X-ray imaging-based void fraction measurement in saturated flow boiling experiments with seawater coolant

Seth Eckels, Zayed Ahmed, Molly Ross, Daniel Franken, Steven Eckels, Hitesh Bindra

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

1 Scopus citations

Abstract

Recent studies have shown that the presence of dissolved salts in water can exhibit peculiar flow boiling and two-phase flow regimes. Two-phase flow and convective flow boiling are typically characterized with the help of void fraction measurements. To quantitatively improve our under-standing of two-phase flow and boiling phenomenon with seawater coolant, void fraction data are needed, which can not be obtained from optical imaging. In this paper, we present experimental void fraction measurements of saturated flow boiling of tap water and seawater using X-ray radiography. X-rays with a maximum energy level of 40 KeV were used for imaging the exit region of the heated test section. At lower heat flux levels, the two phase flow in seawater was bubbly and homogeneous in nature, resulting in higher void fractions as compared to tap water. With an increase in heat flux, the flow regime was similar to slug flow, and void fraction measurements approached similarity with tap water. The predicted pressure drop using the measured void faction shows good agreement with the measured total pressure drop across the test section, demonstrating the validity of the measurement process.

Original languageEnglish
Article number31
JournalQuantum Beam Science
Volume5
Issue number4
DOIs
StatePublished - Dec 2021
Externally publishedYes

Keywords

  • Flow boiling
  • Flow regimes
  • Pressure drop
  • Seawater
  • Void fraction
  • X-ray imaging

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