Experimental and numerical investigation of flow structure and heat transfer during high pressure condensation in a declined pipe at COSMEA facility

Reliability and safety are perpetual topics in the development of nuclear installations. Generation III reactor concepts contain additional passive safety systems for improved accident control and mitigation. Main aspect of these passive systems is to operate with a minimum of external energy and signals. One example is the emergency condenser of the KERENA reactor concept, which removes heat from the core passively, e.g. after a station blackout. The governing natural circulation flow with condensation is only coarsely understood and current simulation methods need to be improved. During the condensation process a complex interaction between flow structure and heat transfer takes places and this determines the total efficiency of the passive safety system and hence the reliability in managing an incident.
The experimental facility COSMEA (condensation test rig for flow morphology and heat transfer studies) at HZDR is designated to provide experimental results to support the further development of CFD calculation methods. The test rig consists of a 3 m long emergency condenser pipe (ID 43 mm) which is 0.76° inclined and cooled by forced water flow. The experiments are conducted in a pressure range between 5 bar and 65 bar with steam mass flow rates up to 1 kg/s. Measurements of pressure, temperature, flow rate and condensation rate deliver integral understanding of the process. To investigate the details of the resulting stratified flow structures, x-ray tomography is applied. Parallel temperature measurements inside the heat transferring wall provide information about the azimuthal distribution of the heat flux.
A phase injection system was developed to operate the experiment in a stepwise condensation mode, which allows the measuring of condensation rates, flow morphologies and heat transfer distribution for different steam fraction values. The combination between cross sectional images from x-ray tomography and the azimuthally resolved heat transfer clarify the coupling between flow structure and heat transfer during condensation.
The experimental results are supported by a system code calculation. The COSMEA facility was modeled with the RELAP5 code. The original condensation model of the code was modified such that the heat transfer coefficient depends on the local mass fraction of the flow field. The experimental and calculation results agreed well for the steady state condensation process in the condensation rate, secondary side temperature and the heat flux data.