A 3D Numerical Study of Supersonic Steam Dumping Process of the Pressurizer Relief Tank

Yi Wang,Ran Zhao,Xiao-Wei Guo,Canqun Yang,Chao Li,Dong Liu,Lijuan Chen,Ge Wu

doi:10.3390/en12122276

Yi Wang, Ran Zhao + Show 6 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/en12122276

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Abstract

Simulating the steam dumping process of a pressurized relief tank is a challenging engineering problem, due to the massive computing resource requirements and its complex physical models. This study gave a comprehensive 3D numerical study for the transient dumping process from the PRT (Pressurizer Relief Tank) to the room containing the tank. The physical model, geometry design and meshing strategy, along with the numerical techniques, have been described in detail. Through parallel simulations based on the open source CFD toolbox OpenFOAM, numerical results for the temperature, pressure, and the velocity distribution are presented. The results show that the maximum velocity throughout the whole domain is 967 m/s over Mach 2 and the maximum pressure on the roof of the room is 2.8 atm. It could provide the guidance information for the safety design of the reactor coolant system. Additionally, comparison cases between OpenFOAM and CFX are tested, and it turns out that OpenFOAM could produce comparable accuracy with commercial CFD software and scale to much more computing cores in parallel simulations.

Highlights

A PRT is a large tank containing water with a nitrogen atmosphere
To explore the potential parallel performance of the application and accurately capture more detailed fluid dynamics with finer mesh among larger domain, this study focuses on simulating the complex supersonic steam dumping process based on an open-source CFD software, OpenFOAM
Simulating a supersonic steam dumping process from a tank is difficult for the complex geometry and multi-component compressible physical models

Summary

Introduction

A PRT is a large tank containing water with a nitrogen atmosphere. As one of the important components in the reactor coolant system, the PRT along with the pressurizer plays a significant role in controlling the system pressure. The PRT has been in the area of industrial engineering for the quench spray system of nuclear reactors [1], reactor coolant system of PWR (Pressurized Water Reactor) [2] and hydrogen mitigation systems [3]. The PRT is connected with the pressurizer of a pressurized-water coolant system through safety valves [4]. When the pressure in the pressurizer continues to increase and exceeds the threshold, the relief valves will open and dump steam to the pressurizer relief tank. The steam could dump into a concrete room (interior space) through the vent outlet while the pressure exceeds the safety point [5]

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