Experimental investigation on the natural convection flow in pool boiling

•The velocity field measurements conducted on the subject of a single and two-phase natural convection flow.•Experimental results show a large natural convection flow at the region above the heater rod.•The thermal stratification is shown at the region below the heater rod.•The results contribute to provide the benchmark data of a thermal hydraulic system analysis code.

In the present study, the key thermal hydraulic phenomena within a passive condensate cooling tank (PCCT) of a small-scale pool test rig with a single heater rod are experimentally investigated. The volumetric scaling ratio of the test rig is 1/910 the size of the passive auxiliary feedwater system (PAFS) condensing heat removal assessment loop (PASCAL), which is a PAFS performance evaluation test facility. The two-dimensional velocity vector fields that occur as the water level decreases are experimentally investigated in a pool that contains a horizontal heater rod. The 2D particle image velocimetry (PIV) measurement technique is adopted to determine the velocity vector field of the natural convection flow. The experimental results indicate that a large natural convection flow occurs above the heater rod and that thermal stratification occurs below the heater rod. The thermal stratification and the stagnant region begin to disappear when the pool temperature reaches approximately 90 °C. The experimental results can provide benchmark data to validate computational fluid dynamics (CFD) calculations of thermal hydraulic phenomena that occur in a pool with a heat source.