Dynamics of liquid sodium pool spreading under sodium fire conditions

The spreading of burning liquid sodium has been investigated using a depth-averaged shallow water equation for isothermal and non-isothermal (burning) conditions. In the latter case, the spreading is one-way coupled with the flame through a separate energy equation for the pool, with appropriate source terms for radiative and conductive heat transfer from the flame, and a sink term (for the continuity equation) to account for loss due to burning. Pool fires on soil and concrete surface have been considered with appropriate friction and heat transfer terms in the momentum and energy equations, respectively. Using this model, numerical simulations have been carried out for a wide range of leak rates, and for a range of burning rates of liquid sodium. Results obtained from the non-isothermal model show that the non-isothermal effects of liquid sodium spreading can safely be neglected for the case or spreading of burning liquid sodium on a typical ground surface such as concrete or soil. Based on these conclusions, dimensionless correlations are proposed for the prediction of spreading parameters such as, equilibrium pool radius, pool formation time, and for mass inventory under pool fire conditions for liquid sodium. These parameters which are obtained from the spreading code can be specified, as input parameters for the existing sodium fire safety codes. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.