Parametric investigation on transient boiling heat transfer of metal rod cooled rapidly in water pool

In this work, the effects of liquid subcooling, surface coating, material property, and surface oxidation on transient pool boiling heat transfer were investigated experimentally using the vertical metal rod and quenching method. The change in rod temperature was measured with time during quenching, and the visualization of boiling around the test specimen was performed using the high-speed video camera. As the test materials, the zircaloy (Zry), stainless steel (SS), niobium (Nb), and copper (Cu) were tested. In addition, the chromium-coated niobium (Cr-Nb) and chromium-coated stainless steel (Cr-SS) were prepared for accident tolerant fuel (ATF) application. Low liquid subcooling and Cr-coating shifted the quenching curve to the right, which indicates a prolongation of quenching duration. On the other hand, the material with small heat capacity and surface oxidation caused the quenching curve to move to the left. To examine the influence of the material property and surface oxidation on the film boiling heat transfer performance and minimum film boiling (MFB) point in more detail, the wall temperature and heat flux were calculated from the present transient temperature profile using the inverse heat transfer analysis, and then the curves of wall temperature and heat flux in the film boiling regime were obtained. In the present experimental conditions, the effect of material property on the film boiling heat transfer performance and MFB point seemed to be minor. On the other hand, based on the experimental results of the Cu test specimen, the surface oxidation had great impact on them. As compared with the as-received Cu test specimen, the pre-oxidized one showed the higher film boiling heat transfer performance and MFB heat flux, but it had the lower MFB temperature.