Geysering inhibiting research for single feeding-line in cryogenic propellant transfer system

Abstract

The main purpose of this paper is to use an external recirculation pipe to inhibit geysering phenomenon in cryogenic propellant transfer system. Inhibiting geysering phenomena in the long vertical cryogenic feeding-line is very important to both the system designers and the operators because they may be latent catastrophic failure(s). Separated-flow model has been used in numerical simulation. Considered the numerical simulation results and the experimental conditions, an experimental set-up using liquid nitrogen (LN 2) as working fluid has been built to simulate the recirculation in the long vertical cryogenic feeding-line. From the experimental results, it is clear that the natural circulation occurs in the recirculation system utilizing the external recirculation pipe and geysering phenomenon is inhibited. Adding external recirculation pipe to normal feeding-line system can be an effective method to reduce or eliminate geysering in cryogenic propellant transfer system.