Experimental and numerical investigation of heat transfer in liquid metals

Low-temperature melting alloys are very attractive heat transfer medium. Especially, when high temperature or extremely high heat flux application are considered, like in case of nuclear power stations, cooling of industrial furnaces to recover waste heat, concentrating solar power stations just to mention a few. The main advantages of low-temperature melting alloys are high heat capacity, high heat conductivity and resistance that is why in case of high temperature applications they are considered as a considerably safer heat transfer medium than water or air. This paper concentrates on the experimental investigation of heat transfer process in the low-temperature melting alloys. We are especially concentrating om the lead-bismuth eutectic (LBE) alloy. The article presents development of the in-house experimental stand equipped with gas-pump and preliminary results carried out on this experimental stand. Moreover, Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) model of fluid flow and heat transfer in considered LBE alloy is presented. The experimental results are used to validate the numerical model, which further allowed us to carry out deeper insight into the heat transfer process.