Forced convective boiling heat transfer and pressure drop characteristics of two-phase flow inside a small horizontal helically coiled tubing once-through steam generator

The pressure drop and boiling heat transfer of steam water two-phase flow were studied in a small horizontal helically coiled tube once-through steam generator of 9-mm inside diameter with 292-mm coil diameter and 30-mm pitch. Experiments were performed at a range of qualities up to 0.95, a system pressure range of 0.5-3.5MPa, a mass flux range of 236-943kg/m²s and a heat flux range of 0-900kW/m². Based on the experimental results, a new two-phase frictional pressure drop correlation was developed on the basis of Chisholm's B-coefficient method. In the present experimental range, boiling heat transfer was found to be dependent not only on mass flux but also on heat flux. This result implies that both the nucleation mechanism and the convection mechanism have the same importance to forced convective boiling heat transfer in small horizontal helically coiled tube over the full range of qualities (pre-critical heat flux qualities of 0.1-0.9) which is contrary to situations in larger helically coiled tube where the convection mechanism dominates at qualities typically >0.1. Traditional single parameter Lockhart-Martinelli type correlations failed to satisfactorily predict present experimental data and in this paper a new flow boiling heat transfer correlation was put forward to better predict the experimental data of the present study.