Experimental Study of Flow Instability and CHF in a Natural Circulation System With Subcooled Boiling

Experimental study has been performed to investigate flow instability and critical heat flux (CHF) in a natural circulation system with subcooled boiling. In the experiments three kinds of heated sections were used. Freon-12 was used as the working medium. The experiments show that which one of the two phenomena, flow instability and CHF condition, may first occur in the system depends on not only the heat input power to the heated section and the parameters of the working medium, but also the construction of the heated section. The occurrence of the flow instability mainly depends on the total heat input power to the heated section and the CHF condition is mainly caused by the local heat flux of the heated section. In the experiments two kinds of flow instability, flow instability with high frequency and flow instability with low frequency, were found. But they all belong to density wave instability. The influence of the parameters of the working medium on the onset of the flow instability and CHF condition in the system were investigated. The stability boundaries were determined through the experiments. By means of dimensional analysis of integral equations, a common correlation describing the threshold condition of onset of the flow instability was obtained.