Falling sodium droplet experiment (FD-3)

Doda, Norihiro ; Ishikawa, Hiroyasu ; Ohno, Shuji  ; Miyahara, Shinya  

The burning behavior of a single sodium droplet has been studied for understanding of spray combustion which is one of the combustion forms in sodium leakage. This study serves as the basis of the mechanistic sodium fire analysis method. A burning experiment with initial droplet size of 3.34mm and 5.85mm different from FD-2 experiment condition (4.75mm), an inert gas condition experiment and a polypropylene sphere experiment were performed to investigate the relation between initial droplet size and burnt mass, and the effect of burning phenomena on the droplet motion. (1)Drag coefficient of a burning sodiuum droplet is 1.42.2 times greater than that of a solid sphere of the same size. (2)The increase in drag force of a burning sodium droplet is mainly due to the increase in gaseous viscosity around the droplet with heat of combustion. Sodium droplet has the ellipsoidal shape with aspect ratio 0.89 when falling by about 8 meters, but the effect of droplet deformation is negligible small. In addition, evaporation and buoyancy have also little effect on the increase in drag force. (3)The burning of sodium droplet follows the D-law when the initial droplet diameter changes. In the calculation which assumes that the sodium combustion quantity agrees with the measurement and that combustion of sodium droplet obeys that law, the NaO ratio of reaction products becomes 0.51-0.75.