Local Heat Transfer Coefficient during Film Condensation of Stream Hydrogen Mixture

PI: Professor Sameer Khandekar

Co-PI: Professor K Muralidhar

Condensation in the presence of non-condensable is an area of concern for long time especially in nuclear reactor containment cooling system. In recent years, lot of research work is being carried out for effectively predicting the condensation phenomena in nuclear reactor containments. This proposed research work would explore the condensation on nuclear reactor containment walls (steel/concrete with epoxy coating) through dedicated experiments, and would generate sufficient data for improvement of CFD based containment thermal hydraulics framework, based on local measurement of parameters viz. condensate film thickness, gas and wall temperatures and pressures, bulk gas concentrations, dynamics of condensate film via imaging etc. The condensation will take place over vertical flat plate (made of steel/ concrete with epoxy paint coating) placed centrally inside a rectangular test facility, injected with helium gas as the simulator for hydrogen. The experiments will be performed at different operating conditions viz., steam pressure, temperature, helium concentration, and upward or downward flow configurations, etc. The measurement of local film thickness will be carried out by non-intrusive optical means. The local heat transfer will be measured by using heat flux sensors placed vertically along the length of the plate. The generated data will be used for the measurement of local and average heat transfer coefficient. Comparison/ validation of experimental data will be done with existing heat transfer models and numerical results. Design equations shall be improved/ new equations will be generated based on the experimental data.