Experimental research on the incipient boiling wall superheat of sodium

•Experimental study on incipient boiling wall superheat of sodium was conducted.•The process of sodium boiling in forced convection was investigated.•Parametric trends were examined and discussed.•A correlation was obtained using the experimental data.

Incipient boiling wall superheat of sodium flowing in annulus was experimentally investigated. The annulus was 800 mm in length, 6 mm as inside diameter and 10 mm as outside diameter. The heat flux in the experiment was from 128 to 846 kW/m2, with inlet subcooling from 63.1 to 287.8 °C, mass flow rate from 7.2 to 122.0 kg/h and system pressure from 0.85 to 28.79 kPa. The experimental results indicated that the incipient boiling wall superheat increased with the increasing heat flux and inlet subcooling. And lower liquid velocity and system pressure could result in a higher incipient boiling wall superheat. Furthermore, a semi-empirical correlation was obtained from the experimental results. It was also found that the predicting results agreed well with the experimental data.