Experimental Investigation of Steam Bubble Condensation in Flowing Subcooled Water With Two Different Injection Nozzle Geometries

A multiphase flow test facility was built at the Department of Nuclear Engineering at the Technical University Munich. The main goal of this facility is to investigate the condensation of steam bubbles injected into a vertical large diameter pipe (104 mm) with flowing subcooled water (6–15 K) at low pressure conditions (1.1–1.45 bar). Current experimental investigations will contribute to a better understanding of subcooled boiling at low pressures, accidental conditions in nuclear power plants and low-pressure research reactors and correlations for the validation of CFD codes. The test section is a 1 m long transparent pipe that is surrounded by an 18×18 cm rectangular “aquarium” filled with distilled water for refraction correction. High-speed camera (HSC) recording was used to gather data about condensing bubbles including bubble diameter, shape and rising velocity. Steam was injected via two different vertical injection nozzles with an inner diameter of 4 and 6 mm, respectively, directly into the center of the test section. The present experiments were carried out at three different steam superficial velocities, water superficial velocities and water temperatures leading to bubble diameters up to 50 mm and bubble relative velocities around 1 m/s. The measurements enabled the calculation of bubble Reynolds and Nusselt numbers and comparison with correlations given in literature. Even though significant differences could be observed between the two injection nozzles with respect to the bubble’s diameter and velocity, the Nusselt and Reynolds numbers are in the same range of values. The bigger bubbles of the 6 mm with respect to the 4 mm nozzle are almost neutralized by the lower rising velocities.