Vapor condensation with low air mass fraction inside water seal branch tube under free convection

The pressure vessel has used a newly designed water seal structure, and the sealed water is from condensation at low hydrogen concentration. To get the condensation capacity of the water seal branch tube under the pressure vessel normal operation, the experimental loop named WASETEL was constructed, which is aimed at studying the heat transfer during the process of air-steam mixture condensation inside the inclined branch tube at the condition of low air mass fraction. The inner tube is diameter 0.134 m with length 0.68 m which is connected with diameter 1.4 m, high 2.5 m pressure vessel. A canon camera was set to record the images and videos of the condensate height through glass tube in communicating vessel liquidometer. The experiment was conducted under the pressure ranged from 0.2 to 0.6 MPa, air mass concentration ranged from 0.49 to 6.42% and wall subcooling ranged from 11 to 40 K. The test showed HTC (heat transfer coefficient) would sharply deteriorate with the small air fraction, compared with pure steam condensation, about 0.49% mass fraction of the air will reduce heat transfer coefficient by 70–80%. When air concentration is relatively small, those widely used relations can not predict the condensation well, therefore, a new heat transfer empirical correlation with air mass fraction, pressure and subcooling is proposed, covered all the experimental data within the error band ±13%.