Solidification and melting behaviors and characteristics of molten salt in cold filling pipe

The solidification and melting phenomena and performances of molten salt during cold filling process in a straight pipe are numerically investigated using volume of fluid model. As the molten salt is filled into a cold pipe, the molten salt adjacent to the cold wall is rapidly cooled, and the solidification phenomena appears. After the whole pipe is filled, the solidification layer begins to melt by high temperature fluid heating. Because of the solidification layer, the flow section obviously shrinks, and the pressure loss remarkably increases. During the solidification and melting processes, the fluid temperature in the region with phase change only varies near the freezing point, and it quickly rises after the melting process. Because of the absorption or release of latent heat, the boundary heat flux of molten salt is increased in the solidification region, while it will be decreased in the melting region. As the inlet temperature rises, the pressure loss apparently decreases with the thickness of solidification layer decreasing. However, when the inlet flow velocity increases, the thickness of solidification layer decreases, but the flow resistance without phase change increases, so the pressure loss has a maximum at moderate flow velocity.