The objective of the present study is to experimentally investigate the cooling of volumetrically heated particle beds and the enhancement of dryout heat flux in particle beds with coolant flow from below.
The experimental facility consists mainly of an induction heater (40 kW, 30 kHz), a quartz-tube test section containing 100 mm in diameter and 300 mm high particle bed, a water circulator and recovery condenser loop. The beads composing the particle bed are in uniform size and two sizes of beads were used
3.2mm and 4.8 mm.
For the top-flooding case, the volumetric dryout heat rate was about 4 MW/m3 in 4.8 mm particle and about 3 MW/m3 in 3.2mm particle bed. For the bottom injection, the volumetric dryout heat rate was about 7.91 MW/m3 in 4.8mm particle at the coolant injection mass flux of 1.5 kg/m2s. In 3.2mm particle, the volumetric dryout heat rate was about 6.5 MW/m3 at the coolant mass flux of 1.0 kg/m2s. It shows the level of enhancement of dryout heat flux in particle beds with the forced coolant flow from below.