• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
• /
• v.54 no.5
• /
• pp.1851-1859
• /
• 2022

Experimental research on flow characteristics of open natural circulation system was performed, to figure out the mechanism of the open natural circulation behaviors. The influence factors, such as the heating power, the inlet subcooled and the level of cooling tank on the flow characteristics of the system were examined. It was shown that within the scope of the experimental conditions, there are five flow types: single-phase stable flow, flash and geyser coexisting unstable flow, flash stable flow, flash unstable flow, and flash and boiling coexisting unstable flow. The geyser flow in flash and geyser coexisting unstable flow is different from classic geysers flow. The flow oscillation period and amplitude of the former are more regular, is a newly discovered flow pattern. By drawing the flow instability boundary diagram and sorting out the flow types, it is found that the two-phase unstable flow is mainly characterized by boiling and flash, which determine the behavior of open natural circulation respectively or jointly. Moreover, compared with full liquid level system, non-full liquid level system is more prone to boiling phenomenon, and the range of heat flux density and undercooling degree corresponding to unstable flow is larger.

• Progress in Superconductivity and Cryogenics
• /
• v.15 no.3
• /
• pp.49-52
• /
• 2013

An experiment to investigate the natural circulation of a cryogen has been performed. The study is motivated mainly by our recent development of cryogenic cooling system for prototype superconducting cyclotron without any circulating pump. In the natural circulation loop system, a cooling channel is attached on the outer surface of the aluminium block and the liquid nitrogen passes through inside of the channel to cool the block indirectly. A cryocooler as a heat sink is located at the top to re-condense cryogenic vapor coming from the aluminium block in which electrical heater is installed as a heat source. The main dimensions are determined using the relevant analysis and the natural circulation loop is successfully fabricated. The temperature distributions in the loop are measured during initial cool-down process and in steady state, from which the modified Grashof numbers are calculated and compared with the existing correlation estimated with one-dimensional analysis for steady state flow.

• Proceedings of the Korean Nuclear Society Conference
• /
• 1995.10a
• /
• pp.383-388
• /
• 1995

Two-phase transient phenomena in the noncondensable gas-filled closed loop was investigated numerically using the RELAP5/MOD3 version 3.1 computer code. The condensation heat transfer correlation for noncondensable gases was studied in detail. Two modes of the reflux condensation which can be characterized by countercurrent flow of steam and its condensed water and the oscillatory between reflux condensation and natural circulation were predicted well. However, the natural circulation mode which the condensed water carried over the U-bend concurrently with steam was failed to predict.

• Proceedings of the SAREK Conference
• /
• 2009.06a
• /
• pp.1283-1287
• /
• 2009

In this study, an analysis was performed on an evaporative steam generator (concentrator), where natural circulation convective boiling occurs on tube-side by condensing hot steam on shell-side. Existing correlations on two-phase pressure drop, boiling or condensation heat transfer were used for the analysis. The effect of number of tubes, tube length, etc. on thermal performance was investigated. Simulation results reveal that steam generation rate increases almost proportionally to the tube length, or number of tubes. It is also shown that water circulation rate decreases as tube length increases.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
• /
• v.56 no.3
• /
• pp.1002-1012
• /
• 2024

To remove insoluble fission products, which could possibly cause reactor instability and significantly reduce heat transfer efficiency from primary system of molten salt reactor, a helium bubbling method is employed into a passive molten salt fast reactor. In this regard, two-phase flow behavior of molten salt and helium bubbles was investigated experimentally because the helium bubbles highly affect the circulation performance of working fluid owing to an additional drag force. As the helium flow rate is controlled, the change of key thermal-hydraulic parameters was analyzed through a two-phase experiment. Simultaneously, to assess the applicability of numerical model for the analysis of two-phase flow behavior, the numerical calculation was performed using the OpenFOAM 9.0 code. The accuracy of the numerical analysis code was evaluated by comparing it with the experimental data. Generally, numerical results showed a good agreement with the experiment. However, at the high helium injection rates, the prediction capability for void fraction of helium bubbles was relatively low. This study suggests that the multiphaseEulerFoam solver in OpenFOAM code is effective for predicting the helium bubbling but there exists a room for further improvement by incorporating the appropriate drag flux model and the population balance equation.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers
• /
• v.8 no.5
• /
• pp.416-424
• /
• 1984

A numerical and experimental investigation was carried out on the single-phase natural circulation system. This study is concerned with the multiloop system which is relevant to the primary system of the pressurized water reactor. For numerical analysis, five time-dependent governing equations were derived using the one-dimensional lumped parameter model. These equations were discretized by the space-time integration technique, and a simplified computer program, SIMFARS, was developed to solve those discretized equations. Experiments were performed for two purposes-one is to validate the developed code, and the other is to understand the qualitative behavior of the natural circulation loop. Comparison of the computational results with experiments, and several experimental and numerical results are presented in this article.

• Journal of Energy Engineering
• /
• v.22 no.1
• /
• pp.8-16
• /
• 2013

A core catcher is considered as a promising engineered system to stabilize the molten corium in the containment during a postulated severe accident in a nuclear power plant. Conceptually, the core catcher consists of a carbon steel body, sacrificial material, protection material, and engineered cooling channel. The cooling capacity of the engineered cooling channel should be guaranteed to remove the decay heat of the molten corium. The flow in ex-vessel core catcher is a combined problem of a two-phase flow in the engineered cooling channel and a single-phase natural circulation in the whole core catcher system. In this study, the analysis of the test facility for the core catcher using the CUPID code, which is a three-dimensional thermal-hydraulic code for the simulation of two-phase flows, was carried out to evaluate its cooling capacity.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
• /
• v.53 no.5
• /
• pp.1429-1435
• /
• 2021

The temperature distribution of an electromagnetic pump was analyzed with a flow rate of 1380 L/min and a pressure of 4 bar designed for the sodium thermo-hydraulic test in the Sodium Test Loop for Safety Simulation and Assessment-Phase 1 (STELLA-1). The electromagnetic pump was used for the circulation of the liquid sodium coolant in the Intermediate Heat Transport System (IHTS) of the Prototype Gen-IV Sodium-cooled Fast Reactor (PGSFR) with an electric power of 150 MWe. The temperature distribution of the components of the electromagnetic pump was numerically analyzed to prevent functional degradation in the high temperature environment during pump operation. The heat transfer was numerically calculated using ANSYS Fluent for prediction of the temperature distribution in the excited coils, the electromagnet core, and the liquid sodium flow channel of the electromagnetic pump. The temperature distribution of operating electromagnetic pump was compared with cooling of natural and forced air circulation. The temperature in the coil, the core and the flow gap in the two conditions, natural circulation and forced circulation, were compared. The electromagnetic pump with cooling of forced circulation had better efficiency than natural circulation even considering consumption of the input power for the air blower. Accordingly, this study judged that forced cooling is good for both maintenance and efficiency of the electromagnetic pump.

• Journal of Energy Engineering
• /
• v.28 no.4
• /
• pp.103-110
• /
• 2019

The domestic innovative power reactor named iPOWER will employ the passive molten corium cooling system(PMCCS) to cool down and stabilize the core melt in the severe accident. The final design concept of the PMCCS is yet to be determined, but the in-vessel retention through external reactor vessel cooling has been also considered as a viable strategy to cope with the severe accident. In this study, the two-phase natural circulation flow established between the reactor vessel and the insulation was simulated using a thermal-hydraulic system code, MARS-KS. The flow path of cooling water was modeled with one-dimensional nodes, and the boundary condition of the heat load from the molten core was defined to estimate the naturally-driven flow rate. The evolution of major thermal-hydraulic parameters were also evaluated, including the temperature and the level of cooling water, the void fraction around the lower head of the reactor vessel, and the heat transfer mode on its external surface.

• 한국신재생에너지학회:학술대회논문집
• /
• 2007.06a
• /
• pp.676-679
• /
• 2007

This paper describes an experiment facility to measure the circulation characteristics of a water/steam receiver at various heat fluxes. The natural circulation type receiver was considered in this study. The experiment facility was designed to satisfy circulation balance with an appropriate scale down. As a result, riser tube inner diameter was 7.4 mm and water circulation was 0.319 kg/s. Downcomer tube inner diameter by circulation balance was 9.52 mm and the quality was from 0 to 0.23.