Supercharging performance of anti-cavitation schemes in pool-type reactor: Experimental verification and numerical investigation

Abstract

Due to working at atmospheric pressure, main pump in pool-type heating reactor may undergo cavitation, which is harmful for its safe operation. In order to prevent cavitation happening after the temperature of primary circuit increases, it is vital to improve the anti-cavitation ability. Therefore, two anti-cavitation schemes using jetting device for main pump are proposed and studied in this paper. Firstly, a small-scale experimental system was constructed to compare the supercharging performance of the two schemes, which demonstrates that device performance is superior when excitation fluid pressurized by the auxiliary pump is used as primary fluid. Besides, a simulation model of the simplified jetting device for large-scale application in the superior scheme was established to study the effect of extraction ratio on flow field. The numerical results show the device efficiency curve approximates the Gaussian distribution. As the proportion of extraction fluid increases, on the one hand, the pressurization performance of the device will be more significant. On the other hand, complex eddies will be formed in the flow field due to boundary layer separation effect, which will increase hydraulic losses. Besides, loss caused by the jet collision with secondary fluid is also one of main losses. The optimization direction on the design of jetting device is to improve its efficiency and ensuring its supercharging performance.