Little work on the void fraction behaviors along structural materials with poor-wettability for liquid metals has been performed. In the present study, void fraction behaviors around a single cylinder with non-wetting surface condition were quantitatively discussed by using a gas jet-cylinder system where the impinging jet flow, the boundary layer flow, the separation flow, and the wake flow appear. One cylinder with a non-wetting surface and two cylinders with a wetting surface were used to vary the wettability for liquid sodium, and void fraction distributions were measured around the cylinders. In the case of wetting condition, void fraction distributions around the cylinder decrease clearly in the backward region of the cylinder, and liquid-rich region is formed due to bubble separation from the cylinder surface. On the other hand, under non-wetting condition, because of two-phase flow without bubble separation on the cylinder surface, void fraction distributions show almost steady values around the cylinder compared to those with wetting surface. The void behaviors on a non-wetting surface were also confirmed by a visualization experiment conducted in water. The observed differences can be basically attributed to the work of adhesion required for liquid-solid interfacial separation.

Computational study of the sodium-water reaction at the gas (water)-liquid (sodium) interface has been carried out using the ab initio (first-principle) method. A possible reaction channel has been identified for the stepwise OH bond dissociations of a single water molecule. The energetics including the binding energy of a water molecule on the sodium surface, the activation energies of the bond cleavages, and the reaction energies, have been evaluated, and the rate constants of the first and second OH bond-breakings have been compared. It was found that the estimated rate constant of the former was much larger than the latter. The results are the basis for constructing the chemical reaction model used in a multi-dimensional sodium-water reaction code, SERAPHIM, being developed by Japan Atomic Energy Agency (JAEA) toward the safety assessment of the steam generator (SG) in a sodium-cooled fast reactor (SFR).

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In order to accurately model sodium-water reaction jets in steam generators of fast breeder reactors, knowledge of size distributions or mean diameters of liquid sodium droplets entrained into the reaction jets is prerequisite. In the present study, argon-gas jet behaviors, without chemical reaction, injected into liquid sodium were successfully visualized using an endoscope and a glass tube, and the size distributions and mean diameters of liquid sodium droplets entrained into the gas jet were also obtained in the bubbling regime. Most of the liquid sodium droplets were observed to be intermittently produced in the vicinity of a gas nozzle in the present study. The droplet size distributions of entrained sodium droplets were found to agree well with the Nukiyama-Tanasawa distribution function when the arithmetic mean diameter was used. The Sauter mean diameters obtained in the present study were also found to be well correlated with an empirical equation proposed by Epstein et al. The present study shows that the existing knowledge, which is based on the results of water experiments, is suitable in terms of accuracy in practice.