Capture of the Morphology Transfer Process in a High-Momentum Centrally Aerated Bubble Column with a Hybrid Multifield Two-Fluid Model

Abstract

The role of pool scrubbing in attenuating radioactivity release after severe accidents has been explored extensively. It is known that scrubbing efficiency is largely determined by the hydrodynamic phenomenology in pools, which is still insufficiently understood. Aerosol gas forms large globules at the nozzle exit, which subsequently break up into a swarm of stable bubbles, where the change of bubble size can reach more than two orders depending on the injection rate. Furthermore, with the increase of flow rates, the injection regime changes from globule to jet characterized by a continuous gas structure. The flow field in the pool can be divided into two zones, injection and rise (swarm), according to the gas-liquid interface morphology. In different zones, scrubbing is governed by different mechanisms such as inertial impact, diffusion, and gravity, whereby bubble rise velocity is one major influential parameter. So far, numerical analysis of pool scrubbing is routinely based on system codes, which rely on empirical correlations for the determination of hydrodynamic parameters as well as scrubbing zones. More recently, owing to the increasing availability of computational resources, knowledge is improved through three-dimensional computational fluid dynamics simulations. Nevertheless, morphology and regime change still present a challenge for both two-fluid and interface-tracking models. Because of the limitation of closures, the conventional two-fluid model (TFM) is generally effective for bubble size smaller than cell size while interface-tracking (capturing) methods demand dozens of cells per bubble size. Combining the two kinds of approaches into one simulation is not straightforward. The present work aims to present a hybrid multifield TFM with extensions for capturing the transfer between different morphologies and for considering the effect of mesh resolution in momentum exchange. The developments are validated by simulating the complex hydrodynamic process in a pool-scrubbing column, which operates in the globule regime with an injection Weber number between 103 and 105. By comparison with experimental data, the results are shown to be promising, which provides a versatile framework for investigation of particle scrubbing in the future. The most attractive feature of the model is that compared to one-fluid interface-tracking models, it reliably predicts the bubble rise velocity. Furthermore, it is able to capture the lateral gas distribution without the need of applying a population balance model since most large bubbles are resolved.