Experimental Studies On Sub-Cooled Boiling In A 3x3 Rod Bundle

With the continuing interest in modeling of boiling heat transfer in complex geometries, such as rod bundles, dedicated experiments with advanced instrumentation are essential. Within a larger cooperative project on boiling flow and heat transfer in rod bundle geometries HZDR has developed and setup an experimental rod bundle facility where first experiments were conducted. The facility is a flow loop with a vertical rod bundle test section operated with a refrigerant coolant (RC318). The test section is 1078 mm long and equipped with an electrically heated 3 × 3 rod bundle. The heating pattern is constant along the height and heating is concentrated in the central rod with 98.5% of total heating power. Experiments can be conducted with variable liquid flow rates, heating power and sub-cooling. Single phase flow in the bundle was studied with DPIV measurements. For void fraction measurement we operate both a gamma ray densitometer as well as high-speed X-ray tomography. In this paper we present first experimental studies with both void measurement techniques.