Dryout Heat Fluxes for Inductively Heated Particulate Beds

Abstract

Experimental observations of the dryout heat fluxes for inductively heated particulate beds have been made. The data were obtained when steel and lead particles in the size distribution 295–787 microns were placed in a 4.7-cm dia pyrex glass jar and inductively heated by passing radio frequency current through a 13.3-cm dia multiturn work coil encircling the jar. Distilled water, methanol and acetone were used as coolants in the experiments, while the bed height was varied from 1.9 to 8.9 cm. Different mechanisms for the dryout in deep and shallow beds have been identified. Dryout in shallow beds is believed to occur when the vapor velocity in the gas jets exceeds a certain critical velocity at which choking of the vapor, leading to obstruction in the flow of the liquid towards the bed occurs. However, deep beds dry out when gravitational force can no longer maintain a downward coolant flow rate necessary to dissipate the heat generated in the bed. Finally, the heat flux data of the present investigation and that from two previous investigations made at Argonne Laboratory and at UCLA have been correlated with semitheoretical correlations based on the proposed hydrodynamic models.