Mist/Steam Cooling by a Row of Impinging Jets
Closed loop steam has been chosen for cooling airfoils in heavy frame Advanced Turbine Systems (ATS) to improve efficiency. Enhanced cooling by the use of mist is considered to have potential to augment cooling by internal steam alone. Water droplets generally less than 10μm are added to 1.3 bar steam and injected through a row of four discrete round jets onto a heated surface. The Reynolds number is varied from 7500 to 22500 and the heat flux varied from 3.3 to 13.4 kW/m2. The mist increases the heat transfer coefficient along the stagnation line and downstream wanes in about 5 jet diameters. The heat transfer coefficient improves by 50 to 700 percent at the stagnation line for mist concentrations 0.75 to 3.5 percent by weight, depending on conditions. Off-axis maximum cooling occurs in most of the mist/steam flow but not in the steam-only flow. CFD simulation indicates that this off-axis cooling peak is caused by droplets’ interaction with the target walls.