A critical heat flux experiment with water flow at low pressures in thin rectangular channels

Highlights: • The CHF experiments were performed in thin rectangular channels at low pressure. • Different test sections were tested with different heating length and width. • A new CHF correlation was derived by considering the heating length effect. • Large pressure drop was found in test section at high flow rate condition. - Abstract: Experimental investigation was performed on the critical heat flux (CHF) in thin rectangular channels with very wide mass velocity range at low pressures. Different test sections were adopted with the different heated length and heated width. Both the vertical upward flow and downward flow were tested during the experiment. The results prove that the effect of the heated length on the CHF exists in the high mass velocity test but it is not very strong. The CHF rises with shorter heated length. At low mass velocities, the CHF at downward flow is much lower than that at upward flow. Empirical correlations were compared with the experimental data both from present and others' studies. Empirical correlations provided by Katto and Gambill gave out good prediction for the low upflow and the high downflow respectively. The Sudo correlation had wide flow range but it overestimated at low mass velocity and underestimated at high mass velocity. A new CHF correlation for the large flow rate shows good agreement with the present and others' studies. High pressure drop was found in the experiment at high flow rate conditions. It was analyzed and discussed in the paper