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Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.

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At least 37 records · Page 2
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2016

On the Modeling of Wall Heat Flux Partitioning in Subcooled Flow Boiling

Accurate prediction of void distribution in reactor coolant channels at subcooled boiling conditions is an important factor in the analysis of the operating conditions of both pressurized water reactors (PWRs) and boiling water reactors (BWRs). Its importance arises from purely thermal-hydraulic considerations (thermal limits, CRUD formation, etc.) and the impact of void reactivity feedback on core neutronics. A mechanistic multidimensional model of subcooled boiling was originally developed by Kurul and Podowski. Whereas this model has been implemented in several commercial CFD codes and successfully used in computer simulations of flow and phase distributions in the coolant channels of light water reactor, additional new modeling aspects of forced-convection subcooled boiling heat transfer have been investigated in recent studies. The purpose of this paper is to formulate a modified model of wall heat flux partitioning, which allows for capturing and quantifying the effect of simultaneous evaporation and condensation at the heated wall on the net evaporation rate and wall temperature. The new model has been implemented in the NPHASE-CMFD code, numerically tested and validated against experimental data. A mechanistic wall heat flux partitioning model for subcooled flow boiling has been presented. This model has been combined with extensively tested models of interfacial mass, momentum and energy transfer terms. It turns out that the model predictions of the wall temperature and void fraction are in good agreement with the experimental data of reference. Future work will focus on the continuation of model validation against experimental data, and on extending its scope to include the phenomena governing departure from nucleate boiling. (authors)

42 ENGINEERING↗
NASA NTRS2021

Experimental Results and Interfacial Lift-off Model Predictions of Critical Heat Flux for Flow Boiling with Subcooled Inlet Conditions – In Preparation for Experiments Onboard the International Space Station

This study investigates critical heat flux (CHF) for subcooled flow boiling of n-Perfluorohexane based on results of pre-launch Earth-gravity Mission Sequence Tests (MSTs) of the Flow Boiling and Condensation Experiment (FBCE), which was launched to the International Space Station (ISS) in August 2021. CHF measurements were made in a rectangular channel having a 2.5 mm by 5 mm cross-section and a 114.6-mm long heated segment. Both single-sided and double-sided heating were tested in vertical upflow in Earth gravity for a variety of inlet conditions. The inlet subcooling was varied in the range of 0.4 – 32.0°C and encompassed both near-saturated and highly subcooled conditions. Experimental trends and high-speed video records were investigated to better understand the mechanism of CHF. Overall trends show CHF increases as flow rate and/or inlet subcooling are increased. Flow features from the events around CHF justify the applicability of the Interfacial Lift-off Model and the determination of limiting criteria for its application. The present experimental data are combined with prior databases for various flow orientations with respect to Earth gravity and microgravity data collected on parabolic flights. Predictions are made using the Interfacial Lift-off Model for this consolidated subcooled-inlet FBCE-CHF database. A heat utility ratio was included in the model to capture the effects of subcooling and corresponding thermodynamic non-equilibrium. An overall mean absolute error of 19.04% indicates good predictive capability of the model for both heating configurations, different gravity environments, and a wide range of inlet subcooling.

flow boiling↗
DOE OSTI2018

Experimental investigation of subcooled flow boiling of a 50/50 ethylene glycol/water mixture in finned rectangular aluminum channels

Subcooled flow boiling heat transfer experiments were performed with a 50/50 ethylene glycol/water mixture in a finned aluminum channel. The channel represented a hybrid electric vehicle power electronic cold plate receiving a 50/50 mixture from the radiator at 105 degrees C and 2atmospheres. Experiments used a range of mixture flow rates and both top- and bottom-heating situations. Boiling curves were generated, and subcooled flow boiling heat transfer coefficients were determined including the test channel fin effects. Subcooled flow boiling heat transfer coefficients showed a 25-30% increase compared to single-phase convection.

boiling curve↗
DOE OSTI2022

Automated bubble analysis of high-speed subcooled flow boiling images using U-net transfer learning and global optical flow

Capturing and analyzing the bubble dynamics is crucial to improving the understanding of boiling heat transfer mechanisms and predicting boiling heat transfer coefficient and boiling crisis. High speed video (HSV) imaging has been used for decades towards this end. Still, there is no universal approach to quantitatively analyze bubble dynamics from HSV images. In this study, we propose a data-driven post-processing approach to segment, track, and identify wall-attached vapor bubbles from HSV images of the boiling process in subcooled flow conditions. Firstly, we employ a transfer learning framework with a U-Net-based convolution neural network (CNN) architecture to detect and segment bubbles in HSV images of diverse contrast and surface texture using very little data (e.g., 10 images) for training. Then, we evaluate the trained CNN model with 100 ground-truth images, and the validation results show that the model accuracy and precision in detecting the optical footprint of bubbles are higher than 90%. Finally, we suggest a criterion to identify a condensing bubble based on the divergence of the bubble displacement, which is calculated from sequential segmented bubble images using a global optical flow code. Using this combination of machine learning and optical flow, we can identify nucleation sites and track the growth of bubbles nucleating at each site to quantify nucleation site density, nucleation frequency, and other fundamental boiling parameters. The proposed system is validated using results obtained on a special heater, which enables both infrared (IR) thermometry and HSV imaging on a metallic surface. We compare the fundamental boiling parameters obtained by the two different diagnostics. The results show good agreement. In conclusion, the difference between the measurements of nucleation site density, averaged nucleation frequency, and averaged growth time performed with the two techniques is always within ± 20% and mostly ± 10% of the values measured with IR thermometry.

42 ENGINEERING↗
DOE OSTI2016

Experimental study on bubble dynamics and wall heat transfer arising from a single nucleation site at subcooled flow boiling conditions – Part 2: Data analysis on sliding bubble characteristics and associated wall heat transfer

In this second of two companion papers presents an analysis of sliding bubble and wall heat transfer parameters measured during subcooled boiling in a square, vertical, upward flow channel. Bubbles were generated only from a single nucleation site for better observation of both the sliding bubbles’ characteristics and their impact on wall heat transfer through optical measurement techniques. Specific interests include: (i) bubbles departure and subsequent growth while sliding, (ii) bubbles release frequency, (iii) coalescence of sliding bubbles, (iv) sliding bubbles velocity, (v) bubbles size distribution and (vi) wall heat transfer influenced by sliding bubbles. Our results showed that sliding bubbles involve two distinct growth behaviors: (i) at low mass fluxes, sliding bubbles grew fast near the nucleation site, subsequently shrank, and then grew again, (ii) as mass flux increased, however, sliding bubbles grew more steadily. The bubbles originating from the single nucleation site coalesced frequently while sliding, which showed close relation with bubbles release frequency. The sliding bubble velocity near the nucleation site consistently decreased by increasing mass flux, while the observation often became reversed as the bubbles slid downstream due to the effect of interfacial drag. The sliding bubbles moved faster than the local liquid (i.e., ur<0) at low mass flux conditions, but it became reversed as the mass flux increased. The size distribution of sliding bubbles followed Gaussian distribution well both near and far from the nucleation site. The standard deviation of bubble size varied insignificantly through sliding compared to the changes in mean bubble size. Lastly, the sliding bubbles enhanced the wall heat transfer and the effect became more noticeable as inlet subcooling/mass flux decreased or wall heat flux increased. Particularly, the sliding bubble characteristics such as bubble growth behavior observed near the nucleation site played a dominant role in determining the ultimate level of wall heat transfer enhancement within the test channel.

42 ENGINEERING↗
DOE OSTI2023

Development of experimental and computational frameworks to predict subcooled flow boiling in the LANL Isotope Production Facility

Cooling is crucial to maintain the integrity of target systems in isotope production facilities. At Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL)’s Isotope Production Facility (IPF), multiple encapsulated targets are stacked and irradiated in tandem with a 100 MeV, ~250μA proton beam. To facilitate effective heat removal, these stacked targets are separated and cooled via a series of water channels. At these beam currents, this high-energy proton beam heats the target system, likely initiating subcooled flow boiling in the cooling channels. However, in-beam monitoring of the IPF target system is not possible due to the extreme radiation environment, and the necessarily significant shielding. To better understand high-power target performance, we developed ex-situ experimental and computational frameworks to predict the behavior of subcooled flow boiling at IPF. Subcooled flow boiling experiments on Inconel 625 samples under IPF conditions (2 bar pressure, 10 GPM flow rate (i.e., 2249 kg/m 2 /s), 85 K subcooling) revealed that IPF's average operating power is at the early stage of boiling with a heat transfer coefficient of 48,000 W/m 2 /s. The proposed modeling framework enables us to predict a complete boiling curve, i.e., single-phase heat transfer, onset of nucleate boiling, two-phase heat transfer, and critical heat flux (CHF), with specification of input boiling parameters up to intermediate heat flux levels. The estimated CHF under IPF conditions is 5.2 MW/m 2 . Experimental data under reduced conditions (2 bar pressure, 1.5 GPM flow rate (i.e., 337 kg/m 2 /s), 45 K subcooling) served as validation cases for the computational modeling. This computational model can be further extended to more complicated systems replicating the real IPF configuration, for instance, to study void distribution as a function of the incident proton beam profile and coolant velocity profile of multiple cooling channels. Finally, the proposed experimental and computational frameworks provide a means to better understand cooling systems in the isotope production facilities at different accelerators, where in-beam monitoring of the cooling process is not available.

07 ISOTOPE AND RADIATION SOURCES↗
DOE OSTI2016

Bubble Departure Diameter and Bubble Release Frequency Measurement from TAMU Subcooled Flow Boiling Experiment

The bubble departure diameter and bubble release frequency were obtained through the analysis of TAMU subcooled flow boiling experimental data. The numerous images of bubbles at departure were analyzed for each experimental condition to achieve the reliable statistics of the measured bubble parameters. The results are provided in this report with simple discussion.

73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2016

Single-Bubble Flow Boiling Phenomena - Interface Tracking Simulation

Boiling, as one of the most efficient heat transfer mechanisms, is widely used in various engineering systems. Better understanding and modeling of this process remains a major challenge in multiphase flow research. The distribution of vapor in boiling system affects the heat transfer rate and may cause unfavorable conditions, such as heater burn-out. A number of flow regimes have been observed experimentally. In general, there are three regimes under boiling conditions: nucleate boiling, transition boiling, and film boiling. The nucleate boiling regime is categorized into partial boiling regime and fully developed nucleate boiling, according to behavior of bubble dynamics and heat transfer characteristics. In the first region, as the wall temperature increases, the fraction of the wall surface subject to nucleate boiling increases until bubble formation occupies the entire heated surface. Heat transfer in this region is a complex mixture of single-phase forced convection and nucleate boiling. As bubble density increases, bubbles turn to coalesce and form insulating vapor patches, which impedes liquid flow back to the surface. The heat transfer rate under this condition reduces dramatically. This point is called Critical Heat Flux (CHF), which leads to boiling crisis. The behavior of boiling crisis is dependent on local fluid conditions due to bubble growth and departure. Experiments are the ultimate tool for boiling model development and verification, but they still lack some capabilities needed for better understanding of the local mechanism of this phenomena. It's difficult to capture many important details at the pressure/temperature conditions of interest using experimental techniques, such as full three dimensional measurements of velocity and temperature distribution and estimates of heat flux partitioning during the boiling process. The interface tracking simulation (ITS) is one of the promising approaches to describe heat transfer of boiling phenomena and their underlying mechanisms. The advances of high performance computing (HPC) in recent years made it possible to apply DNS to a wide variety of adiabatic flows. Some work has been done to implement evaporation / condensation models as well. Lee and Nydahl performed a numerical simulation of bubble growth and departure assuming that the bubble has the shape of a truncated sphere and a micro-layer exists during bubble growth. A 2-D cylindrical bubbles simulation has been done by Son with a simplified model to predict the heat flux in a thin liquid micro-layer. A direct simulation of 2D film boiling is conducted by Juric and Tryggvason. The film boiling, below critical pressure with a modified Level Set Method, is studied by Son and Dhir. Ose and Kunugi have developed a boiling and condensation model on subcooled boiling phenomena. Fuchs performed numerical simulations of bubble growth and departure considering wall conduction effects. Fully transient heat and fluid flow is modeled with a free surface of a rising bubble and a periodic calculation of the whole cycling of a growing, detaching, and rising bubble. Mukherjee and Kandikar have done a numerical simulation of an evaporating meniscus on a moving heated surface with level set method. The heat transfer associated with the advancing and receding contact angle has been studied. To develop the capability of physics-based boiling process, in the presented work the energy and momentum equations are coupled to simulate single-bubble growth scenarios. For a single bubble simulation in infinite liquid, the analytical solution exists and can be compared with the numerical results for verification purposes. The presented capabilities will be utilized in the large scale DNS of boiling flows in the future. The finite-element based code, PHASTA is used for the simulation. It is a parallel, hierarchic, higher-order accurate, adaptive, stabilized, transient analysis flow solver, which has been shown to be an effective tool for a wide range of single and two-phase flow problems. It has been shown to be highly scalable on top supercomputers ({approx}85% scaling on up to 3 million mesh partitions using a 92 billion element mesh . PHASTA has been shown to reliably predict the details of adiabatic bubbly flows as well as single-phase flows with heat transfer. To develop the capability of physics-based boiling process, in the presented work the energy and momentum equations are coupled to simulate a single-bubble growth scenario. For a single bubble growth in superheated water, the analytical solution exists and can be compared with the numerical results for verification purposes. The second-order accurate spatial and time discretization is used for the flow solver in the presented work. (authors)

22 GENERAL STUDIES OF NUCLEAR REACTORS↗
DOE OSTI2022

Effect of PVD-coated chromium on the subcooled flow boiling performance of nuclear reactor cladding materials

Here we elucidate the separate effect of a thin Cr coating deposited by physical vapor deposition (PVD) on the subcooled flow boiling performance of zircaloy-4. First, we run flow boiling experiments on prototypical zircaloy-4 surfaces mimicking the scratch pattern and surface roughness of nuclear reactor claddings. Then, we PVD-coat a 0.3 µm thick chromium layer on the same exact surface and repeat the same flow boiling investigations. All experiments are run using deionized water at atmospheric pressure, flowing on a 1 × 3 cm 2 rectangular cross section channel at a rate of 1000 kg/m 2 /s and a subcooling of 10 K. We measure the average temperature of the boiling surface at increasing surface heat fluxes, covering a wide range of heat transfer regimes, from single-phase forced convection to the boiling crisis. We also record high-speed videos of the boiling process, which we postprocess to measure bubble nucleation site density, growth time, departure diameter and frequency. The surface analysis reveals that, while the chromium coating does not seem change the surface roughness and morphology, it improves surface wettability. However, it decreases the critical heat flux. The chromium coating causes an increase of nucleation temperature, bubble departure diameter and growth time, and a reduction of the nucleation site density. The concurrence of these observations indicates that a size reduction of the nucleation sites, conformally covered by the chromium coating, may be the cause of the boiling performance deterioration. We confirm this hypothesis repeating the same analysis on a FeCrAl sample prepared and tested using the same protocol as the zircaloy-4 sample, but with a different initial surface texture.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗
DOE OSTI2017

Time-resolved measurements of liquid–vapor thermal interactions throughout the full life-cycle of sliding bubbles at subcooled flow boiling conditions

The local thermal response of the liquid phase to the presence of sliding bubbles was measured with an infrared camera in subcooled flow-boiling conditions. These measurements were complemented with two high-speed cameras to capture the corresponding bubbles’ dynamics. The liquid–vapor interactions were captured in detail over the full life-cycle of sliding bubbles. Four distinctive phases for the bubble life-cycle were identified: A) Spherical bubble growth with strong attachment, B) Deformed bubble growth with weak attachment, C) Detachment with hot liquid quenching, and D) Cold liquid quenching. Here, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, it is the first time that the “detachment with hot liquid quenching phase has been observed. This phase is characterized by a “hot” thermal footprint during the bubble detachment process. It is believed that this footprint is constituted partially from hot liquid released during the condensation of the recently detached bubble, and from released hot fluid previously collected by the bubble during sliding. In addition, this work reveals that using traditional high-speed visualization techniques (side-view camera only) can lead to an underestimation of approximately 40% of the actual bubble–wall contact diameter (dc) which was inferred from the infrared camera measurements.

42 ENGINEERING↗
NASA NTRS2023

Effects of Heating Configuration and Operating Parameters on Heat Transfer and Interfacial Physics of Microgravity Flow Boiling With Subcooled Inlet Conditions –Experiments Onboard the International Space Station

This study is part of the Flow Boiling and Condensation Experiment (FBCE), a collaborative effort between the Purdue University Boiling and Two-Phase Flow Laboratory (PU-BTPFL) and the NASA Glenn Research Center. The FBCE fitted with the Flow Boiling Module (FBM) was launched to the International Space Station (ISS) in August 2021 and experiments were successfully performed from February to July 2022 to amass a large microgravity-flow-boiling database. This study is focused on heat transfer and flow visualization of microgravity flow boiling of n-Perfluorohexane in a rectangular channel of 5.0 mm height, 2.5 mm width (heated), and 114.6 mm length, with subcooled inlet conditions. High-speed-video photography is utilized to present flow patterns and temporal interfacial behavior. Heat transfer results are presented in the form of flow boiling curves and both parametric curves and streamwise profiles of wall temperature and heat transfer coefficient. Firstly, the parametric effects of mass velocity (199.4 – 3200.0 kg/m 2 s), inlet subcooling (0.2 – 46.0°C), and inlet pressure (124.2 – 176.7 kPa), on the aforementioned aspects are assessed for double-sided heating to establish them for a microgravity environment. Of these three parameters, mass velocity and inlet subcooling mostly determine the microgravity flow boiling behavior, while inlet pressure plays an insignificant role. Flow patterns for double-sided heating are more complex than those for single-sided heating due to interaction between the two vapor layers. Vapor interaction is minimized at high subcoolings and high mass velocities due to strong condensation offered by the subcooled bulk liquid layer separating them. Despite the different flow patterns, both single- and double-sided heating generally result in similar parametric trends and local heat transfer coefficients for similar operating conditions. Flow instabilities manifest as temporal flow anomalies and temperature oscillations, and their severity increases with increasing boiling number. Secondly, the effects of heating configuration are analyzed by comparing and contrasting several aspects of single- and double-sided heating data. The heat fluxes at which onset of nucleate boiling degradation (ONBD) and critical heat flux (CHF) occur are distinctly different for single- and double-sided heating. There exists a threshold inlet subcooling demarcating the dominance of flow acceleration and condensation effects in vapor removal from the near-wall region and replenishment of fresh liquid for boiling. Above the threshold, condensation from the near-wall region is dominant and single-sided heating yields higher heat fluxes, and below it, acceleration is dominant and double-sided yields higher heat fluxes. At mass velocity in the range of 200 – 2400 kg/m 2 s, the threshold inlet subcooling lies in the approximate range of 20 – 30°C (corresponding inlet quality of roughly -0.40 – -0.20).

Microgravity↗