozzle in the present study. The droplet size distributions of entrained sodium droplets were found to agree well with the Nukiyama–Tanasawa distribution function when the arithmetic mean diameter was used. The Sauter mean diameters obtained in the present study were also found to be well correlated with an empirical equation proposed by Epstein et al. The present study shows that the existing knowledge, which is based on the results of water experiments, is suitable in terms of accuracy in practice.