The Investigation on Heat Transfer Characteristics of Steam Condensation in Presence of Noncondensable Gas under Natural Convection

The NHR-200 reactor in China adopts the noncondensable gas self-stabilizing control and the noncondensable gas used for pressure stabilization control can weaken steam condensation heat transfer in the integrated steam-gas pressurizer. A condensation experimental system was established and the heat transfer characteristics of steam-nitrogen and steam-argon condensation under natural convection had been investigated. The pressure ranged from 0.516 to 5.10 MPa. The distributions of nitrogen and argon in the steam/gas mixture were obtained in the experiments, and the results showed that nitrogen and argon were evenly distributed in the steam under different pressure, respectively. The effects of heat transfer temperature difference had also been investigated and it is found that the total heat transfer coefficient difference had little influence on the total condensation heat transfer coefficient. However, the steam condensation heat transfer coefficient decreased with the increase of the degree of supercooling of the wall. The condensation heat transfer coefficient was reduced by approximately 0.11 kW/(m2·K) as the degree of supercooling of the wall changed from 14°C to 36°C. The condensation heat transfer coefficient also decreased with the mass/molar fraction of noncondensable gas increasing and a certain difference between the effect of the mass fraction of noncondensable gas and the effect of the molar fraction of noncondensable gas was discussed in this paper.

Experiment study on condensation heat transfer and pressure drop of steam flow inside rectangular tube with different aspect ratio

In this study, the condensation heat transfer coefficient and pressure drop of steam are obtained in small rectangular tubes with different aspect ratios. The experiments were carried out on three rectangular tubes with aspect ratios of 1:2, 1:3 and 1:5, with mass flux between 25 and 45 kg/m2s, and vapor qualities between 0.1 and 0.8. The experimental data were analyzed to determine the effect of vapor quality, mass flux, and aspect ratio on the heat transfer coefficient and pressure drop. The results showed that the effect of aspect ratio on condensation heat transfer coefficient appears to be dependent on the flow pattern. For stratified flow, the condensation heat transfer coefficient increases as the mass flux increases. For annular flow, the condensation heat transfer coefficient hardly changed. The pressure drop always increases as the aspect ratio increases. Previous studies on round tube heat transfer and pressure drop correlations have not successfully predicted the small rectangular tube data; therefore, modified Shah correlation and Lockhart & Martinelli correlation are proposed, which predict the data with 20% and 23% RMS error, respectively.

PREDICTING OF STEAM CONDENSATION HEAT TRANSFER COEFFICIENT IN HORIZONTAL FLATTENED TUBE

The heat transfer coefficient of steam condensation has a significant role in the performance of air-cooled heat exchangers. The purpose of this work is to predict the local/average local steam condensation heat transfer coefficient inside the horizontal flattened tube under vacuum conditions using numerous correlations that were developed by some researches which have been conducted under specified conditions. The results from these correlations have been compared with experimental data of Davies, therefore more investigate for the values are necessary to improve or/and validate the existing correlations. The effect of such parameters like the uniform heat flux and saturation temperature also have been studied on the local steam condensation heat transfer coefficient as the results show that the heat transfer coefficient decrease as the heat flux increase, while it increases as the steam saturated temperature increase.

Experimental Study of Pure Steam and Steam-Air Mixture Condensation on a Vertical Chrome-Plated Tube

To investigate the heat transfer characteristics of the chrome-plated tube and hope it could be used on the internal heat exchanger of passive containment cooling system (PCS), an experimental investigation has been conducted. In this experiment, a series of steam condensation experiments are performed under pure steam and steam-air mixed conditions over chrome-plated tube for a variety of chromium coating thickness (1μm and 10μm), total pressure, air mass fraction and wall subcooling. Condensation heat transfer coefficient was obtained for the total pressure ranging from 0.2 MPa to 0.4 MPa, air mass fraction ranging from 0.10 to 0.71, and wall subcooling from 10°C to 70°C. Moreover, the designed visualization experimental device makes the experimental phenomenon can be directly observed through the observation window. Under the pure steam condition, the results show that droplet condensation and filmwise condensation is co-existed on both two kinds of chrome-plated tubes, the chrome coating thickness of 10μm tube shows better heat transfer ability. Under the steam-air mixed condition, the condensation heat transfer coefficient of both two kinds of tubes increases with total pressure, and decrease with the air mass fraction and wall subcooling, while the influence of chrome coating thickness on heat transfer is no longer noticeable. The results also indicate that the thickness of the chromium coating will affect the surface microstructure of the chrome-plated tube and then affect the heat transfer ability of the chrome-plated tube.

Steam Flow Condensation on Superhydrophobic Surfaces in a High Aspect Ratio Microchannel

Steam flow condensation has a wide range of applications in the industry such as in air conditioning, refrigeration, and thermal power plants. Condensation of steam on highly hydrophobic surfaces has resulted in notable heat transfer improvement compared to conventional hydrophilic surfaces. Dropwise condensation and increased droplet mobility are the main reason for thermal performance enhancement of superhydrophobic surfaces. Although there are considerable reports of enhanced thermal transport behavior of highly hydrophobic surfaces on steam condensation, the literature lacks sufficient investigation on flow condensation of steam, such as the effect of average vapor quality change on heat transfer rate. Unlike gravity-driven droplet departure in quiescent dropwise condensation, droplet departure sizes in flow condensation are governed by flow-droplet shear forces and droplet-surface adhesive forces. This work experimentally investigates steam flow condensation on nanotextured highly hydrophobic and slightly hydrophobic surfaces. The experimental setup consists of a reservoir, boiler, superheater, condensation chamber (test section), pre-condenser (to adjust the inlet quality), a post condenser, and a pump. A high aspect ratio microchannel was used as the test section. Different mass fluxes and inlet vapor qualities were used for the experimentations. Visualization studies were performed to analyze droplet dynamics such as droplet departure and coalescence in flow condensation. It is shown that for both surfaces increase condensation heat transfer coefficient were a function of both average quality and mass flux. Increase in mass flux from G = 8 kg/m2s to G = 14 kg/m2s, resulted in 65% and 60% enhancement in condensation heat transfer coefficient of slightly hydrophobic and highly hydrophobic surfaces respectively.