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Abstract
In the development of supercritical pressure water cooled reactors, it is important to understand the characteristics of a heat transfer near the thermodynamic critical point. An experimental study on the critical heat flux near the critical pressure has been performed with a 5 × 5 square array heater rod bundle cooled by R-134a fluid (P c = 4:059MPa, T c = 101°C). The critical power has been accurately measured up to the reduced pressure of 0.99 (4.03 MPa). The critical power decreases sharply at a pressure of about 3.8–3.9 MPa as the pressure approaches the critical pressure. For the low mass fluxes of 50 to 250kg/m2, a sharp decrease in the critical power is not observed near the critical pressure. The CHF phenomenon near the critical pressure no longer leads to an inordinate increase in the heated wall temperature such as the case of DNB at normal pressure conditions. In the pressure region close to the critical pressure, there is a threshold pressure at which the CHF phenomenon disappears. When the pressure exceeds the threshold pressure, the wall temperature increases monotonously without a CHF occurrence according to the power level applied to the heater rods. The threshold pressure moves toward the lower pressure region gradually with an increasing mass flux.