Nuclear Engineering and Technology

Korean Nuclear Society (한국원자력학회)
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Investigation of the concentration characteristic of RCS during the boration process using a coupled model

  • Xiangyu Chi (Institute of Thermal Science and Technology, Shandong University) ;
  • Shengjie Li (China Nuclear Power Engineering Co., Ltd.) ;
  • Mingzhou Gu (State Key Laboratory of Nuclear Power Safety Monitoring Technology and Equipment, China Nuclear Power Engineering Co., Ltd) ;
  • Yaru Li (Institute of Thermal Science and Technology, Shandong University) ;
  • Xixi Zhu (Institute of Thermal Science and Technology, Shandong University) ;
  • Naihua Wang (Institute of Thermal Science and Technology, Shandong University)
  • Received : 2022.12.19
  • Accepted : 2023.05.05
  • Published : 2023.08.25
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Abstract

The fluid retention effect of the Volume Control Tank (VCT) leads to a long time delay in Reactor Coolant System (RCS) concentration during the boration process. A coupled model combining a lumped-parameter sub-model and a computational fluid dynamics sub-model is currently used to investigate the concentration dynamic characteristic of RCS during the boration process. This model is validated by comparison with experimental data, and the predicted results show excellent agreement with experimental data. We provide detailed fields in VCT and concentration variations of RCS to study the interaction between mixing in VCT and the transient responses of RCS. Moreover, the impacts of the inlet flow rate, inlet nozzle diameter, original concentration, and replenishing temperature of VCT on the RCS concentration characteristic are studied. The inlet flow rate and nozzle diameter of VCT remarkably affect the RCS concentration characteristic. Too-large or too-small inlet flow rates and nozzle diameters will lead to unacceptable long delays. In this work, the optimal inlet flow rate and nozzle diameter of VCT are 5 m3/h and 58.8 mm, respectively. Besides, the impacts of the original concentration and replenishing temperature of VCT are negligible under normal operating conditions.

Keywords

Acknowledgement

The scientific calculations in this paper have been done on the HPC Cloud Platform of Shandong University.

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