Analysis of Single-Phase Cascade Flow in Power Plant Drain Systems

1985 ◽  
Vol 107 (3) ◽  
pp. 566-568
Author(s):  
S. A. Hout

The performance of a typical drain system was checked through a pressure drop analysis and the determination of valve sizing coefficients. The operation checks that two-phase flow does not occur upstream of the control valve. Erosion checks are performed at any elbow installed downstream of the control valve where flashing may take place. The analysis does not cover the performance of the feedwater heater or moisture separator and reheater drain systems under transient conditions such as load rejection, i.e., turbine trip. It is believed that accurate valve sizing and appropriate drain cascade are vital to proper drainage.

1983 ◽  
Vol 48 (12) ◽  
pp. 3356-3369 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vladimír Jiřičný ◽  
Vladimír Staněk

The paper gives a review of present approaches to the problem of a single- and two-phase flow in a packed bed. A new definititon has been given of the flooding point, which, as far as the theory is concerned, rigorously defines critical values of the quantities in the flooding point. At the same time, the definition enables a unambiguous experimental determination of the flooding point from experimental dependence sof the hold-up or pressure drop on the flow rate of phases. Based on extensive experimental data three alternative forms have been proposed of the versatile correlation of liquid hold-up on the velocity of liquid at the zero velocity of gas. The correlations have been formulated on the principle of automodel properties and define the appropriate relationships in terms of normalized variables related to the newly defined flooding point. The dependences on the geometry parameters of the packing and physical properties of liquid appear in the versatile correlations only implicitly. A new possibility has been shown of inverse utilization of the versatile correlations for the determination of the critical values (the flooding point) from two independent measurements of liquid hold-up in a real apparatus.


Author(s):  
Ashish Kotwal ◽  
Che-Hao Yang ◽  
Clement Tang

The current study shows computational and experimental analysis of multiphase flows (gas-liquid two-phase flow) in channels with sudden area change. Four test sections used for sudden contraction and expansion of area in experiments and computational analysis. These are 0.5–0.375, 0.5–0.315, 0.5–0.19, 0.5–0.14, inversely true for expansion channels. Liquid Flow rates ranging from 0.005 kg/s to 0.03 kg/s employed, while gas flow rates ranging from 0.00049 kg/s to 0.029 kg/s implemented. First, single-phase flow consists of only water, and second two-phase Nitrogen-Water mixture flow analyzed experimentally and computationally. For Single-phase flow, two mathematical models used for comparison: the two transport equations k-epsilon turbulence model (K-Epsilon), and the five transport equations Reynolds stress turbulence interaction model (RSM). A Eulerian-Eulerian multiphase approach and the RSM mathematical model developed for two-phase gas-liquid flows based on current experimental data. As area changes, the pressure drop observed, which is directly proportional to the Reynolds number. The computational analysis can show precise prediction and a good agreement with experimental data when area ratio and pressure differences are smaller for laminar and turbulent flows in circular geometries. During two-phase flows, the pressure drop generated shows reasonable dependence on void fraction parameter, regardless of numerical analysis and experimental analysis.


Author(s):  
Christian Weinmu¨ller ◽  
Dimos Poulikakos

Microfluidics has experienced a significant increase in research activities in recent years with a wide range of applications emerging, such as micro heat exchangers, energy conversion devices, microreactors, lab-on-chip devices and micro total chemical analysis systems (μTAS). Efforts to enhance or extend the performance of single phase microfluidic devices are met by two-phase flow systems [1, 2]. Essential for the design and control of microfluidic systems is the understanding of the fluid/hydrodynamic behavior, especially pressure drop correlations. These are well established for single phase flow, however, analytical correlations for two-phase flow only reflect experimentally obtained values within an accuracy of ± 50% [3, 4]. The present study illustrates the effect of two-phase flow regimes on the pressure drop. Experimental measurement data is put into relation of calculated values based on established correlations of Lockhart-Martinelli with Chisholm modifications for macroscopic flows [5, 6] and Mishima-Hibiki modifications for microscale flows [7]. Further, the experimental pressure drop data is superimposed onto two-phase flow maps to identify apparent correlations of pressure drop abnormalities and flow regimes. The experiments were conducted in a square microchannel with a width of 200 μm. Optical access is guaranteed by an anodically bonded glass plate on a MEMS fabricated silicon chip. Superficial velocities range from 0.01 m/s to 1 m/s for the gas flow and from 0.0001 m/s to 1 m/s for the liquid flow with water as liquid feed and CO2 as gas. The analysis of the flow regimes was performed by imaging the distinct flow regimes by laser induced fluorescence microscopy, employing Rhodamine B as the photosensitive dye. The pressure drop was synchronically recorded with a 200 mbar, 2.5 bar and 25 bar differential pressure transmitter and the data was exported via a LabView based software environment, see Figure 1. Figure 2 illustrates the experimentally obtained pressure drop in comparison to the calculated values based on the Lockhard-Martinelli correlation with the Chisholm modification and the Mishima-Hibiki modification. For both cases the predications underestimate the two-phase pressure drop by more than 50%. Nevertheless, the regression of the experimental data has an offset of linear nature. Two-phase flow is assigned to flow regime maps of bubbly, wedging, slug or annular flow defined by superficial gas and liquid velocities. In Figure 3 the pressure drop is plotted as a surface over the corresponding flow regime map. Transition lines indicate a change of flow regimes enclosing an area of an anticline in the pressure data. In the direct comparison between the calculated and the measured values, the two surfaces show a distinct deviation. Especially, the anticline of the experimental data is not explained by the analytical correlations. Figure 4 depicts the findings of Figure 3 at a constant superficial velocity of 0.0232 m/s. The dominant influence of the flow regimes on the pressure drop becomes apparent, especially in the wedging flow regime. The evident deviation of two-phase flow correlations for the pressure drop is based on omitting the influence of the flow regimes. In conclusion, the study reveals a strong divergence of pressure drop measurements in microscale two-phase flow from established correlations of Lockhart-Martinelli and recognized modifications. In reference to [8, 9], an analytical model incorporating the flow regimes and, hence, predicting the precise pressure drop would be of great benefit for hydrodynamic considerations in microfluidics.


Author(s):  
Eon Soo Lee ◽  
Carlos H. Hidrovo ◽  
Julie E. Steinbrenner ◽  
Fu-Min Wang ◽  
Sebastien Vigneron ◽  
...  

This experimental paper presents a study of gas-liquid two phase flow in rectangular channels of 500μm × 45μm and 23.7mm long with different wall conditions of hydrophilic and hydrophobic surface, in order to investigate the flow structures and the corresponding friction factors of simulated microchannels of PEMFC. The main flow in the channel is air and liquid water is injected at a single or several discrete locations in one side wall of the channel. The flow structure of liquid water in hydrophilic wall conditioned channel starts from wavy flow, develops to stable stratified film flow, and then transits to unstable fluctuating film flow, as the pressure drop and the flow velocity of air increase from around 10 kPa to over 100 kPa. The flow structure in hydrophobic channel develops from the slug flow to slug-and-film flow with increasing pressure drop and flow velocity. The pressure drop for single phase flow is measured for a base line study, and the fRe product is in close agreement with the theoretical value (fRe = 85) of the conventional laminar flow of aspect ratio 1:11. At the low range of water injection rate, the gas phase fRe product of the two phase flow based on the whole channel area was not substantially affected by the water introduction. However, as the water injection rate increases up to 100 μL/min, the gas phase fRe product based on the whole channel area deviates highly from the single phase theoretical value. The gas phase fRe product with the actual gas phase area corrected by the liquid phase film thickness agrees with the single phase theoretical value.


Author(s):  
Alan B. Maskal ◽  
Fatih Aydogan

The fuel rods in Pressurized Water Reactor (PWR) and Boiling Water Reactor (BWR) cores are supported by spacer grids. Even though spacer grids add to the pressure loss in the reactor core, spacer grids have several benefits in Light Water Reactors (LWRs). Some of these benefits are: (i) increasing the turbulence at the bottom of the reactor core for better heat transfer in single phase region of the LWRs, (ii) improving the departure nucleate boiling ratio results for PWRs, and (iii) improving critical power ratio (CPR) values by increasing the thickness of film in annular flow regime in the top section of the reactor core of BWRs. Several mathematical models have been developed for single and two phase pressure loss across the grid spacer. Almost all of them significantly depend on Reynolds Number. Spacer designs have evolved (incorporating mixing vanes, springs, dimples, etc), resulting in the complexity of the analysis across the grid, all the models have been compared not only theoretically but also quantitatively. For the quantitative comparisons, this work compares the results of mathematical spacer models with experimental data of BWR Full Size Fine Mesh Bundle Tests (BFBT). The experimental data of BFBT provides very detailed experimental results for pressure drop by using several different boundary condition and detailed pressure drop measurements. Since one CT-scanner was used at the bundle exit and three X-ray densitometers were used for the chordal average void distribution at different elevations to generate the BFBT results, detailed two phase parameters have been measured in BFBT database. Two bundle types of BFBT, the current 8×8 type and the high burn-up 8×8 type, were simulated. Three combinations of radial and axial power shapes were tested: 1) beginning of cycle (BOC) radial power pattern/cosine axial power shape (the C2A pattern); 2) end of cycle (EOC) radial power pattern/cosine axial power shape (C2B pattern); and 3) beginning of cycle radial power pattern/inlet peaked axial power shape (C3 pattern) in BFBT. The pressure drop in BFBT database was measured in both single-phase flow and two-phase flow conditions that cover the normal operational behavior. BFBT database gives the three combinations of high burnup assemblies with different radial and axial power shapes, namely C2A, C2B and C3, which were utilized in the critical power measurements. There are two types of spacers in this program — ferrule type and grid type. Therefore, detailed experimental data of BFBT was used for analyzing mathematical models of spacer grid for various boundary conditions of BWR in this paper. It was observed and discussed that pressure drop values due to spacer models can be significantly different.


2004 ◽  
Vol 127 (2) ◽  
pp. 204-209 ◽  
Author(s):  
Savalaxs Supa-Amornkul ◽  
Frank R. Steward ◽  
Derek H. Lister

In order to have a better understanding of the interaction between the two-phase steam-water coolant in the outlet feeder pipes of the primary heat transport system of some CANDU reactors and the piping material, themalhydraulic modelling is being performed with a commercial computational fluid dynamics (CFD) code—FLUENT 6.1. The modeling has attempted to describe the results of flow visualization experiments performed in a transparent feeder pipe with air-water mixtures at temperatures below 55°C. The CFD code solves two sets of transport equations—one for each phase. Both phases are first treated separately as homogeneous. Coupling is achieved through pressure and interphase exchange coefficients. A symmetric drag model is employed to describe the interaction between the phases. The geometry and flow regime of interest are a 73 deg bend in a 5.9cm diameter pipe containing water with a Reynolds number of ∼1E5-1E6. The modeling predicted single-phase pressure drop and flow accurately. For two-phase flow with an air voidage of 5–50%, the pressure drop measurements were less well predicted. Furthermore, the observation that an air-water mixture tended to flow toward the outside of the bend while a single-phase liquid layer developed at the inside of the bend was not predicted. The CFD modeling requires further development for this type of geometry with two-phase flow of high voidage.


Author(s):  
Abdelkader Messilem ◽  
Abdelwahid Azzi ◽  
Ammar Zeghloul ◽  
Faiza Saidj ◽  
Hiba Bouyahiaoui ◽  
...  

An experimental investigation of the pressure drops measurements in a Venturi placed in a vertical pipe is achieved. Venturis with diameter ratios equal to 0.4, 0.55, and 0.75 were employed. Differential pressure transducers were used to measure the pressure drop between the Venturi inlet and the throat sections. The void fraction was measured upstream the Venturi using a conductance probe technique. Air and water superficial velocities ranges were chosen to cover single-phase flow and bubbly, slug, and churn flow regimes. The single-phase pressure drop increases with the liquid superficial velocity. The Venturi pressure drop coefficient increases with decreasing the Venturi area ratio. The discharge coefficient increases slightly with this ratio and approaches a value of unity at high Reynolds number. The two-phase flow pressure drop and the multiplier coefficient increase with the gas superficial velocity and with decreasing the area ratio. Dimensionless pressure drop decreases with increasing the liquid to gas superficial velocity ratio and approaches an asymptotic value at high ratio (greater than 10). This value matches the single-phase flow dimensionless pressure drop value at high Reynolds number. The Venturi with area ratio equal to 0.55 was shown to correlate well the two-phase multiplier and the liquid holdup.


Author(s):  
Dae W. Kim ◽  
Emil Rahim ◽  
Avram Bar-Cohen ◽  
Bongtae Han

The thermofluid characteristics of a chip-scale microgap cooler, including single-phase flow of water and FC-72 and flow boiling of FC-72, are explored. Heat transfer and pressure drop results for single phase water are used to validate a detailed numerical model and, together with the convective FC-72 data, establish a baseline for microgap cooler performance. Experimental results for single phase water and FC-72 flowing in 120 μm, 260 μm and 600 μm microgap coolers, 31mm wide by 34mm long, at velocities of 0.1 – 2 m/s are reported. “Pseudo-boiling” driven by dissolved gas and flow boiling of FC-72 are found to provide significant enhancement in heat transfer relative to theoretical single phase values.


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