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

Abstract

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.