Analysis of Venting of a Resin Slurry

A resin slurry venting analysis was conducted to address safety issues associated with over-pressurization of ion exchange columns used in the plutonium uranium redox extraction (PUREX) process at the U. S. Department of Energy's Savannah River Site (SRS). If flow to these columns is inadvertently interrupted, an exothermic runaway reaction could occur between the ion exchange resin and the nitric acid used in the feed stream. This reaction generates significant quantities of noncondensable gases. To prevent the column from rupturing due to pressurization by these gases, rupture disks are installed on the column vent lines. The venting analysis models accelerating rate calorimeter (ARC) tests and data from tests that were performed in a vented test vessel with a rupture disk. The tests showed that the pressure inside the test vessel continued to increase after the rupture disk opened, though at a slower rate than prior to the rupture. The increase in the vessel pressure is modeled as a transient phenomenon associated with expansion of the resin slurry/gas mixture upon rupture of the disk. It is postulated that the maximum pressure at the end of this expansion is limited by energy minimization to approximately 1.5 times the rupture disk burst pressure. The magnitude of this pressure increase is consistent with the measured pressure transients. The results of this analysis demonstrate the need to allow for a margin between the design pressure and the rupture disk burst pressure in similar applications.

Development of Test Vessel for Gas Insulation Breakdown Test

This paper discusses a new test vessel developed to investigate the breakdown test performance of gas insulation. The test vessel is equipped with certain specialty including pressure chamber and control measures. Through help from a steering, it is provide of controlling the gap length of the electrodes without the need of removing the gas. Other control measures include humidity, temperature, and pressure readings. The humidity and temperature are read wirelessly and from the readings, the necessary atmospheric corrections can be made according to standards. The developed vessel is then tested with AC breakdown test using air with various gap lengths and various electrode configurations. There are two types of electrode configuration used in this project i.e., rod (R0.5)-plane and plane-plane.

Fracture Behavior in West Jefferson Test Under Low-Temperature Condition for X65 Steel Pipe With High Charpy Energy: Current Activities in HLP Committee, Japan, Report 1

This paper describes the results of pressure vessel fracture test which called West Jefferson and/or partial gas burst testing using Grade API X65 linepipe steel with high Charpy energy that exhibits inverse facture in the Drop Weight Tear Test (DWTT). A series of pressure vessel fracture tests which is as part of an ongoing effort by the High-strength Line Pipe committee (HLP) of the Iron and Steel Institute of Japan (ISIJ) was carried out at low temperature in order to investigate brittle-to-ductile transition behavior and to compare to DWTT fracture behavior. Two different materials on Fracture Appearance Transition Temperature (FATT) property were used in these tests. One is −60 degree C and the other is −25 to −30 degree C which is defined as 85 % shear area fraction (SA) in the standard pressed notch DWTT (PN-DWTT). The dimensions of the test pipes were 24inches (609.6 mm) in outside diameter (OD), 19.1 mm in wall thickness (WT). In each test, the test pipe is cooled by using liquid nitrogen in the cooling baths. Two cooling baths are set up separately on the two sides of the test vessel, making it possible to obtain fracture behaviors under two different test temperatures in one burst test. The test vessel was also instrumented with pressure transducers, thermocouples and timing wires to obtain the pressure at the fracture onset, temperature and crack propagation velocity, respectively. Some informative observations to discuss appropriate evaluation method for material resistance to brittle facture propagation for high toughness linepipe materials are obtained in the test. When the pipe burst test temperatures are higher than the PN-DWTT transition temperature, ductile cracks were initiated from the initial notch and propagated with short distance in ductile manner. When the pipe burst test temperatures were lower than the PN-DWTT transition temperature, brittle cracks were initiated from the initial notch and propagated through cooling bath. However, the initiated ductile crack at lower than the transition temperature was not changed to brittle manner. This means inverse facture occurred in the PN-DWTT is a particular problem caused by the API DWTT testing method. Furthermore, results for the pipes tested indicated that inverse facture occurred in PN-DWTT at the temperature above the 85 % FATT may not affect the arrestability against the brittle fracture propagation and it is closely related with the location of brittle fracture initiation origin in the fracture appearance of PN-DWTT.

ESS Target Helium Experiments at Lund University

In ESS, a 5 MW proton beam will hit a helium cooled tungsten target to generate neutrons by spallation. For the purpose of investigating various aspects of cooling with helium, an experimental system has been constructed at Lund University, Department of Energy Sciences. A helium flow of 3 g/s is circulated in a closed loop with pre-heater, cooler, filters and a test vessel. The vessel has windows for measurements and is designed for 10 bar and above 400 °C. In the test vessel, a tube forms a helium jet of up to 150 m/s onto a coin shaped material sample. One purpose of the system is to investigate erosion of sample surfaces. Drilling and attaching equipment to the surface had to be avoided, so the setup has been benchmarked and the comparison was used to tune a CFD model. Then the model is used to assess the conditions in the experiments. The setup, as well as the tests and calculations, are described and it is concluded that the temperature and velocity estimates are sufficient for the experiments to be performed.

Development of a Temperature and Pressure-Controlled Corrosion Test Vessel

Temperature and pressure are very important factors that influence corrosion process. We often need to choose a proper vessel in the corrosion test that need to control both temperature and pressure. Moreover, the material of the test vessel should not be harmful to corrosion liquid. For example, steel even stainless steel will be corroded in warm seawater, and they are not suitable for the vessel material. We designed a corrosion test vessel made of Poly-Propylene Random (PPR), and temperature can be controlled within room temperature and 100Celsius degree, pressure can be controlled within1to10atm.(1MPa). In this paper, temperature-controlled method and pressure-controlled method are described. Temperature and pressure characteristics are also analyzed and described. Shell structure, material and design are introduced. A series of typical corrosion tests were performed by using this corrosion test vessel.

Study on Nucleate Boiling Heat Transfer by Measuring Detailed Surface Temperature Distribution and Variation With Infrared Radiation Camera

Pool boiling heat transfer experiments were performed for water at 101 kPa to examine elementary process of nucleate pool boiling. The heat transfer surface was made from a copper printed circuit board. The size of the heat transfer surface was 10 mm × 10 mm. Direct current was supplied to the heat transfer surface to heat it up. The Bakelite plate of the backside of the copper layer was taken off at the center portion of the heat transfer surface. The test vessel was a closed 200-mm cube container made of duralumin. It has transparent view windows on opposing side walls made of a Polycarbonate plate to observe a boiling state. Heat transfer surface was placed at the bottom of the test vessel. Distilled water was used for the experiments. The instantaneous variation of the backside temperature of the heat transfer surface was measured with an infrared radiation camera. Bubble behavior was recorded with a high speed video camera. The time and the space resolution of the infrared radiation cameras used in present experiments were 60 Hz and 0.1 mm × 0.1 mm, and 120 Hz and 0.315 mm × 0.315 mm, respectively. When the heat flux was increased, the instantaneous surface temperature variation explain the pattern. In the isolated bubble region, surface temperature was uniform during waiting time. When boiling bubble generation started, a large dip in the surface temperature was formed under the bubble. After the bubble left from the heat transfer surface, the surface temperature returned to former uniform temperature distribution. Surface temperature was not affected by the bubble generation beyond 1.8 mm from the center of the bubble. In the intermediate and high heat flux region, the variation of surface temperature and heat flux were small. Rather the heat flux variation range was close to that at the isolated boiling region.