Long tube heat exchanger: the facility and some preliminary tests on the down center/up annular flow configuration

Abstract

A test facility was designed and constructed to study forced flow boiling heat transfer in a cxosed loop long tube heat exchanger which is a two concentric-tube vertical design. The system consists of a 12 m long heat exchanger which can be operated at pressures to 689.3 kPa with pumped or natural convection flow rates from 0.0631 to 0.631 liters/second and which can be irradiated with a maximum steady heat flux rate of 50 kW/m2 by a set of resistive heaters operable at temperatures up to 125OOC. The facility was also designed so that other heat exchanger configurations can be tested with minimum difficulty (i.e., little or no modification of the system other than to replace the heat exchanger). The preliminary tests indicate that the system can be operated in a stable mode. This facility was motivated primarily by the magma energy research program where energy is extracted from magma by heat exchangers similar to the configuration in this report.